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It's been some time since we last looked at a graphics card based on Nvidia's flagship RTX 3090 GPU, but that changes today with our review of Zotac's new RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo. The company's top-tier SKU, the AMP Extreme Holo sports an immensely large cooler, bling-tastic RGB implementation, plus a 420W power target to ensure you are getting every last drop of performance from the GA102 silicon.
The Zotac RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo certainly isn't for the faint of heart. Aside from its sheer size – it measures in over 35cm long – it features a bold and RGB-heavy design, which is likely to split opinion. From a technical perspective however, with a 420W power target plus a 120MHz factory overclock compared to reference specifications, it sounds very exciting indeed. Let's dive in and see what this card is all about.
| RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 | RTX 3070 | RTX 3060 Ti | |
| SMs | 82 | 80 | 68 | 46 | 38 |
| CUDA Cores | 10496 | 10240 | 8704 | 5888 | 4864 |
| Tensor Cores | 328 | 320 | 272 | 184 | 152 |
| RT Cores | 82 | 80 | 68 | 46 | 38 |
| Texture Units | 328 | 320 | 272 | 184 | 152 |
| ROPs | 112 | 112 | 96 | 96 | 80 |
| GPU Boost Clock | 1695 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1725 MHz | 1665 MHz |
| Memory Data Rate | 19.5 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| Total Video Memory | 24GB GDDR6X | 12GB GDDR6X | 10GB GDDR6X | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Interface | 384-bit | 384-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 936 GB/Sec | 912 GB/Sec | 760 GB/Sec | 448 GB/Sec | 448 GB/Sec |
| TGP | 350W | 350W | 320W | 220W | 200W |
RTX 3090 uses the GA102 GPU, which also forms the basis for RTX 3080. Even with its 82 SMs, however, this is not actually a full implementation of GA102, as a fully populated die houses 84 SMs, so just two are missing from the RTX 3090. Ampere has doubled the number of FP32 shaders per SM, so there’s a total of 128 CUDA Cores in each of those 82 SMs, for a grand total of 10496.
Each SM also houses a single RT Core, as well as four Tensor cores, giving us 328 with the RTX 3090. Additionally, there’s 328 texture units and 112 ROPs.
As for the memory, this is a significant step up from the RTX 3080. RTX 3090 of course still uses GDDR6X memory, but it has over double the amount with 24GB. Additionally, the modules are clocked slightly faster at 19.5Gbps, and the memory interface is also slightly wider than RTX 3080, with a 384-bit interface. Total memory bandwidth comes in just shy of 1TB/s, hitting 936 GB/s.
RTX 3090 defaults to a boost clock of 1695MHz, but Zotac has added 120MHz to this, bringing it up to 1815MHz. Later in the review we test exactly how fast this GPU actually operates, as we would expect GPU Boost to bring clock speed well above the rated speed.
Power draw has also been increased with the AMP Extreme Holo, up from 350W to 420W. It will be interesting to see how that affects GPU cooling as well.
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