The GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards is upon us soon. While the GeForce RTX 3080 is NVIDIA's flagship gaming graphics card, the RTX 3090 is the true beastmaster - at least for now. Our RTX 3090 Founders Edition is still on its way to us, but MSI dropped a pleasant surprise at our doorstep with their GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming Trio X graphics card. As we run the card through its pace, here's a quick look at the card itself.
Straightaway, it's obvious the RTX 3090 Gaming Trio X card's build differs from NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition quite radically. For one, the card's size. It will occupy two PCI slots instead of three that the NVIDIA card would. Next, it also uses NVIDIA's reference PCB design, which we have reported before - unlike the custom PCB that the RTX 3090 Founders Edition sports.
It also looks like all GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards from partners, like MSI's here, will use three 8-pin connectors. In contrast, the Founders Edition version will use one 12-pin connector similar to the RTX 3080 Founders Edition.
SLI is almost a 'dead man walking' technology with NVIDIA effectively killing it off with the RTX 3080. But hey, for some reasons, NVIDIA thinks there are crazy rich Asians willing to part with more than US$3,000 on a pair of RTX 3090-based cards and link it up. If you're one of them, here's a snapshot of the NVLink for two RTX 3090 in SLI mode. Oh, and check out the card's eye-popping RGB strip!
Unlike the more understated and monolithic NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition card, the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming Trio X embraces the RGB craze fully. And it looks pretty good. The card will be available for sale after 24th September and MSI will only reveal the price later. If you're curious how the card performs in our benchmark, check out our performance review here.