Update: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 has been revealed so it may be the card to get over the RTX 3090.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is one of the most powerful graphics cards out there if you want to chew through games at 4K on ultra settings and eat up graphics rendering tasks. It's no surprise that it's one of the most sought-after cards.
Sadly, the $1,499 is not only expensive but very difficult to find in stock. You can try your luck with the Nvidia RTX 3080 or Nvidia RTX 3070, though those cards aren't any easier to find. Check out our guide on high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards to seek out restocks and buying advice.
You’ll need to have very deep pockets and a very powerful PC to take advantage of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. But if you have such a setup, you can expect PC gaming nirvana at high frame rates and crazy resolutions.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 release date and price
Released September 24 in 2020, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is available to buy now if you can find it.
At $1,499 in the U.S. and £1,399 in the U.K., it's one of the most expensive gaming-grade GPUs to date from Nvidia.But sadly, low supply, chip shortages and scalpers have meant the graphics card is very difficult to find let alone buy at heavily inflated prices.
Having said that, you still might want to wait before upgrading your graphics card — here’s why.
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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 specs
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| Header Cell - Column 0 | Nvidia RTX 3090 | Nvidia RTX 3080 | Nvidia RTX 3070 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $1,499 | $699 | $499 |
| Nvidia CUDA Cores | 10,496 | 8,704 | 5,888 |
| Boost Clock (GHz) | 1.70 | 1.71 | 1.73 |
| Standard Memory Config | 24GB GDDR6X | 10GB GDDR6X | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface Width | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit |
| Maximum Resolution | 7680x4320 | 7680x4320 | 7680x4320 |
| Ports | HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x) | HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x) | HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a (3x) |
If you thought the price of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 was ridiculous, don't worry — it has the specs to back that up.
The GPU comes with 24GB of GDDR6X, has a 384-bit memory interface and memory speed of 19.5Gbps. Nvidia hasn't officially revealed memory bandwidth, but we’d not be surprised to see it pushing nearly 1TB/s. The GeForce RTX 3090 also sports 10,496 CUDA cores and will run at a boost clock speed of 1,700MHz.
And with the Ampere architecture promising more performance and efficiency, it’s no surprise that the GeForce RTX 3090 will destroy previous GeForce RTX 2000-series graphics cards as well as trounce the RTX Titan.
In real-world terms, this means it can run games at 8K and 60 frames per second, which is frankly ridiculous; not many people have an 8K display. And with second-generation ray-tracing cores and third-gen Tensor cores, the RTX 3090 promises a huge boost in ray-tracing performance and will deliver second-generation deep learning supersampling (DLSS) to help reduce the performance impact of ray-tracing on games running at high resolutions.
Thanks to the Ampere architecture, all of the new GeForce RTX graphics cards can deliver up to two times the ray-tracing performance of the Turing-based GeForce RTX 2000-series.
Outside of games, the GeForce RTX 3090 is expected to be a boon for people who create videos and work with high-fidelity digital assets, effects, and rendering techniques.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is nothing short of a monster graphics card. It's also pretty monstrous in size and comes with a three-slot dual-axial, flow-through design that effectively equips the graphics card with its own silencer. That means it can deliver all of its promised performance at up to 30 degrees Celsius cooler than the RTX Titan and up to 10 times quieter. Just don't go expecting to fit the RTX 3080 in a compact PC case.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 outlook
You probably need to be a serious PC gamer or dedicated game streamer to be willing to part with $1,499 for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090. But if you want the very best in GPU tech, then Nvidia has you covered with the RTX 3090.
Given its price and specs, the GeForce RTX 3090 has few rivals, all save for its bigger sibling, the RTX 3090 Ti. The RTX 3090 appears to have moved the goalposts so far along that AMD is likely to struggle to compete with it at this super high-end level.
With the GeForce RTX 3090, Nvidia has created an aspirational graphics card for gamers and digital content creators to lust after. It makes playing the best PC games even better.
Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face.
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