MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio Review

1. Introduction2. MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark Port Royal6. Control7. Death Stranding8. The Division 29. Far Cry New Dawn10. Gears 511. Ghost Recon: Breakpoint12. Metro Exodus13. Middle Earth: Shadow of War14. Red Dead Redemption 215. Shadow of the Tomb Raider16. Total War Saga: Troy17. Performance Summary (11 Game Average)18. Cost Per Frame Analysis19. RTX On - Control20. RTX On - Metro Exodus21. RTX On - Shadow of the Tomb Raider22. DLSS On - Control & Death Stranding23. Productivity Part 124. Productivity Part 225. Clock Speed26. Temperatures27. Acoustics28. Power Consumption29. Performance Per Watt30. Overclocking31. Closing Thoughts32. View All Pages

It's been a busy few weeks since Jensen Huang first announced the RTX 30-series in a live-streamed event from his kitchen. Last week saw the arrival of the RTX 3080, and today we are already moving on to look at the RTX 3090. While Nvidia specifically didn't call this their ‘flagship' GPU, it sits right at the top of the RTX 30-series stack, with a mammoth 10496 CUDA cores, 24GB GDDR6X memory and 350W TGP. This review is focusing on MSI's RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio model, priced at £1529.99.

Considering we reviewed the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio just last week, there may be a sense of déjà vu when looking at the RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio, as externally nothing appears to have changed. What has changed, is the configuration of the G102 GPU, so let's recap the core spec of this monster of a GPU.

GPU	RTX 3090	RTX 3080	RTX 2080 Ti (FE)	RTX 2080 SUPER	RTX 2080 (FE)
SMs	82	68	68	48	46
CUDA Cores	10496	8704	4352	3072	2944
Tensor Cores	328	272	544	384	368
RT Cores	82	68	68	48	46
Texture Units	328	272	272	192	184
ROPs	112	96	88	64	64
GPU Boost Clock	1695 MHz	1710 MHz	1635 MHz	1815 MHz	1800 MHz
Memory Data Rate	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	14 Gbps	15.5 Gbps	14 Gbps
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	10GB GDDR6X	11GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Interface	384-bit	320-bit	352-bit	256-bit	256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	936 GB/Sec	760 GB/Sec	616 GB/sec	496.1 GB/sec	448 GB/sec
TGP	350W	320W	260W	250W	225W

RTX 3090 uses the GA102 GPU, which also forms the basis for RTX 3080. Even with its 82 SMs, however, this is not actually a full implementation of GA102, as a fully populated die houses 84 SMs, so just two are missing from the RTX 3090. Ampere has doubled the number of FP32 shaders per SM, so there's a total of 128 CUDA Cores in each of those 82 SMs, for a grand total of 10496.

Each SM also houses a single RT Core, as well as four Tensor cores, giving us 328 with the RTX 3090. Additionally, there's 328 texture units and 112 ROPs.

As for the memory, this is a significant step up from the RTX 3080. RTX 3090 of course still uses GDDR6X memory, but it has over double the amount with 24GB. Additionally, the modules are clocked slightly faster at 19.5Gbps, and the memory interface is also slightly wider than RTX 3080, with a 384-bit interface. Total memory bandwidth comes in just shy of 1TB/s, hitting 936 GB/s.

Finally, we can see MSI has pushed the clock speed slightly further than reference. RTX 3090 defaults to a boost clock of 1695MHz, but MSI has added an extra 90MHz to this figure, bringing it up to 1785MHz. Later in the review we test exactly how fast this GPU actually operates, as we would expect GPU Boost to bring clock speed well above the rated speed.

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