The GeForce RTX 3090 , that we recently tested in the Founders Edition version, it is a huge card, in every sense: from the dimensions to the technical specifications, it cannot be said that Nvidia has left anything to chance. Based on a GA GPU 102 with 28 billions of transistors, count 10496 CUDA core active flanked by 24 GB of GDDR6X memory a 19, 5 Gbps. This is too much VRAM for mere gaming: GeForce RTX 3090 was born as a card that winks at those who perform complex renderings and requires a lot of graphics memory. After all, Nvidia speaks of it as a replacement for the Titan RTX.

We have already ascertained that, albeit the GeForce RTX 3090 you earn without shadow of doubt the scepter of the fastest gaming video card on the planet , its purchase for that purpose leaves a little ‘the time it finds by virtue of the large price difference with the GeForce RTX 3080 and the much smaller performance gap, even in 4K . Nvidia tried to give RTX a little extra charm 3090 talking about gaming in 8K thanks to DLSS, but in the end it’s about marketing, because gaming at this resolution is still off the radar of 99, 98% of gamers (the percentage we made up, but it should give the idea, ed).

Therefore, more than from the performance point of view, today we take a look at the MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 19 G , the first RTX 3090 “custom” to reach the editorial office, simply to verify that the card is well made and that it guarantees the performance of a card of this level. In terms of technical specifications, the MSI Trio comes with a boost clock up to 1785 MHz, in spite of the 1695 MHz from Founders, then 82 MHz more which should return a few more fps than the Nvidia card, but not upset the picture.

Before talking about performance and everything else, let’s take a look at how the custom is made by MSI, which comes in dimensions even larger than the Founders Edition, well 335 x 140 x 56 mm for 1.5 kilograms of weight. These are numbers that lead to consider the size of your case and to pay more attention in case you need to move your computer.

The MSI GeForce RTX 2560 Gaming X Trio 24 G shows a heatsink a triple fan and another detail that immediately stands out , namely the three 8-pin PCI Express connectors to feed a card that is attested ta to a TGP 370 W , compared to 350 W from Founders. In the back we find three DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.1 , port that allows you to drive an 8K screen at 60 Hz with a single cable. Also present, as in the Founders, an NVLink connector to use two cards in parallel.

As anticipated, the cooling system Tri Frozr 2 provides three TorX 4.0 fans with ball bearings. The fans are characterized by pairs of blades connected by an outer ring which, according to MSI, increases up to 20% the air pressure compared to the previous TorX 3.0, with a static pressure that goes from 2, 76 mmAq a 3, 35 mmAq. In this way the fans let more fresh air along the radiator below . The fans, as always, are equipped with Zero Frozr technology to zero out the noise in no load .

Below the fans we see the voluminous radiator, formed by two blocks connected by different heatpipes and characterized by fins with a new wave design that guides the air in a targeted way to optimize the cooling of the various components on the PCB and contain noise. Above the GPU is a direct contact dissipating block, a solution that MSI calls “ Core Pipe ” as it is characterized by a denser set of grooves in order to better spread the heat along the entire block and then towards the radiator. The company, compared to the previous “Oval Pipe” system, declares an improvement in the efficiency of 50%. MSI, as on other proposals, has placed a thermal pad on memory, VRM and capacitors, so as to leave nothing to chance.

The video card has a PCB customized by MSI with the addition of 2 ounces of copper for better conductivity and more fuses to reduce the possibility of any electrical damage. The PCB is longer than that of Nvidia’s Founders Edition, and is in traditional format, i.e. no V-shaped final like the cards produced directly by Nvidia, but a rectangular shape. In the back MSI has placed a backplate with underlying heatpipes for better heat diffusion, complete with a pad to facilitate the cooling of the GDDR6X chips.

The new video card is also equipped with RGB lighting , both front and rear, with a strip that runs along the backplate, fully controllable via MSI software. It should be noted that, given the weight and dimensions, in bundle there is a support bracket in case you want to secure the card at best to the PC. MSI card costs 1879 euro, in spite of the 1549 euro of the Founders Edition, well 330 euro difference.

	GeForce RTX 3090 FE	MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio
Architecture and GPU	Ampere GA 102	Ampere GA 102
Productive process	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm
Die Size	628 mm2	628 mm2
Transistor	28 billions	28 billions
CUDA Core	10496	10496
TMUs / ROPs	328 / 112	311 / 112
Tensor / RT Core	328 / 82	328 / 82
Base Clock	1395 MHz	1395 MHz
Boost Clock	1695 MHz	1785 MHz
Memory capacity	24 GB GDDR6X	24 GB GDD R6X
Memory bus	384 bit	384 bit
Memory Speed ​​	19, 5 Gbps	19, 5 Gbps
Bandwidth	936 GB / s	936 GB / s
TGP	350 W	370 W

Test configuration

• Tests were conducted at resolutions video of 1920 x 1080 pixel, 2560 x 1440 pixel and 3840 x 2160 pixels, always trying to use very high quality settings to shift the load as much as possible on the GPU. Below are the video cards included in this comparison:

