Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition is the green team signing off on another successful graphics architecture, the RTX 30-series "Ampere." This isn't our first RTX 3090 Ti review. We've tested custom-design cards from ASUS, MSI, EVGA, and ZOTAC on launch day, and each of those is factory-overclocked, leading the series for their respective brands at the time. At the time, NVIDIA didn't sample out the Founders Edition at all, so everybody was wondering about its performance, thermals, and acoustics. That's why we went the extra mile and purchased one of these $2000 cards to answer those questions.

A quick rundown of the RTX 3090 Ti first. This SKU maxes out the "GA102" silicon, the largest one based on the "Ampere" architecture. The GA102 was already nearly maxed out by the RTX 3090, which remained the fastest Ampere you could buy for over 18 months, since the series launched in September 2020. The RTX 3090 used 82 out of 84 streaming multiprocessors (SM) physically present on the silicon, and two additional SMs probably wouldn't have made a big difference for the new RTX 3090 Ti. NVIDIA hence gave this SKU two enhancements besides maxing out the silicon. First, the company upgraded memory speeds from 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective) on the RTX 3090 to 21 Gbps. This results in a memory bandwidth of over 1 TB/s compared to the 940 GB/s on the RTX 3090. Second, the company significantly increased the power limits, with the typical board power now 450 W, compared to 350 W for the RTX 3090 (at reference specs). This increase in power limits has the RTX 3090 Ti sustain a higher GPU clock speed.



450 W typical graphics power also means it's no longer possible to build an RTX 3090 Ti graphics card with just two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. NVIDIA confronted this problem with even the RTX 3090 Founders Edition, and chose the exotic 12-pin Molex microFIT connector. Over the past two years, Intel finalized the ATX 3.0 system specification and introduced the new 16-pin AIC power connector standard capable of delivering up to 600 W power with a single connector. NVIDIA is the first to market with this connector, with all its board partners implementing it in their custom-design RTX 3090 Ti cards. The Founders Edition card has one, too. Unlike the 12-pin connector that's placed perpendicular to the PCB on the RTX 3090, the 16-pin connector is along its plane. An adapter that converts three 8-pin PCIe power connectors to one 16-pin connector is included.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition graphics card looks nearly identical to the RTX 3090 Founders Edition except for that 16-pin power connector in place of the 12-pin one. We checked, and even the cooler design looks identical. NVIDIA commented that some tweaks were made to the vapor chamber. 24 GB remains the standard memory amount for this SKU, same as with the RTX 3090. The difference on the Ti is that each memory chip has twice the capacity, so there's only half as many required, which means no more memory chips on the back side of the card and helps with memory temperatures. The GPU is clocked at 1860 MHz boost, compared to 1700 MHz of the RTX 3090. The memory ticks at 21 Gbps. NVIDIA is pricing the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition at $1,999, a $500 premium over the MSRP of the RTX 3090.