17.12.2021 
The best graphics cards for gamers today are based on Nvidia’s RTX 3090 GPU, and one of the finest implementations is ASUS’ TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090. We got it a few weeks ago, and since then, we’ve tested it, benchmarked it, and played some of our favorite games using it. Do you want to know how fast the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 really is? Would you like to find out how it handles games in ultra-quality with ray tracing on? If you do, then go ahead and read our review:
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090: Who is it good for?
This graphics card is one of the best choices a gamer could make if you want:
- To be able to play any game at very high resolution, 1440p or even 4K, on ultra quality settings
- Ray tracing and DLSS for beautiful visuals and performance
- The best graphics card money can buy today
Pros and cons
There are many positives about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090:
- Its performance is top-notch in any game, even at high resolutions
- It supports ray tracing and DLSS
- It has 24GB (!) of extremely fast GDDR6X RAM
- It doesn’t heat, and its cooling system is silent
In our view this card, like all others in the RTX 3090 series, has the following downsides:
- Most shops sell it for outrageous prices
- It’s difficult to find
Verdict
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 is an excellent implementation of Nvidia’s best gaming graphics card: the RTX 3090 GPU. It delivers top performance, with ray tracing, even in high resolutions, above 1440p. You can practically run any game you like, no matter how demanding it is, at ultra visual quality and at a high framerate. If you’re an avid gamer, you can find it in stores and have the money for it, go ahead and buy the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090. You’ll just love your gaming machine once you do. 🙂
Unboxing the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card arrives in a large, good-looking box. On it, you can see what the graphics card looks like, its name, and some details about its features and specs.
The box of the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
Inside the box, there’s the graphics card, its user manual, a thank you note, and warranty documents.
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090: What's inside the box
Unboxing the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 video card is a neat experience.
Design and hardware specifications
Using the extremely powerful Ampere GA102 GPU, the GeForce RTX 3090 really is the apex of the graphics cards world. It packs 28 billion transistors, 10496 CUDA cores, 24GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit interface, and supports PCI Express 4.0.
A view of the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
As the RTX part of its name clearly states, the RTX 3090 supports both ray tracing and DLSS technologies. The ray-tracing tech that allows the GPU to deliver realistic lighting effects, shadows, and reflections, needs massive amounts of processing power. That’s why DLSS is also important. Although the RTX 3090 is extremely powerful and can run games smoothly even in 4K, with the magic of the Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), it should be able to deliver good framerates even in huge screen resolutions like 8K!
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 mounted in our test PC
Obviously, GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards like this one are targeting gamers who want the best of the best. Still, considering the prices of these GPUs, especially as they’re in short supply, we’d say that professionals such as video editors are more likely to buy them today.
Going into a bit of detail about the sample we tested, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card has the same technical specifications as the reference Nvidia RTX 3090 GPU. However, when it comes to how it’s built, ASUS changed things quite a bit.
Details shown by GPU-Z
For starters, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 is smaller than the RTX Founders Edition. This one occupies two slots, while the reference card occupies no less than three. However, it’s still a massive card, measuring no less than 11.8 x 4.99 x 2.03 inches (29.99 x 12.69 x 5.17 centimeters). And a thing we like about this graphics card in terms of design is the fact that it doesn’t overdo RGB lights. That’s not to say that there’s none: a fairly small underlined TUF Gaming logo is present on the corner edge of the card, but that’s it.
RGB lighting is discreet on the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 supports a maximum resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels on three DisplayPort (1.4a) and two HDMI (2.1) ports and can connect to up to four displays simultaneously.
Ports found on the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
On the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, ASUS mounted three axial fans that spin on dual ball bearings - this should help with reliability over time. Additionally, a thing that we didn’t see on other cards is that the two side fans are spinning counterclockwise, while the middle one rotates clockwise. According to the company, this reduces turbulence, which means less noise.
The back of the card is covered by a good-looking protective metal backplate that hides the circuit board. However, there’s a cutout in it that allows hot air to be blown towards the top chassis fan(s), which should also help with keeping temperatures low.
