Introduction

The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X is the most premium graphics card from the MSI stable. NVIDIA's "Ampere" graphics architecture reaches its crescendo with what is possibly the final round of product-stack updates for the RTX 30-series, and leading the pack is the RTX 3090 Ti. This card replaces the RTX 3090 as the fastest GeForce you can buy. It maxes out the company's largest "Ampere" silicon, the "GA102," by enabling every single streaming multiprocessor (SM) physically present on the chip, pairs it with the fastest GDDR6X memory tune available, dials up clock speeds a bit, and offers a card that can play any of today's games at 4K with ray tracing, at native resolution.



The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti enables all 84 SM present on the GA102 silicon, which works out to 10,752 CUDA cores, 336 Tensor cores, 84 RT cores, 336 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. The RTX 3090, in comparison, has 82 SM, and the RTX 3080 Ti has 80. NVIDIA also bolstered the memory sub-system. It now uses 21 Gbps-rated GDDR6X memory instead of the 19.5 Gbps memory on the RTX 3090 and 19 Gbps memory on the RTX 3080 Ti. You get 24 GB of memory, much like the RTX 3090, which should help with creative applications that deal with large data sets. If you recall, although the RTX 3090 launched alongside the RTX 3080, it wasn't regarded NVIDIA's "flagship" product, as that was the RTX 3080. Instead, the 3090 enjoyed a "halo product" status because of its 24 GB of memory for creativity applications.

The RTX 3090 Ti is also the first graphics card in the industry to incorporate the new 16-pin power connector, and this time around, it isn't confined to the NVIDIA Founders Edition. NVIDIA partners across the board are incorporating this connector, and including adapters for common 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The 16-pin connector is now a necessity as 450 W is the typical board power of the reference spec of the RTX 3090 Ti. Factory-overclocked cards such as the MSI Suprim X could approach this power limit. The 16-pin power connector is technically capable of delivering up to 600 W as per ATX spec. MSI includes an adapter that converts three 8-pin PCIe connectors to one of these, so you still only push up to 450 W to the card.

The MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X features a gigantic triple-slot cooling solution with a heavy aluminium fin-stack heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of fans. It has a premium metal finish and ARGB lighting inserts, and is a sincere attempt by MSI designers to rival the aesthetic finesse of the NVIDIA Founders Edition card, while also giving the card its enthusiast chops, with which overclockers can top graphics benchmark leaderboards. The new TriFrozr 2S cooler is the largest custom-design air-cooling solution by the company. MSI is giving the RTX 3090 Ti a factory overclocked speed of 1950 MHz, as opposed to the 1860 MHz reference.