Golden Silicon Lottery Die winner? Quite possibly. Honest and amazing results from this Zotac 3090.
by Lee ChesterA VERY HONEST REVIEW. This review is taking into account 7 weeks of testing this card. When I first got this card it worked great, then for some reason after a couple of weeks of regular use it was crashing back to desktop like many other manufacturers cards were. MSI Afterburner was showing that at times the card was pulling over 480 Watts and that is when the CTD happened. I looked to see if there was a newer firmware for this card and as luck would have it, there was a new firmware available that same day. I downloaded the latest version of Firestorm (The OC software that is available for the card), installed it and upon running the latest version of firestorm a box appeared stating that a new firmware is available for this card. I duly installed the latest firmware and it took about 2 mins. I then ran the Far Cry 5 and the crashing had stopped altogether. The max power the card was asking for never topped above 356 Watts. I ran multiple games for hours and no crashing whatsoever. I then cliked the OC Scanner on the firestorm software and let it do it's tests for a min or two and the firestorm software stated that the core clock can run at 1813Mhz safely and memory clock + 200Mhz, I clicked apply, ran Far Cry 5 with MSI afterburner with GPU-Z also running and not a single crash. I find it quite odd that the firmware solved the crashing issues, simply because the firmware 'read me' file stated that the firmware was only to solve RGB problems with the card for some people. Now this is the VERY interesting bit, I have MSI afterburner showing 'in game' the core clock, power, temp and fan speeds and the core clock is stating that it's running over 2000Mhz, sometimes hitting 2145Mhz. I hit the windows key so I can see GPU-Z sensors and the average core clock speed was 2040Mhz, firestorm also showed the core speed when I hit the windows key for that brief second, confirming the core clocks. I have a fan curve on 2 fans at 1600RPM and 1500RPM on the other (barely audible). The temps NEVER go above 58c which is astounding. This places this card with that firestorm OC scanner set overclock as much faster than the Asus Strix OC on AVG, even with a user set OC on the Asus Strix after looking at reviews for the Asus Strix OC and their tests. I have been playing Far Cry New Dawn at 4k and max settings for 40+ hours now without a single crash and averaging 120FPS. The GPU regularly pulls slightly over 1.00v at times. I do have a very good air flow throughout my E-ATX case though and that helps a lot. Do I have a Golden silicon die and this GPU is a silicon lottery winner? Possibly! In any case, this Zotac Trinity 3090 That I bought from Overclockers is fantastic, with super fast next day delivery and is highly recommended.