**The Importance of Understanding GPU and CPU Bottlenecks**

In the world of high-performance computing, it's easy to get caught up in the hype surrounding new graphics cards and their promised performance increases. However, as we recently discovered while benchmarking the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 with a Core i9-10900K processor, there are often subtle bottlenecks that can limit the actual performance of even the most powerful GPUs.

**Overclocking for Better Performance**

Our testing revealed some interesting results when it came to overclocking the CPU. We took our standard 100k benchmark and pushed the clock speed up to a constant 5.3 GHz, which not only improved the frame rates in games but also gave us more insight into whether there was indeed a processor bottleneck limiting the performance of the RTX 3090. By doing so, we were able to determine if the RTX 3090's impressive performance was due to its raw processing power or if it was being held back by the limitations of the Core i9-10900K processor.

**A Closer Look at 1080p and 1440p Performance**

While the RTX 3080 with an overclocked CPU could beat the RTX 3090 in stock form, our testing showed that even at 1080p, there were still some notable differences between the two cards. The RTX 3090's superior performance was only noticeable when running games or other applications that pushed the processor to its limits. At 1440p, the gap between the two cards narrowed significantly, with the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 showing remarkably similar performance.

**Gaming at Lower Resolutions: A Crucial Factor for Competitive Gamers**

Competitive gamers often prefer to play at lower resolutions like 1080p or even 720p in order to achieve extremely fast frame rates and better reaction times. However, they may not be as concerned with 1440p or 4K performance. In these cases, the RTX 3080 proved itself to be a formidable performer, capable of delivering smooth gameplay at lower resolutions while still leaving the RTX 3090 in its wake.

**The Limitations of 4K Gaming**

When it comes to 4K gaming, both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 performed similarly, with the former's performance being only marginally better than the latter. This is not surprising, given that 4K requires an enormous amount of processing power and bandwidth, which both GPUs have in abundance.

**Value for Money: A Critical Consideration**

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is undoubtedly a powerful GPU, but its price tag of over $1,500 makes it one of the most expensive consumer-grade graphics cards available. When compared to less expensive alternatives like the RTX 3080, which offers similar performance at a fraction of the cost, it's clear that the RTX 3090 represents some of the worst value for money in recent memory.

