MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X TRIO review

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Final words and conclusion

Performance

Gaming performance and of course, rendering quality. Of course, the GeForce RTX 3090 is a product that does not need to make sense, and cannot disappoint in that department albeit we feel the RTX 3080 obviously offers more value for money. As mentioned you need to feed the card what is needs, a GPU bound game preferably at Ultra HD. NVIDIA claims this card is even capable of running games at 8K, that however is something we cannot objectively test. At Full HD you'll be quite often bottlenecked and CPU limited. But even there, in some games with proper programming and the right API (DX12/ASYNC compute), the sheer increase in performance is breathtaking. The good old rasterizer engine rips right through the threshold of extreme performance. All thanks to the 10.4K Shading processors. Performance-wise we can safely state that this is a true Ultra HD capable graphics card, which it should be at this retail price. But whether or not you use traditional rendering or games that can be ray-traced and manage DLSS, it's all coming together in that UHD resolution. Battlefield V with ray-tracing and DLSS enabled, in Ultra HD now running in that 86 FPS bracket. DXR ray-tracing and Tensor performance; the RTX 30 series has received new Tensor and RT cores. So don't let the actual RT and Tensor core count confuse you. They're located close inside that rendering engine, they became more efficient and that shows. If we look at an RTX 2080 with port Royale, we will hit almost 30 FPS. The RTX 3090 doubles that at over 60 FPS. Tensor cores are harder to measure, but overall from what we have seen, it's all in good balance. Overall though, the GeForce RTX 3080 starts to make sense starting at a Quad HD resolution (2560x1440), the RTX 3090 Ultra HD at (3840x2160), it is that simple. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 will make you trigger happy at close to 80 FPS in UHD resolutions with the very best graphics settings. As always, comparing apples and oranges, the performance results vary here and there as each architecture offers advantages and disadvantages in certain game render workloads.  As you have been able to see the content creation scene is gonna be happy with the Ampere architecture overall as well, applications like blender and VRAY tear a new hole in performance, absolutely staggering to see and observe. What need I say and state more about performance, you have all the evidence you need in our extensive benchmark suite.


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Cooling & noise levels

MSI is going very strong on its cooling. Even the backplate revealed heat pipes. And yeah when that 400 Watt is in vicinity, you're going to need that alright. You'll close in at a TGP of 380 Watt for this product under full load, and that directly relates to the output heat of your product, there is heaps of it ditched inside your chassis. In extremely stressed conditions, we did hit 33~34 dBA but that is considered a totally silent acoustic level. Depending on the level of airflow inside your chassis, expect the card to sit in the 75 Degrees C range temperature-wise under hefty load conditions (depending on the airflow in your chassis). 

Energy

In the previous chapter, I already mentioned this, your heat output and energy consumption are always closely related to each other as (graphics) processors and heat can be perceived as a 1:1 state, 100 Watts in (consumption) often equals 100 Watt heat as output. This is the basis of thermal designs.  NVIDIA is listing their TGP at 350 Watt for the FE, this card we measure at 380 Watt (!). Which is staggering for a graphics card in the year 2020, these are stupendous amounts of energy which we feel are values that should not be taken for granted lightly. So we're certainly not pleased with the new energy consumption values as it is not a trend that suites my comfort zone, really that value was up-to 250 Watts. 

Coil whine

Where the FE produces some, we hard a hard time detecting coil whine on this card. Graphics cards all make this in some sort or form, especially in high framerates this can be perceived. In a closed chassis, that noise fades away in the background.

Pricing

NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3090 at USD 1499. It's an inordinate amount of money for something to play PC games on. Now I can make all kinds of barbarous comments about it, but these products will sell indifferently and without hesitation. This product is so exclusive that it creates its own niche. This AIB card we have seen listed at € 1689, similar in USD. But if availability is low, we can easily see the prices hike to the wub 2000 EUR/USD marker.

