When Nvidia launched its RTX 30-series of graphics cards in 2020, it felt like the dawn of a new age in high-end PC gaming – one with outstanding performance at a totally reasonable price. Then the GPU market became a total mess thanks to chip shortages, cryptocurrency mining, and an overall demand that far outstripped supply. Graphics cards across the spectrum, from budget fare like the RTX 3050 all the way up to the monstrous RTX 3090, have been near impossible to find at MSRP since.
Now the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Ti promises to be the absolute king of the GPU stack, capable of delivering even more impressive framerates at 4K and 8K, and offering content creators best-in-class performance for video editing, 3D rendering, and more. But with a starting price of $1,999 – and that’s if anyone can actually find it at MSRP – it’s reserved only for those who are willing to spend top dollar in order to have the absolute best available.
MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X 24G – Design and Features
The RTX 3090 Ti is a massive graphics card, dwarfing all of its siblings save for its also-massive predecessor, the RTX 3090. At 13.3 inches long and 5.5 inches wide – not to mention 2.7 inches thick, commanding a triple-slot designation – it stands little chance of fitting into small form factor systems, and will be a tight squeeze for even some standard ATX cases. MSI includes a brace in the box to help prevent GPU sag, which is nice considering the card’s hefty size.
While a Founders Edition from Nvidia does exist, the version we were sent for review is the MSI Suprim X variant, which comes overclocked to 1950 MHz. Beyond that, its specs are the same as the Founders Edition: 10,752 CUDA Cores, up from 10,496 on the original RTX 3090, paired with 24GB GDDR6X memory, memory speed of 21 Gbps, and a total memory bandwidth of 1008 GB/s. It has 336 3rd-generation Tensor Cores and 82 2nd-generation RT cores for AI and ray tracing tasks. The Suprim X also has a dual-BIOS switch that lets you swap between “Silent” and “Gaming” mode, which prioritize low noise and full performance, respectively. Clockspeed is the same on both profiles, but Gaming mode lets the fans run a bit stronger to maximize cooling.
The Founders Edition of the 3090 Ti uses a 1x16-pin power connector, a larger version of the 12-pin connector that debuted with the RTX 3080 FE. Like before, this new port links to your PSU via a 3x8-pin dongle that’s included in the box. Unlike with the 3090, OEMs have also opted to use this new connector, as can be seen on the Suprim X here. You’ll need a beefy power supply (Nvidia recommends 850w minimum) as the card has a TDP of 480 watts, up from 450w on the Founders Edition.
The card is cooled by MSI’s Tri Frozr 2S system, which uses three Torx Fan 4.0s to pull heat away. Temps hovered around 70C in my testing – that’s impressive considering how power-hungry the 3090 Ti is. It’s worth noting, however, that all that heat has to go somewhere, and I could feel the room get noticeably warmer due to hot air pouring out the back of our test rig during benchmarking.
Around back, the RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X has three DisplayPort 1.4a ports alongside a single HDMI 2.1 output. Maximum resolution is 7680 x 4320 (8K).
MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X 24G – Performance
We test GPUs using a mixture of synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. I’ll be comparing the RTX 3090 Ti against the 3090 and 3080 Ti, the only other graphics cards in remotely the same realm of performance and price, as well as the RTX 3080, to give a more mainstream point of comparison. For our benchmarks, all tests are set to Ultra settings unless otherwise noted.
Right off the bat, you can see the 3090 Ti taking the expected lead over its predecessors, putting to bed any doubt that it is the absolute best consumer graphics card available. The real question though is by how much.
In our ray tracing synthetics, the 3090 Ti beats out the 3090 by a larger margin than that card does against the 3080 Ti, a welcome sight considering the price jump over those already ludicrously expensive GPUs. Add the more mainstream RTX 3080 into comparisons and you can see that the 3090 Ti has about as much of a gap between it and the two next best as those two do over the 3080.
Moving on to gaming benchmarks, the 3090 Ti again claims the crown. I limited my testing to 4K since high resolution gaming is what these maximum performance cards are designed for. As you can see from the chart, it again separates itself from the 3090 and 3080 Ti by a margin of 10 to 15 percent, depending on the game. Comparing the 3090 Ti to the 3080, the performance gain is closer to 30 percent.
Like the RTX 3090, Nvidia also touts the 3090 Ti as a card capable of 8K gaming. While I don’t have an 8K display to test native 8K, I used Nvidia’s Dynamic Super Resolution feature to render at 8K and then downscale to 4K.
While I still wouldn’t recommend playing in 8K, as you’ll have a much better experience with higher framerates in 4K, it’s still impressive to see that games can run at all – especially with the help of DLSS. The uplift over the RTX 3090 is somewhat noticeable once again – still an improvement of around 10 to 15 percent (except in the case of Gears Tactics, which scored the same), but that translates to a difference of only a few FPS at the lower overall framerates of 8K.
Of the games I tested, DLSS was only available in Metro: Exodus, so I didn't include it in the chart, but in that one game, the AI-powered tech bumped the 3090 Ti's framerate up to 38.3 FPS, while it actually lowered the output of the 3090 down to 23.5 FPS.
Finally, it’s worth noting that beyond gaming, Nvidia talks up the 3090 Ti for its rendering prowess. Admittedly video editing and 3D modeling is not my area of expertise, but I ran the Suprim X through a few of the same Blender tests we previously used for benchmarking the RTX 3090. Again, there’s a marked improvement with the 3090 Ti over its predecessors. The BMW test shows this off the most, where the RTX 3090 took 22.9 seconds, while the 3090 Ti Suprim X needed only 9.06 seconds to render the same project. On the other hand, quicker jobs suffer from diminishing returns – going from .9 to .85 seconds in the Wasp Bot test is still an improvement, but not one you’re going to actually notice.
I mentioned before that the RTX 3090 Ti requires a beefy power supply, and in testing that proved entirely true. The 480W power draw estimate is accurate – I measured our test rig as drawing around 100W to 130W of power at idle, and 600W when under load benchmarking the GPU. That’s a lot of power, enough to make a noticeable difference on your electric bill if you plan on gaming for a few hours or more on a daily basis.