**The Future of High-Performance Computing**

From a creator's standpoint, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is an exciting development, offering unparalleled compute horsepower and capabilities. However, from a gamer's perspective, the real question is whether the added cost is justified. With the RTX 3080 already offering comparable performance at a fraction of the price, it's worth asking if there's any real reason to upgrade to the more expensive RTX 3090.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell here we are again with another nvidia gpu launch and this time it's the rtx 3090 a card that costs 1500 and it's supposed to give you the best that ampere can offer right now to give you a little bit of idea what that means in terms of hardware dollars you can pick up a ryzen 7 3800 xt 32 gigabytes of 3200 megahertz memory an evga rtx 3080 xc3 if you can find one of course and still have some money left for some storage or maybe even a really nice dinner i want you to keep that in mind as i go through this video because it really puts everything into perspective uh from our rtx 3080 videos a lot of you on twitter and instagram we're talking about waiting for the rtx 3090 before upgrading so this video is gonna be a really honest discussion about whether or not gamers should actually make the jump so that leads me into what we're covering first there's the usual gaming benchmarks at 1440p and 4k the next step is to see if the rtx 3090 is being cpu limited by rerunning all the benchmarks with an overclocked processor at 1440p 4k and yes 1080p as well now obviously we know that the rtx 39d isn't designed to be a pure gaming gpu since it offers huge benefits in compute workloads but it's still being flogged to gamers with deep pockets everything seems to be pointing towards that direction because it comes bundled with a free copy of watchdog's legion and nvidia popped it into their geforce gaming lineup rather than giving it a titan branding also the previews yesterday focused on crafting an 8k gaming narrative i also want to mention that reviews like this one weren't allowed until orders go live so a lot of people have already made their purchase decisions by now and that's too bad because this video is gonna be a warning against gamers actually buying the rtx 3090 but either way we were in sample the founder's edition of this gpu so instead we have this gigabyte rtx 3090 that just showed up a few days before launch so let's get started with specs because there's a bit of a reality check right away nvidia did make it obvious that this card is memory focused above all else that's a pretty big deal for people using creative compute or technical applications that are vram limited right now as a matter of fact we're close to running up against some memory limitations and resolve ourselves so i totally hear in video on this one remember back when it was launched the rtx 2080 ti had some amazing performance uplifts versus the 2080 since it had almost 50 percent more cores three gigabytes of additional memory and a wider memory interface for fifty percent more money it didn't offer the best bang for the buck but it was still a great gpu for gamers who had the money to burn on bragging rights the 39 d on the other hand has only 20 more cores than the 3080 very similar clock speeds but more than double the memory and wider memory interface so this card isn't designed to be much faster than the 3080 in games and let me repeat that the 39d is not meant to beat v3080 by a substantial margin but it's more than double the price meanwhile custom cards will go for between a few bucks and a few hundred dollars more something like this gigabyte rtx 39d gaming oc is supposed to hit 1580 but some other versions like the rog strix or aorus extreme will be above 1700 the interesting thing is the gaming oc is able to hit a constant 1980 megahertz while running at under 70 degrees celsius that's about 100 megahertz faster than the rtx 3080 founders edition we have while operating at pretty similar temperatures honestly i can't tell you enough how impressive this is since the rtx 39d core puts out a lot more heat but this also brings up a pretty good point about comparisons in this video it'll make the rtx 3090 look a bit better than it would at stock speeds noise was really well managed too but anything other than near silence would have been a failure for gigabyte given the sheer size of their heatsink interestingly power is pretty similar between these two cards with the pre-overclocked rtx 3090 drawing at most 35 watts more but don't let this chart fool you the 39d and 3080 are two of the most power hungry gpus of all time and we'd recommend at least a 700 watt power supply now on camera this gigabyte rtx 39d might look like a pretty normal custom gpu until you realize it's absolutely massive even compared to the rtx 2080 ti version you'll need to be really aware of how big it is not just the triple slot height or the length but the width as well it might start off slim but there's a huge overhang that just outpassed the pcb another thing you will need to be aware of is the potential for gpu sag these custom rtx 3000 series cards are big bulky and heavy i know evga is offering anti-sac brackets with some of their cards but gigabyte doesn't we noticed a few odd things with this gpu first of all gigabyte has used a pcb that's shorter than the heatsink but they kept the dual 8-pin power connectors closer to the card's rear end those are connected to the pcb via extension wires they