Did you feel that? Was it an earthquake? An avalanche? No, nVidia just decided to throw all caution to the wind and create the world’s most powerful consumer GPU, and that GPU is stomping!
The new RTX 3090 Ti is an absolute monster that smashes all the metrics and establishes itself as the new king of consumer GPUs.
Let us take a look at some of its stats:
The Good
- The new RTX 3090 Ti is a cool 10% faster than any other consumer card in 4K gaming.
- It has 24GB of VRAM. That is a tonne of VRAM. This card has more VRAM than most PCs have of normal RAM.
The Meh
- In 1440p or 1080p gaming, the RTX 3090 Ti is only about 5% faster than the next step down the GPU ladder. To be fair though, if you buy this card for a sub-4K screen, then you made an error.
The Ugly
- When stressed, the RTX 3090 Ti draws nearly 500 Watts. No, you did not read that wrong, five hundred watts. That is as much as a full mid-range PC!
- All that power consumed means that a huge amount of heat must be dissipated. The heatsink for this card is very heavy, with models of the card weighing ~2kg. That is ~4.5lbs!
- Not only is the card heavy, but it is huge. It occupies 4 slots, wew!
- It costs $2200… assuming you can find it in-stock.
Frankly, the card’s power draw, weight, and size are ridiculous. It has always been the case that those who want the best card will get a hot/large card, but this one is bigger and draws more power than anything we have seen before.
In good conscience, we cannot recommend this card for anything but the Monstrous tier. If you are Wealthy (with the capital W) and you have a 4K gaming screen… AND you are willing to pay $2200 or higher for an extra 10% performance… well, nVidia has you covered.
Conclusion
We will be adding the RTX 3090 Ti to the Monstrous tier of our main chart.
All other GPUs from Exceptional to Extremist will move up one spot on the page (down a tier) to make room for this new monster.
