The new graphics flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 has shown a significant jump in performance, backing up its impressive performance with record speed results. In the last review, we reviewed a video card made by MSI, now let’s get acquainted with the model from ASUS. The focus of our attention was the video card of the TUF Gaming family. Let’s see what it is capable of at factory frequencies and during overclocking, how good the cooling system is in different modes. At the same time, we will expand the list of tests with Crysis Remastered and computational benchmarks.

ASUS TUF-RTX3090-O24G-GAMING

The video card comes in a large box with a picture of the device on the front side.

With the release of older Ampere graphics cards, three-slot models have become standard. ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 takes up 2.7 slots, which leaves more room for airflow.

The length of the video card is 30 cm. It is covered with a metal casing with strict outlines, which gives a solid appearance. The design of the case is diluted with small decorative cuts and a geometric pattern on the surface.

The GeForce RTX and TUF Gaming logos are applied to the side face.

The reverse side is covered with a metal plate. There are slots on the side so that the massive device does not disturb the general movement of air flows inside the case.

The heatsink around the graphics chip is additionally fixed with a pressure plate. In light of the news about the unstable operation of some GeForce RTX 3080s, you need to pay attention to filter capacities. And here we see a large number of ceramic capacitors, that is, the video card is devoid of any potential problems, and the manufacturer immediately took care of the high-quality element base and did not save on piping.

On the side there are two power connectors for eight pins. Dual BIOS is provided. By default, the video card works in Performance Mode, the Quiet Mode firmware provides for a quieter fan mode.

There are three DisplayPort ports and two HDMI ports on the rear panel.

There is an RGB backlight for the window on the side of the case.

Let’s start the analysis of the video card. The plate on the back of the board cools the memory chips and capacitors.

For memory and part of the power elements on the front side there is a large radiator with blocks of thin plates and a heat pipe. For the first time we see such a large individual radiator. This is the right solution, which will ensure efficient cooling of its elements and remove some of the heat load from the main radiator.

The main radiator consists of two sections and six heat pipes. On the side there is a platform for heat removal from transistor assemblies and chokes.

The base is specially machined for a perfectly flat surface to ensure full adherence to the graphics chip. Heat pipes in the area of ​​contact with the base are flattened to reduce gaps.

Three large fans are installed on top of the radiator.

ASUS uses special Axial-tech fans with a unique impeller shape and outer ring. This shape allows you to increase air pressure. The total diameter of the impeller is 90 mm.

PCB 24 cm long:

In total, ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 has 20 power phases. Sophisticated design results in tight two-sided mounting of components. 24 GB of memory is soldered on both sides of the board. Viscous thermal pads are used for contact with radiators, which are easily destroyed when trying to remove them. Therefore, we carefully removed the thermal interface from only a few GDDR6X chips in order to examine the markings.

ASUS TUF products are manufactured to high quality standards and use high performance, durable electronic components.

The GA102-300-A1 GPU operates with 10496 stream processors, 328 tensor cores and 82 RT cores. The board has 24 GDDR6X Micron OPT77 D8BGX memory chips.

ASUS TUF-RTX3090-O24G-GAMING boasts factory overclocking. With the default core base value of 1395 MHz, the average Boost Clock has been increased from 1695 to 1740 MHz. The effective memory data rate is 19500 MHz.

Testing was conducted inside an open Antec NX800 case at a room temperature of 24°C. In such conditions, in many heavy games, the Boost frequencies were kept in the 1750-1850 MHz range. This is illustrated below in the screenshots of monitoring during the load with benchmarks Bright Memory: Infinite RTX and Horizon Zero Dawn in 4K. The temperature did not exceed 63 ° C with a fan speed of 1600 rpm. These characteristics correspond to the standard Performance mode.

How will the characteristics of a video card change with Quiet Mode firmware? Operating frequencies remain unchanged, and the fan speed is reduced to 1330 rpm, allowing warming up to 68 °C. Below is a screenshot of monitoring parameters during Horizon Zero Dawn tests.

Under normal operating conditions, the video card shows a low level of noise combined with low heat. And these are really great results for a device with an impressive TDP of 350W. Operating temperatures are even lower than MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 24G. But the ASUS TUF boost frequencies are also lower, this model is closer to the reference versions in terms of performance.

It should be noted that NVIDIA does not accidentally indicate low base frequencies. In The Division 2 at 4K, there were frequency drops up to 1650-1700 MHz with peak values ​​up to 2025 MHz.

Now let’s talk about overclocking. This video card does not have a locked power limit and allows you to increase it by 7%. But in the end, we still reached the same frequencies as the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 24G.

The average Boost Clock was 1840 MHz at real frequencies of about 1900 MHz and higher. Peak values ​​up to 2130 MHz. The final memory frequency was 19984 MHz.

The Division 2 continued to see the largest frequency spread with drops up to 1710 MHz.

To maintain stability, I had to increase the speed of the fans, which was associated with noticeable noise.