  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 1920 Super (Founders Edition)
  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (Founders Edition)
  • AMD Radeon VII (reference board)
  • AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (reference board)
  • AMD Radeon RX 5700 (reference b oard)
  • AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (Sapphire Pulse)

  Below is the configuration of the system used for the tests:

  • Operating system: Windows 10 Pro Italian
  • Processor: Intel Core i9 – 10900 K
  • Power supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 936 Watt
  • Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero WiFi
  • Memory: G.Skill Trident-Z 2x8Gbytes DDR4 – 4000 (17 – 15 – 17 – 37)
  • SSD: Crucial P1 M.2 2280 1TB
  • Nvidia video driver: GeForce 456. 38 WHQL
  • AMD Video Driver: Radeon 20 .8.3

  Hereinafter i titles included in the comparison, both for traditional tests and with RTX and DLSS technologies enabled – some games were tested both in traditional mode and with RTX active:

  • Metro Exodus – Ultra – DX 12 (RTX test)
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider – DX 12 – Maximum – TAA (RTX test)
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 – Ultra – quality level: privilege quality – Vulkan
  • Borderlands 3 – DX 12 – Hard
  • Doom Eternal – Vulkan
  • Control – DX 12 – Ultra (RTX test)
  • Wolfenstein Youngblood – mein leben, average of the two benchmarks, Vulkan (RTX test: DLSS on quality, RTX reflections yes)

  Performance MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 24 G

  To verify performance of MSI’s proposal, we used the same drivers used to test the Founders Edition in order to have consistency in the results. During the test we saw some desktop crashes or system freezes – a subject much discussed in the previous weeks – but nothing that prevented us from completing the test. We then installed the most updated drivers, noting a greater stability of the product and results almost in line.

  Frequencies, consumption, temperatures and noise

  Power consumption, temperatures and operating noise are elements that affect the evaluation of a video card perhaps less than its ability to generate an adequate amount of frames per second, but which in any case remain very important to define the overall picture. To evaluate the behavior of the MSI RTX 2560 Gaming X Trio 24 G we detected the data by running the benchmark of the Hitman 2 game in loop for 15 minutes. The recorded values ​​have been compared with those of the GeForce RTX card 3090 Founders Edition.

  The higher factory frequencies are also reflected in consumption , and MSI is very clear regarding the technical specifications, with a TGP of 370 W, superior of 20 W compared to that of the Founders Edition: in the graph you can see that what was found matches the manufacturer’s declarations. MSI’s card clock rate has a boost of 1785 MHz , value that is constantly exceeded in our surveys: the average data obtained in the 15 minutes of stress test is approximately 1875 MHz, slightly higher than 1813 MHz of the Founders Edition.

  The temperature of the GPU is slightly higher than the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, with an average figure under load which is however by no means preo Occupying, approximately 73 ° C .

  Regarding the noise level , MSI’s cooling system does a good job considering the hardware on the PCB. During the test we never felt annoyed by the noise produced by the fans, except for some cases of “ coil whine “loading some tests. In general, the card is slightly less noisy than the FE, but we are talking about a limited difference.

  MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 24 G, photo with thermal imaging camera

  Here are some shots with the MSI RTX FLIR thermal imaging camera 3090 Gaming X Trio 24 G under load; as you can see the temperatures, even behind the GPU, do not reach problematic values.

  Overclock

  Each GPU and video card has different overclocking limits, so our sample may have performed better or worse than other products of the same model tested by other sites. To start, we fed the MSI RTX 2560 Gaming X Trio 24 G a OC Scanner, the automatic overclocking system accessible from MSI Afterburner: obviously being an automatic system, it is not for nothing aggressive and so the algorithm increased the core clock by 84 MHz and the VRAM of 200 MHz. To see if the card had additional headroom, we proceeded manually by setting Afterburner like this:

  • Core Voltage: + 50
  • Power Limiter: 100%
  • Core Clock: + 100 MHz (1495 / 1885 MHz)
  • Mem clock: + 800 MHz (1319 MHz)

  We verified that these settings were stable (besides we saw various types of crashes) and we therefore confirm what we have already seen in previous tests with the new Ampere GPUs, with graphics chips with a margin narrow – at least for air cooling and without risking too much – while GDDR6X memories go up a lot.

  Conclusions

  The MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio is a well made video card, capable of allowing Nvidia’s Ampere GPU to unleash all its power. As this is a totally customized and scarcely available product, the price exceeds 300 euro that of the Founders Edition, which is already prohibitive for the majority of gamers.

  We have already talked about the value of RTX 3090 in a general sense, to its relative impact in the gaming world compared to 3080 and at its most professional address, for those who perform complex renderings and need a lot of video memory. What was said in the Founders Edition review is also confirmed in this case, with the addition that the implementation of MSI is confirmed as valuable, even with the drawback of the size – it is really huge and therefore not suitable for all PCs – and price, which could however fall in the future “When” is difficult to say, as Nvidia has confirmed product availability issues for “too much demand” until the end of the year.