Table of Contents
Introduction
NVIDIA has a long history of releasing "Ti" variants of their products which in most cases are simply slight upgrades to the base model. With the recent launch of the RTX 3090 Ti, NVIDIA is continuing this trend. Compared to the base RTX 3090, the RTX 3090 Ti has the same amount of VRAM (24GB) but has a few more CUDA cores that run at a slightly higher frequency.
The improved performance of this new GPU will make them attractive for many GPU-heavy workflows, but other applications may not see much of a benefit. To see how these new cards perform in a range of other real-world scenarios, we have reviews looking at a number of applications across video and photo editing, game development, and more. While this post includes a summary for each entry, we highly recommend reading the full article for programs you are interested in as we go into much greater detail in the individual reviews.
Puget Systems Podcast – Nvidia RTX 3090Ti & Intel i9-12900KS Review Roundup w/ The Puget Labs Team
If you want to see the full specs for the latest NVIDIA GPUs we recommend checking out the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series product page. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:
| GPU | VRAM | Cores | Boost Clock | Power | MSRP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 | 12GB | 3,584 | 1.78 GHz | 170W | $329 |
| RTX 3060 Ti | 8GB | 4,864 | 1.67 GHz | 200W | $399 |
| RTX 3070 | 8GB | 5,888 | 1.70 GHz | 220W | $499 |
| RTX 3070 Ti | 8GB | 6,144 | 1.77 GHz | 290W | $599 |
| RTX 3080 | 10GB | 8,704 | 1.71 GHz | 320W | $699 |
| RTX 3080 Ti | 12GB | 10,240 | 1.67 GHz | 350W | $1,199 |
| RTX 3090 | 24GB | 10,496 | 1.73 GHz | 350W | $1,499 |
| RTX 3090 Ti | 24GB | 10,752 | 1.86GHz | 450W | $1,999 |
As we noted earlier, the RTX 3090 Ti is a slightly more powerful version of the RTX 3090 – only with a much larger power draw and price tag. While we are going to focus purely on performance in this article, it is definitely worth noting that the 3090 Ti is going to be both louder and hotter than any other RTX 3000 series card due to the much higher power draw. This can be a significant concern if your system does not have adequate cooling or a large enough power supply, so be sure to keep that in mind if you are considering getting an RTX 3090 Ti.
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DaVinci Resolve Studio
Read the full article: DaVinci Resolve Studio – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: Overall, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti provides a small benefit over the RTX 3090 in DaVinci Resolve Studio, although the difference is at most around 6%. Considering that the RTX 3090 Ti has a MSRP is that is $500 higher than the RTX 3090, consumes 100W more power, and doesn't any additional VRAM, the RTX 3090 Ti is likely going to be a bit of a hard sell for most Resolve users.
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Adobe Premiere Pro
Read the full article: Adobe Premiere Pro – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: Overall, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti does well in Premiere Pro, but it is at most only a few percent faster than the RTX 3090. Considering that the RTX 3090 Ti has a $500 higher MSRP, requires up to 100W more power, and doesn't have more VRAM than the RTX 3090, the RTX 3090 Ti is likely not worth the investment for most Premiere Pro users.
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Adobe After Effects
Read the full article: Adobe After Effects – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: Overall, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti does fine in After Effects, but is at most only a few percent faster than the standard RTX 3090. Considering that the RTX 3090 Ti has a MSRP is that is $500 higher than the RTX 3090, uses 100W more power, and doesn't have any additional VRAM, the RTX 3090 Ti is likely not worth the investment. In fact, the RTX 3080 Ti should be nearly as fast as either RTX 3090 variant for most users, which would free up a significant amount of your budget to put towards a faster CPU, more RAM, faster storage, etc.
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Unreal Engine
Read the full article: Unreal Engine 4.26 – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: The RTX 3090 Ti offers nearly 9% higher frames per second than the RTX 3090. This does make it the fastest GPU option for Unreal Engine users. At $500 more than the base RTX 3090 yet only offering a few percent more performance, it is somewhat hard to justify. If you need the best of the best, than the RTX 3090 Ti is the way to go. If you don't think you'll notice that 9% difference, you can save yourself a few hundred dollars.
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OctaneRender
Read the full article: OctaneRender 2020 – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: The RTX 3090 Ti offers only 4% faster rendering performance than the RTX 3090. This does make it the fastest single GPU option for Octane users. At $500 more than the base RTX 3090 yet only offering a few percent more performance, it is somewhat hard to justify. If you need the best of the best, than the RTX 3090 Ti is the way to go. If you don't think you'll notice that 3% difference, you can save yourself a few hundred dollars.
Also of concern is the much larger power draw, a full 30% higher than the base RTX 3090. This will make multiple GPU builds difficult due to both the large power draw as well as the potential extra heat. In our testing we saw power draw of over 400W with spikes even higher. Temperatures also averaged 5-10 degrees hotter in our open air test beds. For a single GPU this shouldn't be an issue, but trying to have multiple RTX 3090 Tis in a system might be problematic. So far we have not seen any blower-style cards. We’ll have to wait for some more GPUs to do some more in-depth multi-GPU testing.
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V-Ray GPU Rendering
Read the full article: V-Ray – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Performance
Summary: The RTX 3090 Ti offers only 3% faster rendering performance than the RTX 3090. This does make it the fastest single GPU option for V-Ray users. At $500 more than the base RTX 3090 yet only offering a few percent more performance, it is somewhat hard to justify. If you need the best of the best, than the RTX 3090 Ti is the way to go. If you don't think you'll notice that 3% difference, you can save yourself a few hundred dollars.
Also of concern is the much larger power draw, a full 30% higher than the base RTX 3090. This will make multiple GPU builds difficult due to both the large power draw as well as the potential extra heat. In our testing we saw power draw of over 400W with spikes even higher. Temperatures also averaged 5-10 degrees hotter in our open air test beds. For a single GPU this shouldn't be an issue, but trying to have multiple RTX 3090 Tis in a system might be problematic.
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How well does the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti perform overall?
In most cases, the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24GB performs only a few percent faster than the existing RTX 3090, with a maximum difference of 9% in Unreal Engine. In exchange, the RTX 3090 Ti has a $500 higher MSRP compared to the RTX 3090, not to mention a significantly higher power draw of 450W versus 350W. All-in-all, this is likely going to make the 3090 Ti difficult to justify outside of the most demanding workloads. In many cases, users could opt for the base RTX 3090, or even RTX 3080 Ti, and not experience a noticeable difference in performance, while saving several hundred dollars.
One of the biggest concerns we have about the RTX 3090 Ti is the much higher power draw, using upwards of 30% more power than the already power hungry RTX 3090. This should make it both louder and hotter than any other RTX 3000 series card, which can be a significant concern if your system does not have adequate cooling. In addition, it also makes multi-GPU setups – which are often a consideration if you need this much GPU power – much more difficult.
On the multi-GPU front, we do want to mention that we 100% planning on testing multi-GPU configurations with the RTX 3090 Ti, but that will have to wait for a future article. Not only do we only have a single GPU available for testing at the time of this article, but due to the 450W power draw, we are going to have to do quite a bit of additional thermal and power draw testing to find out if using more than one RTX 3090 Ti card is something we feel is safe to do in a standard workstation.
If you are looking for a workstation with one of these new RTX 3000-series GPUs, you can visit our solutions page to view our recommended workstations for various software packages, our custom configuration page, or contact one of our technology consultants for help configuring a workstation that meets the specific needs of your unique workflow.
Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.