Why I Will Not Be Buying The Nvidia RTX 3090 Graphic Card?

Aside from being broke, it’s like purchasing a Ferrari when you only drive around 2 block from your house.
When Nvidia released the 3000 series on September 2020, it totally blew away the entire gaming community. The PS5 and Xbox, even after months of hyping up could not achieve the same level of attention like this. It was so ground-breaking that an entire generation of graphics cards felt obsolete, people started planning on selling their newly purchased 2000 series in order to get one of these giants. What made them do it? The big numbers on their benchmarks and all the youtube reviews of course, where the biggest channels started reviewing how great the card is.

How overkill is the RTX 3090?

Remember when the RTX TITAN came out as the world’s most advanced consumer GPU? Well, the 3090 managed to kick it off its crown almost two years later. The RTX TITAN was a beefy card and it came at a hefty price, the tag was as big as an average gamers budget for an entire PC. The card was priced at $2500 and it still is to date. The RTX 3090, comes in at almost half the price of that of the RTX TITAN, chipping into the market at $1500 at release. $1500 is still a lot of money to shovel into buying a GPU for a PC.

The 3090 RTX has a huge video memory capacity of a staggering 24 Gigs in size. This is identical to the RTX TITAN. The key difference lies in the technology used, as the RTX 3090 uses the latest in the market, GDDR6X, which is much faster and more efficient in the aspect of power when compared to the GDDR6 that is used in the TITAN.

NVIDIA TITAN RTX
NVIDIA® TITAN RTX™ is designed for researchers, developers and creators. It’s powered by Turing™ architecture, bringing 130 Tensor TFLOPs of performance, 576 tensor cores, and 24 GB of ultra-fast GDDR6 memory to your PC.

The RTX 3090s advanced technology does not end there as it has a truckload of engineering in it to make it an absolute beast. The GPU has a 384-bit memory interface along with 10496 CUDA cores, which puts the card at the pinnacle of performance in modern gaming.

So why is it not a viable option?

If you read the specifications of the RTX 3090 and what makes it so great, one can easily see that the card is definitely a beast. But, is it really needed though?

The card is extremely advanced which is not a lie, but for an average gamer who just wants to play their titles of preference, all these numbers mean nothing. Most gamers even in 2020 play at 1080p or 1440p, both these resolutions are now a staple among gamers. Companies such as Nvidia focus on the future, meaning, they base their card off resolutions such as 4K and 8K. Imagine buying an RTX 3090 designed to push gamers towards a 4K experience and just using it to play a game on 1440P.

Here’s a comparison chart from GPUcheck.

A Whooping $800 difference for 15 extra frame per-second.

The difference in stats when playing at 1080p or 1440p using either a RTX 3090 or 3080 is minimal. The reason it is so will be explained. The most common refresh rate accepted by the community is 144Hz, only professional gamers that want absolutely nothing holding them back go for those juicy 240 frames per second. If the RTX 3080 can comfortably pump in 144 frames for the game you need, is it really worth paying more than double to get about 20 frames more?

• CPU bottlenecking

  This is probably one of those instances where the CPU bottlenecks the graphics card, although it is not common it is certainly an issue here. The RTX 3090 is too powerful for the processors in the market right now, most of the options that consumers have are way behind the RTX 3090. The ampere architecture used to develop the graphics unit surpasses that of the processors, which means the brains of the PC will not be able to comprehend what its eyes are capable of viewing. The CPU is sure to bottleneck the RTX 3090s performance 100%. So, it is better to wait for a sufficiently powerful and commercially available processor before investing in it.

• It’s always out of stock

  The demand for the RTX 3090 is so massive that the company has declared it will most probably be out of stock a good few months into 2021. Nvidia simply cannot cope with the number of orders they are getting. Looks like the eccentric reveals and numbers really made people open up their wallets. So if you are still looking to purchase an RTX 3090, you might have to wait till it becomes available again. Not to mention that the “Ti” versions are hinted to be released next year, so it is always better to wait.

Who can make the most out of the RTX 3090?

The RTX 3090 was definitely not meant for the average gamer that wants to play a round of call of duty after a day’s work. The insanely high specifications of the GPU means that it is definitely an overkill for most gamers. The card supports 8K HDR Shadowplay, HDMI 2.1, and a whole lot more. Meaning its best for gamers or content creators that are wishing to try out 4K or 8K gaming.

Check this video where Linus from Linus Tech Tips tested RTX 3090 playing AAA games using 8K tv.

Simple to say, for gaming purposes, if you’re not going to be gaming in 8K, or can afford an 8K tv, it’s better to choose a lower-end GPU of 3000 series.

Designers, animators that are hoping to get some more power into their work can definitely utilize the 10946 CUDA cores in the GPU along with its 1.70GHz boost. With this much power backing a system, it allows slow and tiring work such as rendering to be as smooth as a breeze.

Final summary

The RTX 3090 is a great consumer GPU but it is not meant for everyone, especially due to its high price tag. Unless you really want to make use of that enhanced ray tracing and 8K support, we advise you to stick to the lower end GPUs of the 3000 series. The 3070 and 3060 are more than enough for an average gamer that just wants to get some high frame rates along with stable gameplay.

Read also: Upgrading RTX 2080TI to RTX 3000 series, is it worth it?

If you want some more power then a 3080 is just about enough to make you future proof for a good 5 years or more. Anyways we always advise you to wait till a sufficiently powerful processor comes along, which makes the most of these godlike GPUs.