Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC Review

How Much Does It Cost?

Unfortunately, it seems everything that launches recently is getting struck by bots and scalpers. Not to mention just general stock issues due to the ongoing covid crisis. If you want to check up to date prices and stock, you can do so on Amazon UK here and Amazon US here.

Overview

Obviously, the flagship of the Nvidia range doesn’t come cheap. It’s fairly clear to me that the performance difference isn’t about gaming. There are more cores, and it does run faster, but it’s not as far ahead from the RTX 3080 as the RTX 2080 Ti was from the RTX 2080. The performance difference is marginal in some benchmarks due to it being CPU limited.

It sounds silly, even with us using some of the latest processors here, that I don’t think we’re getting everything we can from the RTX 3090 cards. There’s clear CPU limiting in some of the gaming benchmarks. That being said, hitting the limit on these new GPUs still results in record breaking performance, so I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

So what are they for? Well, as Andy was saying in the video review, content creation and heavy workstation tasks. They’re marketed as gaming cards too, which is fine, I’m sure the deep pocketed enthusiast market will love them. However, while it’s an expensive “gaming” card it’s half the price of the Titan RTX, and offers some pretty significant performance in Specviewperf, V-Ray, Blender and more.

Furthermore, that wealth of VRAM is insane. For game development and 3D rendering, having all that memory is going to be vital to creating truly next-gen content experiences.

Why Choose the Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC?

Without a doubt, the RTX 3090 is an incredible piece of hardware, and I think Gigabyte has done a superb job getting competitive performance from it. Even more impressive is that while it wasn’t the fastest RTX 3090 we’ve tested today it’s extremely close. We’re talking a few FPS here, in what is still an extremely fast GPU. For example, this got 112 FPS while the MSI card got 113 FPS in Battlefield, hardly something you’ll notice.

Also, the updated Windforce cooler design from Gigabyte is really impressive. It’s still a great performing cooler at an affordable price compared to some of the more expensive 3090’s, but clearly it’s competitive. Plus, it’s visually striking, a much cooler looking than their previous design, which had been with us for a good few years now.

Ray Tracing and 8K

Despite being one of the more affordable RTX 3090 models, it hardly felt like it. We were hitting above 60 FPS in many of the latest games at 4K without issues. Even with ray tracing turned on, it didn’t feel like we had to compromise on quality to get the right performance.

Our 8K tests showed just how valuable that huge amount of VRAM really is, as even the RTX 3080 cards failed to run in some of these benchmarks. The performance was surprising though, and even doom was close to 60 FPS at 8K. That was still true in our stress test max graphics 8K tests too.

Should I Buy One?

While it’s still a very expensive card, the Gigabyte RTX 3090 Gaming OC offers performance very close to the more expensive flagship models at a much more impressive price. A great option for anyone wanting a monster GPU for next-gen content creation and enthusiast-level gaming.