MORE THAN A YEAR and a half has
now passed since Nvidia launched its
Ampere GPUs, including the RTX 3090
and RTX 3080. Ampere was supposed
to bring the GPU empire under control
but it was plagued by shortages in the
ensuing time, an unforeseen weakness in
Nvidia’s plans. However, things are finally
starting to improve and you might be able
to find an RTX 3080 for under a grand.
This is apparently unacceptable because
the RTX 3090 Ti doubles that price, kicks
performance per watt considerations to
the curb, and goes for a no-holds-barred
implementation of the GA102 processor.
The 3090 Ti, like its 3090 predecessor,
packs 24GB of GDDR6X memory, but
Nvidia has improved things with this
update. Specifically, it’s using 16Gb
modules and only needs 12 of them,
so all the chips are on the same side
of the PCB. That’s good news because
GDDR6X temperatures have been a
concern since the RTX 3090 launched,
with some models, including Nvidia’s
Founders Edition, hitting 110°C under
strenuous workloads. The Asus 3090 Ti
TUF Gaming maxed out at 100°C, even
with the memory overclocked from the
default 21Gbps to 22.5Gbps and running
an Ethereum mining test—something we
couldn’t have done with the old 3090 cards.Fully armed and operational
Asus RTX 3090 Ti
TUF Gaming
7
VERDICT Asus RTX 3090 Ti TUF GamingDEATH STAR Fastest
GPU around; potent cooling;
decent overclock.
EXHAUST PORT Inefficient; extreme
price; late to the party.
$2,149, http://www.nvidia.comSPECIFICATIONSArchitecture GA102
Lithography Samsung 8N
Boost Clock 1950MHz
GPU Cores 10752
Memory 24GB GDDR6X
TFLOPS FP32 41.9
Bandwidth 1008Gbps
TDP 480W
Connectors 2x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4Yields on the chips have apparently
improved as well, that or Nvidia has been
stockpiling the best binned GA102 GPUs
because the 3090 Ti uses a fully enabled
processor. You get all 84 Streaming
Multiprocessors (SMs) backing up the
full 384-bit memory configuration. Nvidia
also goosed the reference boost clock
from the 3090’s meager 1695MHz up to a
heady 1860MHz—and Asus pushes that
further to 1950MHz with the OC mode
engaged via its GPU Tweak utility. That’s
still a conservative estimate, and we
routinely saw core clocks of 2050–2080
MHz while gaming.PAYING THE PIPER
But like everyone else, Nvidia had
to pay the piper. The effective end of
Dennard scaling (a ‘law’ from the 1970s
that observed that smaller transistors
required less voltage and current,
meaning smaller process nodes ended
up boosting performance per watt) and
the death of Moore’s Law (the doubling of
transistor density every couple of years),
means that while chips made on smaller
process nodes might be faster, they tend
to get there by increasing power use.
In the case of the 3090 Ti, Nvidia has
bumped the reference TBP (Total Board
Power) from the 3090’s 350W to a newhigh of 450W, and Asus goes even further
with a peak power draw of nearly 500W
when OC mode is engaged.
Naturally, more cores, faster clocks,
and more power combine to create the
blueprint for incredible performance. On
paper, the RTX 3090 Ti delivers 8 percent
more memory bandwidth and 12 percent
more compute than the 3090. In practice,
at least at 4K ultra, we measured an
average frame rate improvement of
10 percent. At 1440p ultra, as well as
in professional and content creation
workloads, however, performance was
only about 7 percent faster overall.
So, we’re looking at 5–10 percent more
performance, 30 percent more power,
and a theoretical price that’s 33 percent
higher than its predecessor. That’s
certainly not an unassailable position.
Hell, a bunch of teddy bears with spears
could probably take it out if the stars were
to properly align. But in the real world,
vanilla 3090 cards still sell for $1,900 or
more, the improved performance on the
3090 Ti might actually justify the price.
Before you whip out your credits
looking to upgrade your gaming battle
station, however, it’s worth keeping
one eye on the future. Sure, the RTX
3090 Ti might be the fastest thing since
the Millennium Falcon, but the Ada
architecture is likely only months away.
If history is any indication of what to
expect (see our GPU feature, page 26),
Ada could provide a 50 percent boost in
performance or more within the same
tier of GPU. Power requirements might
be a bit higher as well, but that’s the new
price for progress.–JARRED WALTONBENCHMARKSRTX 3090 Ti RTX 3090 RX 6900 XT RTX 3080 Ti
10 Game Average (fps) 108 / 70 100 / 63 96 / 57 97 / 60
Borderlands 3 (fps) 138 / 80 122 / 70 131 / 70 118 / 68
Control (DXR) 79 / 40 70 / 35 47 / 22 69 / 34
Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR) 50 / 25 45 / 22 25 / 11 44 / 21
Far Cry 6 (fps) 140 / 91 132 / 84 141 / 86 130 / 82
Flight Simulator (fps) 85 / 70 87 / 64 80 / 51 80 / 54
Forza Horizon 5 (fps) 115 / 88 109 / 82 130 / 91 107 / 80
Horizon Zero Dawn (fps) 162 / 102 153 / 93 160 / 85 150 / 89
Minecraft (DXR) 69 / 35 64 / 32 31 / 15 62 / 31
Red Dead Redemption 2 (fps) 133 / 94 119 / 84 113 / 77 116 / 81
Watch Dogs Legion (fps) 109 / 71 102 / 65 98 / 58 98 / 63Best scores are in bold. All testing conducted with a Core i9-12900K, MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4, 2x16GB DDR4-
3600 CL16, 2TB Crucial P5 Plus M.2 SSD, Cooler Master MWE 1250 Gold V2. Scores are average framerates at
2560x1440 / 3840x2160 ultra, with ray tracing enabled in Control, Cyberpunk, and Minecraft.in the lab
74 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022