The backplate on the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090
One other good thing about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 is that it draws its additional power via two regular 8-pin PCIe connectors, unlike the Nvidia RTX 3090 Founder’s Edition, which uses a new 12-pin power connector. And, for this graphics card, ASUS recommends a power supply unit that can deliver at least 850W.
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 uses two 8-pin power connectors
If you want to see more details about the hardware specs and features, visit this webpage: ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 Tech Specs.
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 - Testing setup
For a clearer idea of how powerful the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card really is, we played and benchmarked it in a few games. And, to match its performance, we chose to run our tests using only premium hardware components, including a powerful 12th Gen Intel Core processor and one of ASUS’ premium Z690 motherboards.
ASUS Z690 motherboards for Intel Alder Lake processors
This is the PC we assembled for benchmarking the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090:
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme (built for Alder Lake processors, XMP 3 and built-in ASUS enhanced memory profiles, Wi-Fi 6E and Thunderbolt 4, PCI Express 5.0)
- Processor: Intel Core i7-12700K (25M Cache, up to 5.00 GHz)
- Cooler: ASUS ROG Ryujin II 360
- Memory: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 RAM (2 x 16GB, 4800MHz)
- Storage: Kingston KC3000 SSD (2TB, PCI-Express 4.0)
- Monitor: ASUS ROG Strix XG32VQ Curved Gaming Monitor (2560 x 1440 resolution, at 144Hz)
- Power Supply Unit: ASUS ROG Thor 850W Platinum
- Operating System: Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Build 22000.348
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 on the Z690 Extreme motherboard
Note that we benchmarked all the games using the highest possible graphics settings.
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 - Benchmarks results
The first game that we tested with the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card was Shadow of the Tomb Raider. It’s a beautiful game that requires a relatively powerful gaming machine if you want to play it at maxed graphics quality. As you can see in the chart below, even if we set it to use ray tracing and DLSS on the Quality preset, the frame rates we got were very high, both in 1440p and 1080p resolutions.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Benchmark results
Metro Exodus is another game that requires a lot of hardware resources if you want to run it at the best graphics quality possible. Still, the RTX 3090 GPU had no issues rendering more than 100 frames per second at both resolutions tested. In 1440p, we got 101 fps on the RTX preset, while on the 1080p resolution, we got 117 frames per second.
Metro Exodus: Benchmark results
We also benchmarked the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 in Horizon Zero Dawn, an open-world PlayStation game that has been ported to PC, with highly polished visuals. Obviously, it requires powerful hardware too, at least if you want to experience its beauty in all detail. As expected, the RTX 3090 had no issues running it even if we used the game’s maximum graphics quality settings: the Favor Quality preset. Our test computer was able to render 147 fps in 1440p resolution and 166 fps in 1080p.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Benchmark results
Next on our list came Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, another splendid game in terms of visuals. Even if it doesn’t use ray tracing, Valhalla is one of the most demanding games we’ve seen in the last few years. Still, the RTX 3090 managed to deliver 102 fps in 1440p and 122 fps in 1080p.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Benchmark results
3DMark Port Royale is a specialized benchmark for real-time ray tracing. Using the GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, we got a score of 13146 points (and an average of 60.86 fps) in 1440p and 20662 points (and 95.66 fps) in 1080p. That’s better than 95% of all results recorded by 3DMark!
3DMark Port Royale: Benchmark results
In 3DMark’s standard Time Spy benchmark, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 scored 19754 points in 1440p resolution and 28842 points in 1080p. These scores are better than 99% of all computers and laptops tested with 3DMark Time Spy.
3DMark Time Spy: Benchmark results
While running the benchmarks, we also found out that the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 video card can draw up to 350W of power, but doesn’t get excessively hot. Using Furmark, the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 didn’t get hotter than 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit)!
Temperature reached in FurMark
The ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 is one of the best high-end graphics cards based on Nvidia’s RTX 3090 GPU. It can run any game in ultra quality and with ray-tracing turned on. Although we only tested the 1080p and 1440p resolutions, it should have no issues running games at more than 60 fps in 4K resolution as well.
What is your opinion about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090?
These were our thoughts and opinions about the ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. It is one of the best video cards you can(‘t) find in stores right now. Before closing this review, let us know what you think about ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3090 in a comment below.
