Don't sweat it, Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for maximum cooling. HDMI™ x 1 (2.1) (Supports 4K 120Hz HDR, 8K 60Hz HDR and Variable Refresh Rate as specified in HDMI™ 2.1)

RTX 2080 S | TU104-450 | 12nm | 545mm² | 13.6 BT |⠀ 3072 CCs | 192 TMUs | 64 ROPs | ⠀48 SMs | 1815 MHz | 8GB | 1024MB x 8 | GDDR6 | 256-bit | ⠀496 GB/s | 250W Dragon Center: MSI's exclusive Dragon Center software lets you monitor, tweak and optimize MSI products in real-time. As a top-floor-with-a-view kind of card, the gaming performance of the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Suprim outpaces any other GPU we've tested to date, and not always by a small margin. In some of the titles we tested, like Red Dead Redemption 2, the RTX 3090 was more than 20% faster than the RTX 3080 Founders Edition in 1440p, though that gain dipped to just 12% in 4K. We can't say how much extra juice MSI has imparted into its RTX 3090 over other models just yet, since Founders Edition RTX 3090 cards were in short supply from Nvidia during the RTX 30 Series launch and PCMag didn't get the opportunity to test one. If there's anywhere the MSI RTX 3090 Suprim X 24G is going to make the case for its high cost, it's here. The 24GB of onboard VRAM sends the RTX 3090 to new heights in these tests, setting records wherever it goes, though perhaps not by the kinds of margins that you might have been expecting given the price.Fin array is populated by 30 microfins with 0.6mm wide microchannels that provide optimal cooling performance, without unnecessary flow restrictions or clogging hazards. RTX 3090 | GA102-300 | 8nm | 628mm² | 28.3 BT | 10496 CCs | 328 TMUs | 112 ROPs | ⠀82 SMs | 1695 MHz | 24GB | 1024MB x 24 | GDDR6X | 384-bit | ⠀936 GB/s | 350W⠀⠀ We ran a 10-minute stress test in 3DMark Port Royal on the MSI Geforce RTX 3090 Suprim X 24G, and the card peaked at a temperature of 81 degrees C. This makes the MSI Geforce RTX 3090 Suprim X 24G the hottest RTX 30 Series card we've tested thus far, though that result is expected, given the added power hiding inside.

NVIDIA is equipping the RTX 3090 with a mammoth 24 GB of video memory and targets it at creators as well, not just gamers. Creators can pair it with NVIDIA's feature-rich GeForce Studio drivers, while gamers can go with GeForce Game Ready drivers. That said, the RTX 3090 isn't strictly a creator's card, either. NVIDIA is taking a stab at the new 8K resolution for gaming, which is four times the pixels of 4K and sixteen times Full HD—not an easy task even for today's GPUs. The company hence innovated the new 8K DLSS feature, which leverages AI super-resolution to bring higher fidelity gaming than previously thought possible, for 8K. Though we've been able to pit the RTX 3080 Founders Edition against several third-party RTX 3080 cards since they originally launched in November, right now we have no point of comparison on heat or noise for the RTX 3090 Suprim. That said, for such an intimidating card on the outside, once we had it installed in the rig, it barely made a peep, even during the most intense scenarios.

Let's Get Testing! How Supreme Is the 'Suprim'?

Also remember that almost every test we run (aside from the esports titles) is done at the highest possible quality preset or settings. If you have a higher-hertz gaming monitor and you're worried your card might not make the frame-rate grade, it could still be possible with the right card and a combination of lower settings. Not only that, but many of these titles (including Death Stranding, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and F1 2020) have both DLSS and FidelityFX CAS with Upscaling integrated directly into the game. This can mean boosts of up to 40 percent more performance on top, depending on the setting and the card you're playing with. RTX 4080 | AD103-300 | 5nm | 379mm² | 45.9 BT |⠀ 9728 CCs | 304 TMUs | 112 ROPs | ⠀76 SMs | 2505 MHz | 16GB | 2048MB x 8 | GDDR6X | 256-bit | ⠀716 GB/s | 320W⠀⠀

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. Unlike other RTX 3090 cards we've reviewed, the MSI RTX 3090 Suprim X consumes considerably more power than the RTX 3090 Founders Edition. We measured 436 W average gaming power, which is over 70 W higher than the 365 W on the FE. Of course, you get 6% higher gaming performance in return, but the power cost is almost 20%. That said, if you're in the market for an RTX 3090 in the first place, power consumption is probably secondary to you anyway. All this electricity will heat up your room, though, which will be nice right now, but could be less enjoyable in the summer months. The GeForce RTX 3090 is the only graphics card in the Ampere family that features an NVLink interface for SLI. Implicit multi-GPU (the classic SLI you know) is not available—only explicit multi-GPU is supported. Explicit multi-GPU requires that game developers invest their own time and money to add support for the technology, which simply isn't going to happen because of the tiny market size for the feature. Only a handful of games and benchmarks support explicit multi-GPU. To use even this mode, you'll need to buy a new-generation NVLink bridge separately. The NVLink cable from your RTX 20-series cards won't physically fit, and with NVIDIA reportedly stopping the development of SLI profiles for newer games from 2021 for GPUs that support implicit multi-GPU, we can safely conclude that the age of multi-GPU gaming is over. Buying a pair of RTX 3090 cards for multi-GPU would cater to a very tiny niche, mostly professionals.

Board Design

The GeForce RTX™ 3090 is a big ferocious GPU (BFGPU) with TITAN class performance. It's powered by Ampere—NVIDIA's 2nd gen RTX architecture—doubling down on ray tracing and AI performance with enhanced RT Cores, Tensor Cores, and new streaming multiprocessors. Plus, it features a staggering 24 GB of G6X memory, all to deliver the ultimate gaming experience. During its marketing blitz, Nvidia chose to focus on the RTX 3090 as the "world's first 8K gaming card," though this is disputable, depending on a huge variety of factors that won't fit in the small print. (Cards that came before the RTX 3090 can run games and applications at 8K...it's just a matter of how well.)