ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC Review

Can the ROG STRIX RTX 3090 climb to the very top of the GPU leaderboard? We review ASUS ROG’s beast of a graphics card and see how it compares to other cards on the market.

Product on Review: ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC
Manufacturer: ASUS
Street Price: USD $1600 | AUD $3400 | GBP £1700

Touted as the “World’s First 8K Gaming GPU”, the RTX 3090 was launched at the tail-end of September. The positioning of such a graphics card sees it take the top spot in the Ampere lineup. Its makeup, which consists of 24GB GDDR6X, 384-bit bus and 10496 cuda cores marks this out as the model which should effectively replace the ‘Titan’ prosumer model from the Pascal generation, if nothing else, the price-tag should indicate that!

So, today we turn to the ASUS ROG team for a look at their top of the line STRIX RTX 3090 OC. Carrying the STRIX name, automatically pits this card as a premium offering. The card itself features an impressive factory overclock to the GPU clock boost, taking this model right to the top of the leaderboard within its class.

The STRIX graphics cards have remained mostly untouched in their physical appearances for at least two generations, so the ROG team has performed an overhaul to the design with a fresh ‘new look’ but still retaining the much-revered MaxContact thermal solution.

ASUS on their STRIX RTX 3090 OC

From top to bottom, the ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 3090 has been radically improved to accommodate the impressive new Ampere chips from NVIDIA and to deliver the next wave of gaming performance innovation to the market. A fresh design and more metal surrounds a grouping of Axial-tech fans. Last gen’s uniform fan layout has been usurped by a new rotation scheme and specialized roles for central and auxiliary fans. Below the blades, a larger, more impressive heatsink is ready for the most demanding thermal loads. The PCB has some new tricks up its sleeves, and even the backplate has received some performance-boosting changes. You’ve been waiting for the latest and greatest in GPU design – and this is it.

Technical Specifications

Below are the technical specifications surrounding ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC supplied directly by ASUS:

GPU
GA102
Stream Processor
10496
Video Memory
24GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus
384-bit
Engine Clock Boost
1890MHz
Memory Clock
19500MHz Effective
PCI Express
4.0
Display Outputs
3x DisplayPort 1.4
2x HDMI 2.1
Recommended Power Supply
850W
DirectX
12 API feature level 12_2
OpenGL
4.6
Cooling
Triple-fan
Slot Size
2.7
Supported OS
Windows 10
Card Length
318 x 140 x 57mm

Closer Look Video Review

For this review we’ve produced a video of ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC. In this video we go into great detail about this graphics card, walking you through all of the features and detaching the cooler for a look at the thermal solution and innards. View the video here or watch below:

Test Setup & Methodology

HOW WE TEST GRAPHICS CARDS

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

HARDWARE

In Q3 2020 we decided to move on from our Intel X99-based graphics card test system to embrace AMD Ryzen Gen3. The basis for this was quite simple, AMD’s platform is one of the most popular choices for gamers and by using such a configuration, we can hopefully showcase to our readership what they can expect. In the past we’ve used HEDT platforms and while this does indeed align itself to the bleeding edge for a computer system, it doesn’t reflect what most gamers will be using.

With NVIDIA and AMD now using PCIe 4.0 for their bus interface on graphics cards, AMD Ryzen Gen3 and the X570 chipset are well-equipped to test appropriately.

Graphics Cards on test:
AMD RX 5700
AMD RX 5700 XT
NVIDIA RTX 2060
NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti
ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC
ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC

Special thanks go to AMD, MSI, Corsair, Noctua and AverMedia for providing the hardware configuration for our graphics card reviews:

Motherboard: MSI PRESTIGE X570 CREATION
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
RAM – 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance DDR4 @ 3000MHz
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 830 EVO 250GB + Crucial MX300 2TB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H150i Pro 360mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Capture Card – Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme 2

BENCHMARKS

If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:

Horizon Zero Dawn
Control
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
F1 2020
A Total War Saga: Troy

To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools and FRAPS.

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

3DMark Time Spy
3DMark Port Royal
Unigine: SuperPosition

In light of the new RTX and DLSS features, we have also added in some tests to cover this tech to provide some analysis, showcasing what users can expect with/without such a feature enabled. For this we are using:

3DMark DLSS
Control – RTX Off/RTX On

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using AIDA64 stability test (GPU Only) which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

TEMPERATURE

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Unigine SuperPosition running in game mode continuously for ~30 minutes and recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.