also tried to copy nvidia's airflow design by opening a section of the backplate so one of the fans could breathe a little bit better the problem is that those power cables actually block off a good amount of that fan's airflow so with that out of the way let's get into the benchmarks with our usual test system running at stock settings well that was certainly interesting wasn't it you see from the very first day when nvidia announced these new gpus we were saying that the 39d won't offer or won't give much of a gaming advantage over the 3080 and this proves it i also want to mention this one more time that this gigabyte rtx 3090 is slightly overclocked whereas the 30 80 pound position isn't so if i were to compare these cards in their stock configurations the separation would be slightly less and even now it isn't that much across all the games at 1440p we saw only about an eight percent overall increase in average frame rates and even less than that with the one percent lows one thing i do want to mention is jedi following order and overwatch have built-in frame rate limiters that can't be overridden and it looked like the rtx 3090 hit those a few times so its performance has been capped a bit 4k removes those limits so the rtx 39d is now about 14 ahead on average and it shows 11 improvement in 99 percentile frame rates as well the simple fact is even at 4k and the highest detail settings games become limited by gpu processing long before they need more than 10 gigabytes of vram or the memory bandwidth provided by the rtx 3090. sure you can fix the results and make this card look a lot better by throwing in 8k but that's just a marketing hype is anyone actually going to play at that resolution probably not but like i said at the beginning these super close results got us wondering if the rtx 39d was being bottlenecked by the core i9 10900k i mean sure it's the fastest cpu available for gaming right now but with a gpu as powerful as this one we could be running up against the limits of processor horsepower so we went off for more benchmarks and this time instead of the 100k running at the usual 4.8 to 4.9 gigahertz in games we overclocked it to a constant 5.3 gigahertz not only that but we're adding 1080p results here too since those could really tell us if there's a processor bottleneck somewhere look i know what you're saying no one's going to buy a high-end gpu to play a 1080p but i disagree because a high-end graphics card can be an interesting option for competitive gamers who play at low resolutions to get extremely fast frame rates or higher frame rates and better reaction times and that's why we're including this for them kicking things off with csgo and this game was obviously cpu limited in a big way since even the rtx 3080 with an overclocked cpu can actually beat the rtx 3090 in a stock system this is also why you won't see much difference between the stock systems 1080p and its 1440p results now it looks like we're smashing heads first into a game engine limiter speaking of limiters that's exactly what happens with jedi fall order since it caps at 144 frames per second and overwatch as well by the way overwatch's new patch increases the frame cap to 400 so we needed to re-benchmark all the cards here moving on and there's a few games with minor increases with the overclocked cpu but for the most part both the rtx 3080 and the rtx 39d are still showing the gpu limitations still exist at 1080p 1440p brings everything even closer together but the 5.3 gigahertz 10900k positively affects 99 percentile frame rates more than averages either way other than a few exceptions the rtx 3090 wasn't bottlenecked by the cpu at 1080p and it certainly isn't here either now at 4k there's basically no difference between the results and the separation between the rtx 3080 and 3090 sticks to about 13 on average so that's pretty much expected since 4k puts all the emphasis on the gpu even in more basic dx9 titles alright so with all of that done i think it's time to wrap this up and guys there's no doubt that this gpu should be a go-to purchase for creators digital artists or anyone who needs access to a ton of compute horsepower i can't argue with that at all since it is going to be a critical component in my own editing workflow going forward but like i said in the intro there's plenty of reasons why this video was done from a gaming perspective and i'm hoping it helps some people hit the brakes before giving in to the hyped up consumerism and making a really poor buying decision and look flagship gpus are always pretty low on the value for money scale and there's no denying it a good example of it was the rtx 20 dti back in 2018 it cost 50 more than the 2080 and it featured between 20 to 37 percent better performance now in 2020 the rtx 3080 is an amazing value provided you can actually find one for 700 maybe its price is even too low but that's another conversation for another time but let's see where the rtx 3090 slots into this since it costs more than double what the rtx 3080 does while offering at the most 14 higher frame rates at 4k at launch this makes it one of the single worst values versus a less expensive alternative we've ever seen from any geforce or radeon gpu sure past titans may have been worse but remember according to nvidia this isn't a titan it's a geforce card so i guess that's it from a creator's standpoint i'm pretty excited about the rtx 39d and what it can bring to the table and i'm also looking forward to popping this thing into one of my new editing workstations but