...the cooler's capabilities are accentuated by the fact that the quickest partner card also happens to be the quietest.
Making sense of a £1,680 graphics card is nigh on impossible for us mere mortals. Most readers will assume, as we do, that anyone with an ounce of common sense will shun the range-topping RTX 3090 for a second-rung RTX 3080 that's plenty fast for gaming while costing half as much.
We, clearly, aren't the target market. For the enthusiast refusing to accept second best, RTX 3090 represents an undisputed king. Nvidia's flagship chip offers the best performance that PC gaming has to offer, and with the Ampere architecture married to a huge 24GB pool of GDDR6X memory, there's a large slice of future proofing and genuine attraction for creative types inclined to render by day and game by night.
Tapping into those credentials, MSI's Gaming X Trio is the fastest implementation of RTX 3090 that we've tested to date, and the cooler's capabilities are accentuated by the fact that the quickest partner card also happens to be the quietest. It is built like a tank and priced accordingly, but an ongoing lack of availability continues to dampen the card's appeal, and the longer the wait goes on, the closer we get to AMD's reveal of Big Navi.
Bottom line: MSI's RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio is the fastest graphics card in our charts and, if you can find one, a fine fit for a no-holds-barred gaming rig.
The Good
The Bad
Chart-topping performance
True 4K UHD gaming credentials
24GB makes it a Titan in all but name
Default BIOS is quiet at all times
Solid build quality and factory overclock
Stock availability still poor
Requires three power connectors
More than 2x the cost of RTX 3080
MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio
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The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio will be available to order from Scan Computers.
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