Final Thoughts
So we’ve put Zotac’s flagship and highest clocked RTX 3090 to the test, what did we find out? Well I think that Zotac has done quite a lot to really make this card stand out amongst all of the other RTX 3090’s out there.
Let’s first talk about that overclock. As I said this is Zotac’s highest clocked RTX 3090 at 1815 MHz, which is a bump of 120 MHz over the stock RTX 3090. This overclock is why the card tops our charts compared to Zotac’s own RTX 3090 Trinity that we took a look at late last year. While you are not going to see a massive increase in benchmark scores and FPS, the overclock is appreciated. One of the reasons Zotac was able to achieve this overclock is they increased the default power limit to 420W (compared to 350W).
The increase in power is probably why this card is so large. Zotac’s IceStorm 2.0 cooling system is a triple-fan, triple-slot cooler with 8 heatpipes. This massive cooler did a great job in our testing, hitting a max 72.7C in our temperature test. This is actually better than what we saw from their RTX 3090 Trinity which runs at stock speeds and power limits. To achieve this cooling performance the noise levels were not the best, but keep in mind the fans turn completely off when there is no load on the card.
The RGB lighting on this card is excellent and it is really cool how part of it is actually hidden under the holographic section of the card. You have RGB lighting not only on the edge of the card, but on the back and Zotac does include a metal GPU support bracket that has RGB lighting on it too. You can connect this bracket to the card itself so all of your effects are the same.
This is a dual BIOS card, but the BIOS can only be changed using Zotac’s FireStorm application. This definitely makes it easier than opening your system up and pressing a button, which I am assuming why Zotac has it implemented this way. But what if for some reason when updating or making changes to one of the two BIOS’s you brick the card? You obviously then cannot boot your system and use the FireStorm utility, that is why I think a hardware switch would have been better here.
As I mentioned earlier in this review this card is massive! At 355.9mm long it is probably the longest card we’ve ever reviewed! 350 mm is usually the cut off point in quite a lot of cases, being over that means you’ll have to pick your case very carefully. Even more carefully if you plan on running a radiator in the front of your case.
Now when it comes to other cards out there the RTX 3090 is really the top dog, but as I’ve said before it is really overkill for a lot of people. Are you really going to make use of 24GB of VRAM? Probably not, that is why either the RTX 3080 or RTX 3080 Ti make sense for most people, especially gamers. When it comes to gaming you are easily going to see over 60 FPS at 4K and very high frame rates at 1440p to push high frame rate displays. Now if you are a digital creator this card would make a lot of sense as many workloads can make use of that 24GB VRAM. So this could be a great dual purpose card.
Overall you are going to be very satisfied with Zotac’s GeForce RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo. For a flagship graphics card I think it has quite a lot going for it and is definitely the best card I’ve reviewed from Zotac. Graphics card pricing and availability is still pretty bad. This card has a MSRP of $2799, but Zotac is running a promotion for $2599.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Zotac GeForce RTX 3090 AMP Extreme Holo Graphics Card a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Fastest card we’ve ever tested
– 1815 MHz default GPU Boost
– Dual BIOS
– Higher power limit that many other RTX 3090s
– Excellent holographic design & RGB lighting
– Metal RGB GPU support bracket included
Cons:
– Software-only Dual BIOS
– Very long, case options will be limited
– High power consumption and noise levels