for gamers the real question is how much are you willing to pay for just 14 and videos daring you to say double they want you to say it they need you to say it because they'll guide their next steps and that and that should be a very very big red flag for everyonewell here we are again with another nvidia gpu launch and this time it's the rtx 3090 a card that costs 1500 and it's supposed to give you the best that ampere can offer right now to give you a little bit of idea what that means in terms of hardware dollars you can pick up a ryzen 7 3800 xt 32 gigabytes of 3200 megahertz memory an evga rtx 3080 xc3 if you can find one of course and still have some money left for some storage or maybe even a really nice dinner i want you to keep that in mind as i go through this video because it really puts everything into perspective uh from our rtx 3080 videos a lot of you on twitter and instagram we're talking about waiting for the rtx 3090 before upgrading so this video is gonna be a really honest discussion about whether or not gamers should actually make the jump so that leads me into what we're covering first there's the usual gaming benchmarks at 1440p and 4k the next step is to see if the rtx 3090 is being cpu limited by rerunning all the benchmarks with an overclocked processor at 1440p 4k and yes 1080p as well now obviously we know that the rtx 39d isn't designed to be a pure gaming gpu since it offers huge benefits in compute workloads but it's still being flogged to gamers with deep pockets everything seems to be pointing towards that direction because it comes bundled with a free copy of watchdog's legion and nvidia popped it into their geforce gaming lineup rather than giving it a titan branding also the previews yesterday focused on crafting an 8k gaming narrative i also want to mention that reviews like this one weren't allowed until orders go live so a lot of people have already made their purchase decisions by now and that's too bad because this video is gonna be a warning against gamers actually buying the rtx 3090 but either way we were in sample the founder's edition of this gpu so instead we have this gigabyte rtx 3090 that just showed up a few days before launch so let's get started with specs because there's a bit of a reality check right away nvidia did make it obvious that this card is memory focused above all else that's a pretty big deal for people using creative compute or technical applications that are vram limited right now as a matter of fact we're close to running up against some memory limitations and resolve ourselves so i totally hear in video on this one remember back when it was launched the rtx 2080 ti had some amazing performance uplifts versus the 2080 since it had almost 50 percent more cores three gigabytes of additional memory and a wider memory interface for fifty percent more money it didn't offer the best bang for the buck but it was still a great gpu for gamers who had the money to burn on bragging rights the 39 d on the other hand has only 20 more cores than the 3080 very similar clock speeds but more than double the memory and wider memory interface so this card isn't designed to be much faster than the 3080 in games and let me repeat that the 39d is not meant to beat v3080 by a substantial margin but it's more than double the price meanwhile custom cards will go for between a few bucks and a few hundred dollars more something like this gigabyte rtx 39d gaming oc is supposed to hit 1580 but some other versions like the rog strix or aorus extreme will be above 1700 the interesting thing is the gaming oc is able to hit a constant 1980 megahertz while running at under 70 degrees celsius that's about 100 megahertz faster than the rtx 3080 founders edition we have while operating at pretty similar temperatures honestly i can't tell you enough how impressive this is since the rtx 39d core puts out a lot more heat but this also brings up a pretty good point about comparisons in this video it'll make the rtx 3090 look a bit better than it would at stock speeds noise was really well managed too but anything other than near silence would have been a failure for gigabyte given the sheer size of their heatsink interestingly power is pretty similar between these two cards with the pre-overclocked rtx 3090 drawing at most 35 watts more but don't let this chart fool you the 39d and 3080 are two of the most power hungry gpus of all time and we'd recommend at least a 700 watt power supply now on camera this gigabyte rtx 39d might look like a pretty normal custom gpu until you realize it's absolutely massive even compared to the rtx 2080 ti version you'll need to be really aware of how big it is not just the triple slot height or the length but the width as well it might start off slim but there's a huge overhang that just outpassed the pcb another thing you will need to be aware of is the potential for gpu sag these custom rtx 3000 series cards are big bulky and heavy i know evga is offering anti-sac brackets with some of their cards but gigabyte doesn't we noticed a few odd things with this gpu first of all gigabyte has used a pcb that's shorter than the heatsink but they kept the dual 8-pin power connectors closer to the card's rear end those are connected to the pcb via extension wires they also tried to copy nvidia's airflow design by opening a section of the backplate so one of the fans could breathe a little bit better the problem is that those power cables actually block off a good amount of that fan's airflow so with that out of the way let's get into