The Zotac GeForce RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo is the company's new flagship RTX 3090, which also makes it the fastest graphics card Zotac ever built. It comes with the full arsenal of technologies: big factory overclock, a large board power limit increase, massive triple-slot, triple-fan cooler, plenty of ARGB effects, and, a Zotac first, software-switchable dual BIOS.

Out of the box, the RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo ticks at a rated boost of 1815 MHz, which is a +120 MHz increase over the NVIDIA Founders Edition. This frequency is higher than around 80% of the custom RTX 3090 cards on the market, and only few 3090s go higher. When averaged over our test suite at 4K resolution, we see the AMP Extreme 4% ahead of the RTX 3090 FE—a very decent improvement. This makes the card 6% faster than RTX 3080 Ti, 11% faster than RX 6900 XT, 15% faster than RTX 3080 and 17% faster than Radeon RX 6800 XT. Just to put things into perspective: the difference between the RTX 3090 and RTX 2080 Ti is +56% (!), and the 2080 Ti was every enthusiast's wet dream not long ago. Compared to other RTX 3090 cards, performance differences are slim, a few percent here and there. Out of all the RTX 3090 cards we've tested, only the MSI 3090 Suprim X and ASUS STRIX are a tiny bit faster than the AMP Extreme, by 2% and 1% respectively.

Such performance numbers definitely make the RTX 3090 suitable for 4K resolution gaming. Many games will run at over 90 FPS. At highest details at 4K, nearly all games settle in at over 60 FPS. At lower resolutions, you'll often run into CPU bottlenecks with even a fast processor. Still, for 1440p, I could imagine high-refresh-rate gamers considering the RTX 3090 to drive their monitors at 120 FPS and beyond. Raytracing performance of the RTX 3090 is better than the Radeon RX 6900 XT because NVIDIA executes more raytracing functions in hardware and is on their second-generation of the technology. Differences vary between titles, though. The new consoles are built using AMD RDNA 2 technology, so going forward, game developers may invest more resources into optimizing RT for AMD's architecture, or they simply dial down the RT effects to reduce the performance hit, which is what happened recently with Resident Evil 7.

NVIDIA recently released the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which comes with 12 GB VRAM—half that of the RTX 3090. While 12 GB is plenty for nearly all gaming scenarios, there's still workloads that could go beyond that. Also, if you feel like you want to future-proof in terms of VRAM, the 3090 could be an option. Personally, I don't think 24 GB will be needed in this cycle, but I guess better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Physically, the Zotac RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo is the longest graphics card I ever tested. At 35 cm long, there's many cases where it will not fit if you plan on installing a watercooling radiator in the front, too. I'm not sure why Zotac chose to make their card that long, especially considering there's 3 cm of unused space that's just cooler shroud. Those 3 cm are what make the difference between "fit" and "won't fit" in many cases. Maybe they didn't think of the possibility of the watercooling radiator taking up space, or they just wanted to beat MSI's Suprim X to claim the title "biggest card." On the other hand, if you spend more than $2500 for a graphics card, you'll most certainly have some extra cash lying around to upgrade your case, too.

Zotac's cooler is very decent in its capability. In our direct heatsink shootout against the RTX 3090 FE, it matches NVIDIA's most premium cooling solution, which is a great achievement. The RTX 3090 Founders Edition cooler is one of the best we've ever seen. However, in our normal thermal testing, we found the cooler to run louder (41 dBA) and hotter (73°C) than the NVIDIA Founders Edition, which reached 33 dBA and 71°C. What's going on? Didn't I just say the cooler is comparable to the FE? The problem is that Zotac's card puts out 448 W during gaming, whereas the NVIDIA Founders Edition only puts out 355 W—a 100 W difference. This obviously puts MUCH more stress on the cooler, so it has to run the fans faster to achieve the target temperature. In a first for Zotac, their RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo comes with a dual-BIOS feature, which lets you activate a "quiet" BIOS. While that BIOS definitely makes a difference—38 dBA instead of 41 dBA—it isn't quiet enough to compete with other RTX 3090 cards we've tested. The Founders Edition is already very quiet, but we've seen custom designs go even lower, almost whisper-quiet, like the MSI RTX 3090 Suprim X and EVGA RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra, which reach 31 dBA and 32 dBA respectively. If you want the lowest possible noise, you have to go for AMD Radeon. Their GPUs are much more energy efficient than NVIDIA now, which means less cooling is required, allowing for lower noise levels. For example, the RX 6900 XT reference design runs at only 27 dBA—whisper quiet while roughly 10% slower than the Zotac card. With Ampere, NVIDIA introduced idle fan stop on their Founders Edition, which makes fan stop a mandatory capability for custom designs, too. In idle, during desktop work, internet browsing, and light gaming, the card will turn off its fans completely for the perfect noise-free experience.

Having a dual-BIOS feature is definitely a nice option, but I'm not sure if Zotac's approach of making it software-only is the right path. Switching the BIOS can't be done with a manual switch like on every other dual-BIOS card I'm aware of—Zotac requires that you install the Firestorm software for dual-BIOS control. Software control is nice of course because you don't have to crawl under your desk, open up the case, and look for the switch in the dark. On the other hand, what's the plan when your system doesn't boot because of a failed BIOS flash? What's even more surprising is that the PCB design has a spot for a physical switch. I can't imagine they skipped it for cost reasons; it costs a few cents, which should be no problem on a graphics card for more than $2500. I guess the best solution would be to combine a physical switch with a software switch, which is something Sapphire does on some of their graphics cards.

Zotac increased their card's default power limit to 420 W, which is the highest we've seen so far, same as the EVGA FTW3 Ultra and MSI Suprim X. The manual adjustment limit is generous, too, with 462 W, but not as high as 500 W on the EVGA FTW3 with XOC BIOS, and the ASUS STRIX offers 480 W adjustment range. Still, kudos to Zotac for offering higher power limits than most of the competition. Overclocking potential was good, pushed forward a bit by the higher default GPU voltage, which helps with stability at higher frequencies, but at the cost of energy efficiency.

While Zotac hasn't provided any pricing information, we're expecting the card to retail at around $2800. Graphics card prices have come down a little bit recently, but that's still a lot of money. The most affordable RTX 3090 cards can be found for $2500. While Zotac's RGB implementation is fantastic, and the large card with its higher power limit is definitely interesting for some, I'm not convinced that spending so much more over the base price will be worth it. It definitely is not if low-noise and energy efficiency are among your priorities. Strong competition comes from the Radeon RX 6900 XT, too, which can be had for $1800—or $1000 less than the RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo, and the recently released RTX 3080 Ti for $2000 isn't that much slower than the RTX 3090, but doesn't have 24 GB VRAM either.