The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is surprisingly efficient … when limited to 300W

The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti it is significantly more efficient than the other models in the RTX 3000 range, as long as the TDP is limited to 300W. The German site Igor’s Lab has studied the behavior of the new top of the range of NVIDIA discovering that by limiting the TDP you can get a better compromise between performance and consumption.

Sure, limit the capabilities of a VGA by almost 2300 euro probably it is not among the aims of any of the buyers, but the test is still interesting for those who love to experiment and love to know the behavior of the hardware in its possession in every facet.

The current top of the Nvidia range features a TDP of well 450W in versione referencethe highest of the range and 100W higher than the RTX 3090, while in the case of some custom products, even 550W. In short, there is very little to discuss, in terms of energy, the new spearhead of NVIDIA is the most demanding video card in the entire sector.

With the curiosity to understand if it was possible to improve the relationship between performance and consumption of the card, Igor’s Lab took one RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X from MSI and through MSI Afterburner he blocked the TDP at 300W, and then moved on to the modification of the VF (voltage / frequency) curve to intervene on the frequencies. More specifically, Igor replicated the VF curve of a Nvidia RTX A6000 who owns the same die GA102, but uses GDDR6 memory and has a TDP of 300W. In this way, the possible peak frequency was of 2050 MHzthat is the maximum obtainable through GPU Boost 4.0 with the VGA in optimal conditions.

At this point the RTX 3090 Ti has been tested in 4K with 10 different titles and compared – to keep the comparison as fair as possible – with Suprim X versions of the RTX 3080 10/12 GB, 3080 Ti and 3090 models, all overclocked from the factory. from MSI, as well as the Gaming X versions of the RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT solutions, also factory overclocked.

Overall, in all games, the “limited” RTX 3090 Ti achieved very similar results to the 3080 Ti with a difference, in terms of fps, of 1.5% on average. However, what was surprising was the efficiency with which the limited 3090 Ti achieved such a result, stopping in fact at 314W against the 409W of the RTX 3080 Ti, ben 95 Watt in meno. Even the RTX 3080 has achieved higher consumption, 351Wwhile guaranteeing the11% less than average performance.

In the case of AMD solutions, the result is just as interesting. As for the Radeon RX 6800 XTthe latter touches very similar consumption, but yields 16% in terms of performance compared to the RTX 3090 Ti limited to 300W. There RX 6900 XTinstead, it achieves lower performance and higher energy consumption.

Results that from an “academic” point of view are very interesting, also to evaluate the Ampere architecture, but those who buy a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti certainly do it for performance, regardless of consumption and even less energy efficiency. .