the benchmarks with our usual test system running at stock settings well that was certainly interesting wasn't it you see from the very first day when nvidia announced these new gpus we were saying that the 39d won't offer or won't give much of a gaming advantage over the 3080 and this proves it i also want to mention this one more time that this gigabyte rtx 3090 is slightly overclocked whereas the 30 80 pound position isn't so if i were to compare these cards in their stock configurations the separation would be slightly less and even now it isn't that much across all the games at 1440p we saw only about an eight percent overall increase in average frame rates and even less than that with the one percent lows one thing i do want to mention is jedi following order and overwatch have built-in frame rate limiters that can't be overridden and it looked like the rtx 3090 hit those a few times so its performance has been capped a bit 4k removes those limits so the rtx 39d is now about 14 ahead on average and it shows 11 improvement in 99 percentile frame rates as well the simple fact is even at 4k and the highest detail settings games become limited by gpu processing long before they need more than 10 gigabytes of vram or the memory bandwidth provided by the rtx 3090. sure you can fix the results and make this card look a lot better by throwing in 8k but that's just a marketing hype is anyone actually going to play at that resolution probably not but like i said at the beginning these super close results got us wondering if the rtx 39d was being bottlenecked by the core i9 10900k i mean sure it's the fastest cpu available for gaming right now but with a gpu as powerful as this one we could be running up against the limits of processor horsepower so we went off for more benchmarks and this time instead of the 100k running at the usual 4.8 to 4.9 gigahertz in games we overclocked it to a constant 5.3 gigahertz not only that but we're adding 1080p results here too since those could really tell us if there's a processor bottleneck somewhere look i know what you're saying no one's going to buy a high-end gpu to play a 1080p but i disagree because a high-end graphics card can be an interesting option for competitive gamers who play at low resolutions to get extremely fast frame rates or higher frame rates and better reaction times and that's why we're including this for them kicking things off with csgo and this game was obviously cpu limited in a big way since even the rtx 3080 with an overclocked cpu can actually beat the rtx 3090 in a stock system this is also why you won't see much difference between the stock systems 1080p and its 1440p results now it looks like we're smashing heads first into a game engine limiter speaking of limiters that's exactly what happens with jedi fall order since it caps at 144 frames per second and overwatch as well by the way overwatch's new patch increases the frame cap to 400 so we needed to re-benchmark all the cards here moving on and there's a few games with minor increases with the overclocked cpu but for the most part both the rtx 3080 and the rtx 39d are still showing the gpu limitations still exist at 1080p 1440p brings everything even closer together but the 5.3 gigahertz 10900k positively affects 99 percentile frame rates more than averages either way other than a few exceptions the rtx 3090 wasn't bottlenecked by the cpu at 1080p and it certainly isn't here either now at 4k there's basically no difference between the results and the separation between the rtx 3080 and 3090 sticks to about 13 on average so that's pretty much expected since 4k puts all the emphasis on the gpu even in more basic dx9 titles alright so with all of that done i think it's time to wrap this up and guys there's no doubt that this gpu should be a go-to purchase for creators digital artists or anyone who needs access to a ton of compute horsepower i can't argue with that at all since it is going to be a critical component in my own editing workflow going forward but like i said in the intro there's plenty of reasons why this video was done from a gaming perspective and i'm hoping it helps some people hit the brakes before giving in to the hyped up consumerism and making a really poor buying decision and look flagship gpus are always pretty low on the value for money scale and there's no denying it a good example of it was the rtx 20 dti back in 2018 it cost 50 more than the 2080 and it featured between 20 to 37 percent better performance now in 2020 the rtx 3080 is an amazing value provided you can actually find one for 700 maybe its price is even too low but that's another conversation for another time but let's see where the rtx 3090 slots into this since it costs more than double what the rtx 3080 does while offering at the most 14 higher frame rates at 4k at launch this makes it one of the single worst values versus a less expensive alternative we've ever seen from any geforce or radeon gpu sure past titans may have been worse but remember according to nvidia this isn't a titan it's a geforce card so i guess that's it from a creator's standpoint i'm pretty excited about the rtx 39d and what it can bring to the table and i'm also looking forward to popping this thing into one of my new editing workstations but for gamers the real question is how much are you willing to pay for just 14 and videos daring you to say double they want you to say it they need you to say it because they'll guide their next steps and that and that should be a very very big red flag for everyone\n"