MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X review
MSI offers a super over-engineered GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X edition graphics card. Tweaked to the max, huge power delivery, and a card that remains shockingly silent for a product in this enthusiast range. Well, that and, of course, 24 GB of the fastest GDDR6X memory your money can get you. What will this beefed-up 10469 shader core powered product offer you?
But hey, now let's stick to what we have on deck; we review and benchmark the new premium flagship graphics card. All hail the might and awe that is the GeForce RTX 3090. Armed with a shader core count that will make at least one of your eyebrows frown with a nearly nauseating 24 GB of blazingly fast GDDR6X graphics memory. The GeForce RTX 3080 already is a smoking hot product, but of course, but NVIDIA is NVIDIA and decided to stretch their legs a little more. One thing that needs to be stated, though, the product shown today is all about Ultra HD and higher resolutions. It is an RTX Titan replacement or successor, I should say. I write all this before testing the product, but I already understand that it will be hard to show where this product will make real sense. For me, the good news is, at least, a product doesn't have to make sense to be appreciable. I mean, you like Ferrari as well, eh? (albeit right now, that probably that is not the best example). Well, Tesla maybe .. a model S is out of range for many, but man, they drive nice, accelerate fast, and you get that feeling you're driving something from Star Trek. That said, in that realm, we think the RTX 3090 will position itself in its own niche. It was 2017 when Ampere as a GPU architecture surfaced on the web, and, up-to earlier this year, NVIDIA had not listed this name in any of its roadmaps on the consumer side. It was with military-level secrecy that the Ampere consumer part was developed. Ampere, of course, is the base unit of electric current in the international system of units. But the GPU is named after André-Marie Ampère, a French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics. NVIDIA has a track record of naming their GPU architectures after mathematicians and physicists or figures from closely related fields, of naming a few; Pascal, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, and, more recently, Turing. While it was no secret that the new GPUs would be based on Ampere, we've seen much discussion about fabrication nodes, architecture, and specifications. Still, everybody seems to have forgotten that Ampere already launched earlier this year for the HPC market. The first product based on Ampere was the NVIDIA Tesla A100, outfitted with a GA100 Ampere GPU based on 7nm fabricated at TSMC; that product holds 54 billion transistors 6912 Shader cores. On September 1st of the year, 2020, NVIDIA announced three initial Ampere graphics cards in its first launch wave. A week before announcements, specifications of the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 took a twist; the shader core count mysteriously doubled up from what everybody expected. The GPUs are fabricated on an 8nm node derived from Samsung. This process is a further development of Samsung's 10nm process; no EUV is applied in production just yet. The first wave of announcements would see the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 being released first, and, as a bit of a surprise, the GeForce RTX 3070 would be arriving in roughly the same timeframe as well. The initial launch of Ampere for consumers entails the GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6, RTX 3080 10GB GDDR6X, and what we test today, the 24GB GDDR6X based premium flagship, the mighty mo, the GeForce RTX 3090. The lineup nearly doubles Raytracing performance with Gen2 ray-tracing cores and 3rd iteration Tensor cores. These cards will all be PCIe 4.0 interface compatible and offer HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a. Most importantly, it is that outrageous shader processor count (referred to as CUDA cores by NVIDIA), passing the 10K marker; nobody.. not even us, saw that one coming.
The NVIDIA GA102 GPU is used initially for two products, the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards. And it is one big GPU die and product overall alright; the 3090's GA102-300-A1 GPU is armed with 10.496 Shader processors and 28 billion transistors. And no, that's not even the fully unlocked product. FYI: the GeForce RTX 3080 is listed as having 8.704 Shader cores, and the GeForce RTX 3070 (GA104) will bring 5.888 Shader cores to the table. In this review, we'll check out the mother of them all, the GeForce RTX 3090, paired with 24GB of all GDDR6X graphics memory, 24 GB, and 10K+ Shader cores.
The new SUPRIM series is positioned beyond GAMING and being shaped into a more luxurious level.
“SUPRIM means more than just a new graphics card series from MSI. Decades of circuit engineering and cooling development have led to a new product design that embraces prestige in its appearance and capabilities. The concept turns to reality with high-quality materials coming together such as thickened copper inside the PCB to brushed aluminum plating with precision-cut edges on the exterior of the cooler. A focus on the user experience and quality are reflected in the details, such as the dual BIOS being set to Silent out of the box for comfort. This card is amped up with robust power stages for durability, cooled with an extensive heatsink system for sustaining extreme performance, and clad in a modern aesthetic to reflect a high-performance lifestyle.”
The new MSI SUPRIM X series GeForce RTX 3090 has, of course, been fitted with maximum enabled NVIDIA GA102-300 GPU; it has a hefty 10.469 Shader cores activated and is paired with 24 GB of all-new GDDR6X graphics memory. MSI equipped the card with a semi-passive design; the three fans start to spin and cool once the GPU warms up. The card is beefed up pretty extreme. As explained, it has a dual BIOS with gaming performance and silent mode. Both BIOS modes offer the same performance (!), just at different temperatures and acoustics. MSI increased the power usage allowance as well as the turbo clock frequency. This card has a clock speed of 1860 MHz, the fastest on the market. The memory runs at 19.5 Gbps effective. SUPRIM X has been fitted with a new TRI FROZR 2S cooling solution with three TORX 4.0 fans. New in the design is that it has close quarters heat pipes around the VRM and a backplate (which is now made of metal). So that provides even better cooling. The SUPRIM X RTX 3090 also has a higher TGP value, at 420W (+70W optional). The younger brother, the RTX 3080 SUPRIM X, is rated at 370W (+50W optional). To amp up such hefty values, the cards have been fitted with 3x 8 (6+2) pins, possibly creating challenges with some power supplies cables (and power). So it would be best if you had at least a proper 850 Watt PSU for this graphics card. Weighing in at 1895g, this baby has been sized quite big, 336 x 140 x 61mm. You'll receive a free mouse mat as well as an extra bracket to support the weight of the card should you want/need that—all that with exquisite looks, of course. But hey, judge for yourself, let's start up this review, shall we?