Cons

Price level, of course. Then power consumption, which we feel it's too much really. And lastly, the mandatory three power connectors are a bit of an eye-sore as well.  Also keep in mind that the heat needs to go somewhere, you'll need a properly vented chassis.  And to feed this beast, you need a powerful PC, and you need to play your games in Ultra HD, and nothing below that.

Tweaking

Tweaking Ampere GPUs have been a bit of a challenge. Sometimes puzzling other times easy. The tweaks on the clock frequency and memory run fine, but the performance was just often lower than defaults. There is a new safety protection active on memory, which will prevent the card from crashing when clocked too far, it, however, will drop in performance. For the RTX 3090 series we'd expect you to add and reach +250 max with a steady 20 Gbps of effective bandwidth. Of course, increase the power limiter to the max so your GPU gets (even) more energy budget, and then the GPU clock can be increased anywhere from +25 to +75MHz. Why this differential you might wonder? Well, results will vary per board, brand, and even card due to cooling (GDDR6X/GPU/VRM) but also ASIC quality. In the end, I expect 20 however if you are lucky 20.5 Gbps on the memory subsystem (effective), and let me be subtle a +50 Core frequency and added power, you should see your card hovering at a 2 GHz range (which is pretty awesome).  I will say this though, frequency matters LESS these days. Even if the GPU could do 2100 MHz, your power limiter will be the decisive and dominant factor, lowering that clock frequency to meets its assigned power budget. The MSI Gaming X TRIO however was tweaked for you, while we could overclock a tiny bit more, which resulted in maybe 1 to 2% additional performance. Our advice, leave this card as it is.

Conclusion

It is nothing short from impressive as to what MSI brings to the table. First things first, the product is factory tweaked close to max performance already for you. So there is only a little oomph little left to gain with overclocking. Next to that, the acoustics as low as this card offers once again astound me. I mean this is the most tropical running card ever for a consumer, and certainly the hottest for the Ampere series with that wattage. Yet still, you sit at 33 maybe 34 DBa at best for acoustics. There is of course a tradeoff, it will run in a 75 Degrees C domain, but that is still perfectly fine. You need quite a system to tame thus beast though, you have a spicy processor that can keep up with the card, you need lovely GPU bound games preferably with DX12 ASYNC compute, and of course, if you are not gaming at the very last in Ultra HD, then why even bother right? The flipside of the coin is that when you have these three factors applied and in effect, well then there is no card faster than the 3090. Of course, there is an energy consumption factor to weigh in as a negative factor, and yes, there's pricing to consider. Both are far too high for the product to make any real sense. For gaming, we do not feel the 3090 makes substantial enough difference over the RTX 3080, and that's mainly due to system bottlenecks really. You need to game at Ultra HD and beyond for this card to make a bit of sense. We also recognize that the two factors do not need to make sense for quite a bunch of you as the product sits in a very extreme niche. But I stated enough about that. I like this chunk of hardware sitting inside a PC though, as no matter how you look at it, it is a majestic product. Please make sure you have plenty of ventilation though as the RTX 3090 will dump lots of heat. It is big but still looks terrific. And the performance, oh man ... that performance, it is all good all the way as long as you uphold my three musketeers remark. Where I could nag a little about the 10GB VRAM on the GeForce RTX 3080, we can not complain even the slightest bit about the whopping big mac feature of the 3090, 24 GB of the fastest GDDR6X your money can get you, take that Flight Sim 2020! This is an Ultra HD card, in that domain, it shines whether that is using shading (regular rendered games) or when using Hybrid Raytracing + DLSS. It's a purebred but unfortunately very power-hungry product that will reach only a select group of people. But it is formidable if you apply and give it the right circumstances.

It is very hard for us to recommend a product like this for many reasons that would not make sense. You will be better off with GeForce RTX 3070 or 3080 as money wise this doesn't make much sense? But these puppies will sell regardlessly just because people can and will buy them for that x-factor. The Gaming X TRI leaves is in awe, it's a beautifully designed product with a beefy cooling and dreamy acoustics. For those that can and are will to spend the dough on, this has to be a top pick. 

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