Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Nvidia teases extreme RTX 3090 performance and warns of GPU shortage

If you thought Nvidia’s claim that performance of its flagship GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card was impressive — the company says the RTX 3080 delivers twice the performance of the RTX 2080 that it replaces — then you’ll be in for a real treat with the GeForce RTX 3090. With its triple-slot design and extreme performance designed for creatives, data scientists, and enthusiast gamers, Nvidia claims the RTX 3090 can deliver up to 15% better performance on average than this year’s flagship GPU.

“For 4K gaming, the GeForce RTX 3090 is about 10% to 15% faster on average than the GeForce RTX 3080, and up to 50% faster than the Titan RTX,” the company revealed in a blog post ahead of the card’s official availability. The GeForce RTX 3090 is priced at $1,499 for Nvidia’s Founders Edition, though custom variants can cost more. For comparison, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 only costs $699.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

If the numbers prove impressive, you may want to set an alarm to order the RTX 3090. The card will officially be available on Thursday through Nvidia’s website. Nvidia experienced major shortages about a week ago when the RTX 3080 went on sale due to extremely high demand and limited inventory, and the company expects the situation to be similar with the GeForce RTX 3090. “Since we built GeForce RTX 3090 for a unique group of users, like the Titan RTX before it, we want to apologize upfront that this will be in limited supply on launch day,” the company said.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Along with the change to the Ampere architecture from the Turing design used on the older Titan RTX, Nvidia also made some changes to drive the performance of its GeForce RTX 3090. The card ships with 10,496 CUDA cores and comes with a whopping 24GB of memory. This year, Nvidia worked with Micron to use a faster GDDR6X memory format, which will be found on the RTX 3090, as well as the flagship RTX 3080. For comparison, the RTX 3080 only ships with 10GB of GDDR6X memory.

Most gamers, however, will find the performance of the RTX 3080, which comes in at a more affordable price point, to be more than sufficient for their needs. Even though Nvidia is pushing the RTX 3090 into more mainstream systems — like those from HP, Acer, and others — the card is actually designed as the successor to the Titan RTX, a card that was designed for those who require more extreme performance, like those working with data science and artificial intelligence, complex 3D modeling, and high-end creative applications. This year, with the performance gain from the new Ampere architecture, Nvidia is marketing the RTX 3090 as an 8K gaming card that’s capable of rendering scenes fluidly at 60 fps. In the meantime, be sure to check out our RTX 3080 review to determine if you really need the power of the RTX 3090 come Thursday.

Editors' Recommendations

Chuong Nguyen
Silicon Valley-based technology reporter and Giants baseball fan who splits his time between Northern California and Southern…
Here’s how AMD counters Nvidia’s big RTX Super launch
RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT on a pink background.

Well done, AMD. Today is a big day for Nvidia -- after all, today is when the RTX 4070 Super hits the shelves. So what does AMD do? It serves up a huge price cut on one of its top graphics cards in this generation to strike back at Nvidia and counter its big release. Coincidence? No way. But will this price tag be low enough when Nvidia launches the RTX 4070 Ti Super?

AMD's RX 7900 XT is the GPU that's now a lot cheaper, with an official price of $750, but some models are as cheap as $710. It initially launched at $900 and was never the most popular option out of AMD's two flagships. The RX 7900 XTX, priced at just $100 more, often made more sense due to its greatly improved performance. As such, the RX 7900 XT was a bit of a forgotten entry in AMD's lineup. Its price quickly plummeted to $800 and even lower at certain retailers.

Read more
RTX 4080 Super vs. RTX 4070 Ti Super vs. RTX 4070 Super: Nvidia’s new GPUs, compared
Nvidia RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4070 Super over a dark background.

Nvidia's RTX 40-series refresh is officially here, serving up three of the best graphics cards we've seen in a while -- the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4070 Super. The new GPUs, while still belonging to the RTX 40-series, deliver significant changes in specs, making them an interesting choice for PC enthusiasts.

While all three of these cards are on the upper end of the spec and price spectrum, they're not all the same. How do they stack up against each other? Let's find out with a thorough comparison of Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti, and RTX 4070 Super.
Pricing and availability

Read more
How to watch Nvidia’s launch of the RTX 4000 Super today
A rendering of an RTX 40 Super GPU.

Nvidia's RTX 40 Super graphics cards are just around the corner, with Nvidia teasing an unveiling of its mid-generation refresh of its Ada Lovelace GPUs ahead of CES 2024. The cards are expected to update a number of midrange to high-end graphics cards from the RTX 4000-series with increased CUDA core counts, enhanced clock speeds, and potentially more competitive price tags.

But that's all speculation until Nvidia shows us what it's been working on. If you want to be there when the news drops about just how powerful (and maybe affordable?) these cards actually are, here's how to watch the RTX 40 Super launch.
How to watch Nvidia's RTX 40 Super launch
NVIDIA Special Address at CES 2024

Read more