MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio 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.

Alternatively, you can also find stock/prices of this card at eBuyer 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 MSI RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio?

It’s pretty clear that this is a truly phenomenal graphics card. It proved to beat out its rival RTX 3090 cards in most benchmarks; especially gaming benchmarks. Just look at the 4K gaming performance using high settings. Around 90 FPS in Deus Ex, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus. Over 100 FPS in Far Cry New Dawn, Battlefield V, etc. Wolfenstein Youngblood was hitting 184 FPS! This is not a slow gaming card.

Ray Tracing and 8K

DLSS took our 4K Shadow of the Tomb Raider performance to an impressive 114 FPS. Even the demanding Metro Exodus 4K managed 60.38 FPS with ray tracing, but DLSS was able to take that to 82.56 FPS, and that’s an extremely demanding game. This card means no compromise on quality settings.

8K did make good use of the VRAM, however, it seems many games just aren’t quite dialed in yet and I expect we’ll see some updates from both Nvidia’s drivers and developers to address 8K compatibility. However, 59.87 FPS in DOOM Eternal at 8K was impressive to play.

The MSI card came out top in our stress tests too. 57.2 FPS in DOOM Eternal at Max Settings. 27.56 in Metro Exodus Max Settings. An incredible 62 FPS in Youngblood Max Settings. Finally, an impressive 59.713 in Control with High RT and DLSS on. Oh, and all of those benchmarks were in 8K!

Should I Buy One?

It’s big, it’s bold and it’s brilliant. If you’ve got the cash for it, it’s the fastest thing we’ve tested. Brilliant for gaming, incredible for ray tracing, and truly next-generation for content creators.