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.

Benefits of 24 GB in Productivity

One of the key features setting the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti apart from any other consumer graphics card in the market is its incredible 24 GB dedicated memory. NVIDIA achieved this much memory without compromising on performance, with the highest 21 Gbps data rates, widest 384-bit bus widths, and highest 1 TB/s memory bandwidth on tap. This is NVIDIA's fastest graphics memory solution in the Ampere series. The professional A6000 GPU has up to 48 GB of memory, but it is conventional 16 Gbps GDDR6 for the sake of ECC support. The GDDR6X memory found in NVIDIA Ampere GPUs is an innovation co-developed by NVIDIA and Micron Technology.


So what does one really do with 24 GB of memory? If you've read our GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review, you'll know that despite just 12 GB of memory, the GPU is almost as fast as the RTX 3090. The RTX 3090 Ti does not just have faster memory than the RTX 3090, but also more shaders, higher clock-speeds, and significantly higher power limits to sustain boost frequencies. Even NVIDIA believes that one doesn't really need 24 GB of memory for gaming, and hence mooted the original RTX 3080 as its flagship for this generation.

NVIDIA considers the RTX 3090 Ti to be more than just a gaming graphics card. The incredible 24 GB memory and NVIDIA GeForce Studio drivers combination is designed to give the RTX 3090 Ti some serious professional-visualization chops, especially when working on 3D content-creation projects with large data sets.

OTOY OctaneRender is able to utilize the 24 GB memory to draw large 3D scenes, including with RTX ray tracing acceleration. The advantage of 24 GB is in storing the entire scene data on the video memory to minimize or cut out out-of-core data, which has to be fetched from main memory or disk storage, making the process an order of magnitude slower.

Blender is one of the most popular 3D authoring and render software, and the Blender Cycles path-tracing renderer utilizes NVIDIA OptiX to accelerate interactive and final frame rendering with incredible lighting effects over multiple instances of Blender. Something like this would fail if attempted on the RTX 3080 Ti with its 12 GB video memory since you would run out of memory.

Video editing software DaVinci Resolve will particularly benefit from the 24 GB memory of the RTX 3090 Ti, especially in 8K Redcode RAW projects, where you're dealing with 8K uncompressed video frames that take up enormous amounts of memory. NVIDIA assesses that it takes 24 GB to smoothly work with 8K editing, color-correction, VFX, and post-production, and that the 12 GB or 10 GB solutions on the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3080 will run into out-of-memory errors.

Packaging

The Card

The visual style of the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X matches that of the other Suprim X models. A premium brushed aluminium shroud dominates much of the card, with cleverly designed cutouts for the vents and some sharp edges and RGB LED diffusers. The amount of RGB bling is about the same as for the Gaming X Trio, but somehow comes across as more subtle and classy.


Dimensions of the card are 34.0 x 14.0 cm, and it weighs 2146 g.


These GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards are enormous in size. From top left to top right: EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra, Zotac RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme, MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X, and ASUS RTX 3090 Ti STRIX Liquid Cooled.

See the small AMD card in the bottom left? That's the Radeon RX 6900 XT, the fastest card the red team currently offers. Also included is GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition in the bottom right. $10,000 in graphics cards right there!


Installation requires four slots in your system.


The dual BIOS switch lets you toggle between the default "quiet" BIOS and "gaming" BIOS that runs the fans at higher speeds for lower temperatures.


Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports.


The RTX 3090 Ti introduces the new 16-pin power connector—note the four small pins above the larger 12 pins. This connector is specified for up to 600 W power delivery. All RTX 3090 Ti cards come bundled with a 3x 8-pin to 12-pin adapter (the four small sense pins aren't used). While the ATX specification technically states that if the four small sense pins aren't connected, the card should limit itself to 150 W, NVIDIA made sure even the 3x 8-pin adapter scenario, which can provide 525 W total (3x 150 W + 75 W from the slot), runs the card at optimal settings.


The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti supports SLI, but know that NVIDIA isn't supporting SLI as implicit multi-GPU (SLI as you know it), but explicit multi-GPU that's developed and supported by game and application developers. With multi-GPU game support pretty much non-existent, this basically means SLI is dead.

Teardown

MSI's cooling solution features two large aluminium fin stacks paired with eight heatpipes. The baseplate not only provides cooling for the GPU, but also the memory chips.


Once the main heatsink is removed, you're still left with this black stabilizer plate that protects the card against sagging.


The backplate protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.



High-res versions are also available (front, back).