Power and Temperature
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data. For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU or Package Temp) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition is a 450W TDP video card, versus the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition which is 350W. These power results show this fact. The board power on our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition hit a maximum of 453W, and GPU Chip power at 359W. The GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition sits at a board power 100W less at 354W and GPU Chip Power of 205W. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti runs at a 28% higher board power than the GeForce RTX 3090, and a 75% higher GPU Chip power than the GeForce RTX 3090. The GPU Chip Power is also 41% higher than the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which always used to be the highest GPU Chip Power, until now.
On the plus side of things, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition actually isn’t that bad on GPU and GPU Hot Spot temperatures. With as much power as it draws, you would think it would be the hottest card on this list, but it isn’t. The Radeon RX 6900 XT still takes the lead in GPU and GPU Hot Spot Temperatures.
The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition design clocks in with a GPU temperature of 73.6c and Hot Spot temp of 81.9c. This is much cooler than the GeForce RTX 3090 FE and close in temps to the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, which is a smaller video card overall.
One factor that might account for this temperature reduction is that the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition GPU is actually running at a lower voltage compared to the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. The RTX 3090 Ti FE is running at 1.0750V while the RTX 3090 FE is running at 1.0810V. The other might come down to the tweaks done to the Vapor Chamber on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition design versus the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition design.
We did look at the fan speeds to compare between both, and the fan speeds are actually running faster on the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition fans run slightly slower by default. On the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, the fan speeds ran at 65% and 1715RPM. However, on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition the fan speeds ran at 58% and 1515RPM. Therefore, it’s not a fan speed difference accounting for the lower temps. It’s a pretty amazing feat for a card pulling so much power.
Also, we did look at the memory temperatures. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE had a memory temp of 82c and the GeForce RTX 3090 FE had a memory temp of 90c. Therefore, the newer GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE had cooler running memory as well, even though it’s running much faster clock speeds.