Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 FE - High-end graphics power at a premium price!

Nvidia's new flagship goes by the name of GeForce RTX 3090 and offers a whopping 24 GB of graphics memory for the consumer sector for the first time. These memory sizes were previously only available in professional graphics solutions like the Quadro or Titan models. One thing is for sure: Criticism due to too little VRAM does not apply with the RTX 3090.

Nvidia clearly deviates from the reference design of the RTX 2000 cards in terms of cooling design. The cooling unit was developed from the ground up, and even three slots are occupied in the GeForce RTX 3090. In return, it finally offers a fan-stop mode, which reduces the noise level in 2D mode significantly. Nvidia also places one axial fan per side, something that we had not seen in this form before. The large 110-millimeter fans push a lot of air through the cooling fins that are distributed over the entire length of the graphics card. This provides a very large cooling surface to quickly dissipate the power loss of the 350 watts. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 weighs a good 2 kilograms. If you install the graphics card horizontally in your system, you should consider a stand. The PCI slot will thank you in the long run. Unlike with the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Suprim X, Nvidia does not include a graphics card support stand with its model.

Another new feature is the 12-pin power connector. This replaces the previous 2x 8-pin connectors. However, in our opinion, its placement is not very well designed, because those who use the included adapter will always have an unsightly cable tangle in front of them in their field of vision. Various power supply manufacturers have reacted and offer suitable cables to be able to manage without the included adapter construction.

Externally, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a connections.

The GeForce RTX 3090 is an extremely fast graphics card that is perfectly suited for 4K gaming. Nevertheless, users of the Founders Edition have to make do with a slightly weaker performance. The partner cards, which often offer a higher TDP, deliver slightly higher frames per second. However, games don't run noticeably faster. If we only look at the results of the Full HD benchmarks, the duel against the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT doesn't definitely end in Nvidia's favor. The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT can often place itself in front of the GeForce RTX 3090 FE. An AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT should even increase the lead here. However, we haven't had the chance to examine a sample of the Radeon RX 6900 XT so far, so that we can't provide benchmark results here. Only at higher resolutions does the GeForce RTX 3090 manage to set itself apart. AMD can no longer keep up here. Furthermore, Nvidia offers great features with DLSS and ray tracing, which are being used increasingly in many games. Meanwhile, AMD has also included RT cores in its RX 6800 GPUs, but they can't keep up with the current Ampere generation in terms of technical performance.

We use the game The Witcher 3 (Ultra preset, 1080p) to measure the frame times and frame rates. The game still scales very well with current graphics cards despite its age. We recorded a few outliers in the frame times, which are also visible in the frame rates. We could not determine a lasting impact on the game's performance.

Due to the very high power consumption, you shouldn't pay attention to every single figure when it comes to energy consumption. The manufacturer specifies a maximum of 350 watts for the Founders Edition. The recently reviewed model from MSI even had a power consumption of 420 watts according to the spec sheet. However, the system is just as energy-efficient in idle usage at 91 watts as with other modern graphics cards. Therefore, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 FE doesn't have a disadvantage here. Our measuring device shows considerably more when we play The Witcher 3. An average of 463 watts is reached here. A comparatively good result when we look at the RTX 3080 from Asus or the RTX 3090 from MSI. At 501 watts, our test system achieves almost the same value as the RTX 3080 from Asus in the stress test with FurMark.

The newly designed cooling system works well, and the fan-stop mode enables now a whisper-quiet 2D operation. The large 110-millimeter fans only start to rotate under load. Nevertheless, they remain surprisingly quiet under load. We measured just under 40 dB(A) in the stress test and just under 43 dB(A) while gaming. The fans of the installed AIO drive the noise up a bit, since the CPU is pushed harder during gaming. The graphics card's case heats up quickly, and the thermal imaging camera's pictures show that heat is well distributed. Nonetheless, there are hotspots on the back of the graphics card that reach 84 °C (~183 °F), which is caused by the VRAM that is installed underneath. The GPU temperature is surprisingly cool at 69 °C (~156 °F). However, the VRAM gets much hotter at around 95 °C (~203 °F).