Overclocking NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition

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Conclusion

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 sits at the high-end of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series, with an MSRP of $1,499.  In our full review, we took the Founders Edition version of the video card and gave it a full gameplay performance experience review, looking at many games performance at 4K, as well as how DLSS factors into performance.  We then enabled Ray Tracing at 1440p in several games, including DLSS as well, to see what it can provide as far as the gameplay experience goes in games. 

Our findings then were that it allows games to be played at their highest settings at 4K, and their highest Ray Tracing settings at 1440p.  When you factor in DLSS, performance is improved greatly and then the card really can pull off these amazing features in games at the highest resolutions your monitor supports with high framerates. 

The only thing that could make the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition even better, was to overclock it.  Therefore, in this overclocking review today, we took the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition version and overclocked it to see how high it will overclock, and what kind of performance uplift that overclock allows.  We tested once again with DLSS and Ray Tracing in many games to see the impact of overclocking on those features as well.  Yes, overclocking does help DLSS improve even more, which is great to see.

Performance

Starting off in Dying Light 2 at 4K overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition improved performance by 6%. This allowed near 60FPS at 4K with the highest in-game settings, and the game was very playable, it was a good experience and DLSS wasn’t required to make that happen. Though, if you enabled DLSS performance shot up to near 90FPS, and this was certainly very smooth and enjoyable. Therefore, 4K gaming in Dying Light 2 with everything on except Ray Tracing is very possible. At 1440p with Ray Tracing the game was also playable with the video card overclocked. Overclocking the video card improved performance by 8% at 1440p with Ray Tracing, once again near 60FPS. With DLSS it was around 90FPS with Ray Tracing at 1440p, which is amazing.

Rainbow Six Extraction was very playable at 4K with the video card overclocked. Overclocking the video card improved performance by 7% and brought it up to 125FPS. With DLSS that can be extended all the way up to 179FPS with the card overclocked. Turning on a harder AA mode, like TAA-2X, the overclocked RTX 3090 FE really shined, above 70FPS beating everything. In Forza Horizon 5 the game was very playable at 4K with the RTX 3090 FE overclocked, performance was improved by 7%. Turn on CAS and you can get 90FPS in this game on this card with it overclocked.

Far Cry 6 was also very playable at 4K with everything turned on. The overclock improved performance by 6% and took the crown in performance. Turning on FSR further improved performance to 115FPS on the overclocked RTX 3090 FE. When we turned on DXR Ray Tracing at 1440p we found the game to actually be CPU bound with these video cards being so fast. We found that 4K with DXR Ray Tracing was very playable on the RTX 3090 FE.

Cyberpunk 2077 was challenging, as usual, the overclock improved performance by 8% but it didn’t allow the game to be playable at 4K unless we utilized DLSS. With DLSS and the RTX 3090 FE overclocked we finally broke 50FPS at 4K with “Ultra” settings and the game was borderline playable, that’s what it took to make it playable. Utilizing Ray Tracing at 1440p is much of the same, without DLSS it isn’t playable. However, with the overclock plus DLSS performance is around 76FPS and very playable, overclocking the card plus DLSS made a huge difference at 1440p with Ray Tracing possible.

Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 is pretty CPU bottlenecked even at 4K with these fast video cards, and the overclock didn’t help much. Regardless, the RTX 3090 FE still brought in the fastest performance and beat the RX 6900 XT. In Watch Dogs Legion the overclock improved performance by 6% and the game was very playable near 70FPS average. With DLSS it was even better at 92FPS at 4K with the overclock. The game was also playable with Ray Tracing at 1440p with the overclock, around 66FPS, and with DLSS around 90FPS. Metro Exodus Enhanced got a big boost in framerate from overclocking the RTX 3090 FE, and the game was playable, turn on DLSS and it was even better.

Overclocking

Overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition version was fairly simple. Utilizing EVGA Precision X1 software we were able to control GPU Clock, Memory Clock, GPU Voltage, Power Target, and Fan Speeds, everything we needed to hone in the best overclock. We were happy to see the Power Target increase as high as it did, up 14%, which is higher than the GIGABYTE 3090 we reviewed which only allowed +5%. We were also able to test to see if GPU Voltage would help us overclock, and we were able to turn the fans up to 100%.

After much honing, we honed in at +140 on the GPU Clock, which brought the GPU Clock speed up to around 1910MHz average clock speed while gaming. This was up from the default of 1770MHz, which was already strong for this video card. Compared to the GIGABYTE RTX 3090 that overclock wasn’t much higher at 1925MHz average. Therefore the Founders Edition is keeping up very well with a custom-built and custom cooled retail video card. In fact, we actually got the memory to overclock higher on the Founders Edition versus the GIGABYTE RTX 3090. We hit 21GHz on the memory with the Founders Edition, while 20.5GHz on the GIGABYTE RTX 3090.

While the Founders Edition is well built, ultimately we did feel it wasn’t quite up to the task of keeping everything cool enough when overclocked unless we had the fan speeds up high. With the fans up high it was fine, but otherwise, it was a little warm with the fans on auto if you are overclocking it. The downside to that is that the fan noise is very loud on the Founders Edition with the fans cranked up. The design is not holding back the overclock, and it is not causing any thermal throttling, but it does show how other custom cooling designs can do a better job and keep the fan noise quieter.

Final Points

What we found out is that whether you are overclocking a custom-built video card or the Founders Edition version of the GeForce RTX 3090 they can obtain similar levels of overclocking and performance. For all intents and purposes, the Founders Edition provided the same practical level of performance overclocked compared to retail custom video cards we’ve used. The Founders Edition has all the potential of those video cards, and you are able to improve performance on average between 6-8% in games by overclocking it.

That overclocking performance also translates to DLSS, improving DLSS performance even more in games. When you combine an overclock plus DLSS, you have the potential to really make the most demanding games playable at 4K with the highest settings, or 1440p with the highest Ray Tracing settings. The GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition is a powerful GPU, and it is made even better when you combine DLSS and overclocking. Just be prepared for the power demand, be prepared for over 400W consumed from your graphics card alone, and make sure you have plenty of cooling.

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Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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