An RTX 3090 Ti set to a 300W limit still beats AMD's best

pcgamer.com:

There's been a lot of talk around graphics card power consumption in recent times. Whether its the scary sounding 600W rumour(opens in new tab) around next gen RTX 40 series cards or the 450W of the recently released RTX 3090 Ti(opens in new tab), it's clear that graphics card power consumption is on the rise.

But it's interesting to see what happens if you restrict the power to a card. Do you lose much performance? Igor's Lab set out to answer these very questions(opens in new tab). Igor took an MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X and set the power limit to a relatively miserly 300W before setting out to see what effect that would have on the flagship card's performance. The results were surprising.

If we look at Igor's 4K test results, we can see that the stock Suprim 3090 Ti scores an average of 107.4 FPS over the entire test suite. That drops to 96.3 FPS for the 300W tuned 3090 Ti. Interestingly, the card still beats out the 6900XT and is well ahead of the RTX 3080 and 3080 12GB.

Meanwhile the power consumption readings are even more interesting! The default 3090 Ti records an average power consumption of 465.7W, while the 300W limited card delivers a 313.8W reading. That's a huge difference and it proves just how aggressive Nvidia was in order to ensure the 3090 Ti retained the outright performance crown.

Best CPU for gaming(opens in new tab): The top chips from Intel and AMDBest gaming motherboard(opens in new tab): The right boardsBest graphics card(opens in new tab): Your perfect pixel-pusher awaitsBest SSD for gaming(opens in new tab): Get into the game ahead of the rest

Of course, this is a theoretical exercise. You wouldn't expect anyone to buy a 3090 Ti and effectively downclock it, but it does show that with the right