ACOUSTICS

For the purpose of testing audio levels we have the NDI KC-3300 sound level meter. During the temperature recording above, while in Unigine SuperPosition gamemode we monitored the audio and the results are found below. All graphics cards are tested in their out of the box state (auto).

DX12: 3DMark Time Spy

Download your copy now

With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.

DX12: 3DMark Port Royal

Download your copy now

3DMark Port Royal is the world’s first dedicated real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers. You can use Port Royal to test and compare the real-time ray tracing performance of any graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX Raytracing. As well as benchmarking performance, 3DMark Port Royal provides a realistic and practical example of what to expect from ray tracing in upcoming games.

DX11: Unigine SuperPosition

Superposition is a new-generation benchmark tailored for testing reliability and performance of the latest GPUs. Top-notch visuals, support for VR-devices and an interactive mode with mini-games — the list of features built into Superposition could go on and on.

DX12: Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The plot follows Aloy, a hunter in a world overrun by machines, who sets out to uncover her past

DX12: Control

Control Ultimate Edition contains the main game and all previously released Expansions (“The Foundation” and “AWE&quot

in one great value package. Winner of over 80 awards, Control is a visually stunning third-person action-adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

DX12: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series.

DX12: F1 2020

F1® 2020 allows you to create your F1® team for the very first time and race alongside the official teams and drivers. Alternatively, challenge your friends in new split-screen with casual race options for more relaxed racing. Compete on 22 circuits, with current and classic content.

DX12: A Total War Saga: TROY

A Total War Saga: TROY is the first in the award-winning strategy series to focus on the Bronze-Age Mediterranean and the legendary twenty-year conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece, known as the Trojan War.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Please note: we’ve used GBP for currency but since this is relative – regardless of which currency you use, this will give you a good indication of value for money.

DLSS Analysis: 3DMark DLSS

Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is an NVIDIA RTX technology that uses the power of deep learning and AI to improve game performance while maintaining visual quality.

RTX Analysis: Control

Control is an action-adventure video game title which has the ability to take advantage of real-time ray tracing. For this test we ran the game in 1440p with Ultra Detail set. Under the settings we enable RTX and assign the preset as “High”. Below are the results with RTX On and RTX Off.

Conclusion

The RTX 3090 is without doubt the new performance king and carrying the STRIX badge only confirms this further. Even on paper the stats speak for themselves, 24GB GDDR6X, 10496 cuda cores and not to mention a chart topping 1890MHz GPU boost clock.

Casting an eye over the benchmark results highlights that at lower resolutions of 1080p and 1440p, the RTX 3090 barely flexes its muscles, and in fact RTX 3080 and 3090 figures are similar at 1080p. Stepping into the 4K domain is where we really see this card come into its own, at 4K and above, the RTX 3090 starts to really pull away from other cards. So your sole intention is to game at 1080p or even 1440p, you would probably be better investing in the RTX 3080.

The ROG team has done an excellent job with the re-design of their STRIX cards for this generation, a makeover was needed and they’ve delivered. RGB lighting may not be for everyone but the integrated strip along the edge of the card adds some vibrancy to any configuration.
The most obvious elements to take note of if you’re considering this graphics card are the size, weight, and power requirements. This GPU is gigantic and will therefore need sufficient space within a computer chassis to comfortable reside, it’s also rather hefty in the weight department so if you have an enclosure with GPU weight support, we definitely recommend using it. Power consumption for NVIDIA’s new lineup is considerably more demanding and this flagship places itself at the very top of the stack for such an attribute – an 850W PSU is necessary as well as triple 8-pin PCIe connectors.

Combine the fastest GPU with the STRIX insignia and we’re left with no surprises about a big price-tag. STRIX RTX 3090 OC is available for a breath-taking USD $1600 | AUD $3400 | GBP £1700.

If you want the very best, this is unquestionably it. STRIX RTX 3090 OC takes Ultra-Hi Def gaming to another level.

Pros
+ Impressive new STRIX design
+ Rugged build quality
+ Factory overclock to GPU
+ Zero decibel technology
+ Low-noise under load
+ Top performing cooler
+ Dual-Bios switch for lower noise
+ Excellent performance in the latest games
+ Handles 4K ultra easily

Cons
– Power hungry
– Very big
– Heavy
– No memory overclock
– Expensive

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