These Tensor Cores do more than just power DLSS, however. They're also the technology that enables Nvidia Broadcast, which is by far one of the most underrated features released for this generation. There's plenty of reasons why people may want to buy the RTX 3090, as it's a cutting edge and future-proof graphics card that can also dabble in 8K gaming. Just like its little sibling, the RTX 3080, the RTX 3090 is built on the Nvidia Ampere architecture, using the full-fat GA102 GPU. This time around, we're getting 82 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM), making for a total of 10,496 CUDA cores, along with 328 Tensor cores and 82 RT Cores.

Oh lawd it's coming. We reported yesterday that RTX 3090 TI Founders Edition cards are likely to be just as big as the prior RTX 3090 versions. That means this one will probably be another three-slot GPU - an absolute giant in GPU terms. Now that we've all been working from home for so long, and with it looking like that's going to become the new normal, anything that makes video conferencing less stressful is a huge benefit. The best part is that this technology is available to anyone with an Nvidia RTX-powered device. At 4K, however, the RTX 3090 does provide the level of performance where you can just crank every setting up to max and just forget about it. Every single game we tried to play with this graphics card at 4K ran like a dream. Final Fantasy XV with everything turned up? 70+ fps – with the stutter that game is infamous for almost completely eliminated thanks to the 24GB frame buffer.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090

But you can bet your bottom dollar that we threw this graphics card into our personal machine and tried it across a wide spectrum of PC games, both at 4K and 8K DSR to see how it performs. In games like World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth and Destiny 2, we were able to get a steady 60-70 fps at this extremely high resolution, but with quality settings at high, rather than having all the eye candy turned on. This isn't as big a loss as it sounds, as the 24GB of VRAM is enough so that we didn't have to turn down textures. The redesign of the PCB on the RTX 3090 requires a whole new 12-pin power connector. (Image credit: Future) At first glance, the small bump up from the 72 SMs on the Nvidia Turing-based Titan RTX seems like a minor improvement, but one of the most groundbreaking differences with the Ampere architecture is the ability for both datapaths on each SM being able to handle FP32 workloads. This means that CUDA core counts per SM is effectively doubled, which is why the RTX 3090 is such a rendering behemoth. Just like the RTX 3080, the Founders Edition of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is hands-down the best cooler design Team Green has ever shipped itself. While this is an absolutely massive graphics card – the thing is 12.3 inches long, is a 3-slot card, and weighs, well a lot. Look, we don't have a scale, and Nvidia doesn't list the weight, but it's easily more than 7 lb.

It is a bit unsightly, however, and it's hard to have the same kind of clean cable setup as you would have otherwise. However, third-party graphics card manufacturers are using the same 8-pin power connector as always, so you can always just go with one of those if you need to. From playable 8K gaming to absolutely jaw-dropping performance in creative workloads, the RTX 3090 can do just about anything with best-in-class performance. But where the RTX 3090 really shines is in 3D Rendering through applications like Blender and Autodesk Maya. In fact, while in games the RTX 3090 is around 50% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, the 3090 is nearly twice as fast as the Turing flagship in Blender, rendering through the benchmark in just 229 seconds to the RTX 2080 Ti's 438 seconds. That's a 91% improvement, thanks in large part to the sheer amount of VRAM and FP32 performance on offer here. If you've come here looking to buy the RTX 3090 then you've probably seen the huge excitement surrounding the card so far - especially after videos from the likes of MKBHD and Linus Tech Tips demonstrating the graphics card driving an immensely expensive 8K monitor in some recent games. While there are going to be some elite gamers out there who are going to buy this card more for status than performance, this is much more of a creative professional's graphics card. As such, it does for professional workloads what the RTX 3080 does for 4K gaming at a compelling price (relatively), making this the best graphics card for creative professionals.

Customer reviews

Surprisingly, 8K gaming is actually a possibility for this card, although it does take some sacrifices to get there. Most people will instead choose to game at 1080p, 1440p or 4K, the resolutions Digital Foundry tested more in-depth in their RTX 3090 review. Compared to the RTX 3080, the 3090 is around 10 to 15 per cent faster at 4K, with a narrower gap - on average - at lower resolutions. Nvidia's impressive Ampere architecture is on full display with the RTX 3090, featuring over 10,000 CUDA cores, second generation RT cores, and third generation Tensor cores to accelerate machine learning tasks. It should be noted that the NVENC encoder is the same here as on the RTX 2080 Ti, which means performance doesn't change much generation-to-generation. However, now that this encoder is supported in Adobe Premiere, nearly the entire video production workflow is now accelerated by the GPU, which makes a dedicated GPU incredibly beneficial to video editors. Encoding a video using the NVENC encoder, rather than through software cuts the time in half – even when we're using the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X paired with 64GB of RAM running at 3,600MHz.