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Reviews of the RTX 3090 brand information technology articulate this GPU is a lot of things. It's virtually the weight of a minor roasted chicken (RTX 3090: 4.84 pounds; roasted chicken: 5-7 pounds). It'south longer than the Xbox Serial Ten is tall. It'south a truthful triple-slot GPU and packs 24GB of VRAM. If yous cull to wield an RTX 3090 every bit an offhand weapon, you will suffer a -four / -viii to attacks due to its off-balance weight and heft. This may be reduced to 0 / -four if you lot took graphics cards equally an exotic weapon proficiency.

Across these metrics, the RTX 3090 is more than. It's a heck of a lot more than expensive than the only-launched RTX 3080 and it offers near i.15x boosted performance compared with that card. Nvidia has used this launch to push button the thought that the RTX 3090 is an 8K gaming card or a GPU for ultra-loftier-stop prosumers. Whether that'due south true is a little more than complicated. 8K gaming isn't in its infancy. 8K gaming is however in the womb.

Nosotros've rounded up coverage from multiple publications, including Eurogamer, Hot Hardware, and PC Gamer. The general opinion on the RTX 3090 is that the 24GB of VRAM can exist genuinely useful in sure 4K+ content cosmos workloads. It could also exist useful if you are working extensively with AI modeling, depending on the needs of your model. Equally far as its actual usefulness in gaming, however, 24GB is overkill.

All Top-Stop GPUs Are Bad Deals, just Some Are Worse Than Others

In society to talk about whether the RTX 3090 is a good deal, we have to sandbox the trouble a bit. Objectively speaking, the one affair the RTX 3090 offers that the RTX 3080 cannot match is the additional 14GB of VRAM. For certain prosumers, this solitary tin can justify the purchase, especially if you want 1 GPU for both your 4K+ video editing and your personal gaming without compromising on features or performance for either.

For everyone else, this GPU is an objectively bad deal. The RTX 3080 is (or will be, once y'all tin buy one) one-half the cost and about 85 percent the functioning. Given how skilful Ampere'due south operation is to first with, the RTX 3080 is a great pick for anyone who wants to game at the highest frame rates and resolutions, but withal has a gasp of concern for affordability and price/performance ratio. The RTX 3090, not so much.

Simply.

The RTX 3090's overall characteristic prepare is a much meliorate match for its price point than the RTX 2080 Ti's was. The 8K gaming claim is a little wobbly, just that'southward partly because standing upwardly 8K gaming is itself a little wobbly correct now. Because basically nobody has 8K displays, Nvidia created an 8K DLSS mode (upscaling 1440p to 8K). It'southward as well possible to apply dynamic super resolution (DSR) to push the resolution upward that high via supersampling. The reviewers that tested the GPU in 8K all appear to accept used this method.

Paradigm by Hot Hardware

Fifty-fifty among the relative handful of customers who buy GPUs like this in the starting time place, 8K gaming is going to exist the nichest of niche applications. Most users volition encounter this card at 5K or below, and it excels at those frame rates, even if they don't show off its advantages over the RTX 3080 to quite the same extent.

The RTX 3090 is not a skillful value for about customers. But evaluated against previous top-end cards, I'd say it's the best value since the GTX 1080 Ti. The full general stance of the reviewers that tested it agrees:

Eurogamer writes: "All told then, RTX 3090 is the traditional hard sell for the mainstream gamer only the high-end crowd volition likely lap it upward."

Hot Hardware's conclusion echoes the points above. It notes that the GPU is only iv-20 percent faster than the RTX 3080 for regular gamers before noting: "Consider complex creator workloads which can leverage the GeForce RTX 3090'southward additional resources and retentivity, even so, and it is simply in another class birthday and can be many times faster than either the RTX 3080 or Titan RTX."

Image by PC Gamer

PC Gamer besides emphasizes the content creator aspect, stating: "This is the Ampere generation's Titan. That'southward how y'all justify selling a GeForce GPU, with just eleven percent higher 4K gaming performance over its closest sibling, with a 114 percentage higher sticker price."

In their decision, PCG leans harder into the "Not for gamers" than other reviews, saying:

This is a toughie considering in that location are very, very few people who I would recommend the $1,500 RTX 3090 to. And none of them are gamers…This is every inch the Titan card Jen-Hsun said it would be. It'south a creator's carte, one with a stunningly powerful GPU and a frame buffer that allows personal creation on a level not seen on a GPU this side of $vi,000.

In short, this GPU may be the best thing that always happened to you, if you lot're a artistic type with $one,500 to drop on a loftier-stop card with dramatically better performance. The rest of us tin can more than make do with the excellently positioned RTX 3080.

Your move, AMD.

At present Read:

  • There'due south No Such Thing as 'Huang'southward Constabulary,' Despite Nvidia's AI Lead
  • Resellers Used Bots to Dominate the RTX 3080 Launch
  • Ampere Unleashed: Nvidia's RTX 3080 Redefines High-End Gaming