evgablee
I am not sure there is anything wrong with the bios as it is, the card pulls the Watts when it needs it, most of the time it doesn't though. If you run a benchmark you can get it to consistantly pull more than 450 watts continuous.  In my opionion this card is badass.

demowhcc
Hey guys, picked up a 3090 FTW3 Ultra a few days ago before I found this thread..
 
Installed the 500w bios but card does not exceed 440w, except for an odd spike to 469w. Clocks are all over the place, bouncing from 1850 to 2050
 
Please fix EVGA!

slovak_killer
 Im sure your 500W run was pwr throttling nonstop, flashing XC3 bios onto FTW3 should fix this.

tt0ne
Sooooo... Let's say someone blows the 10 AMP fuse on the 3090 FTW Ultra because they didn't realize that EVGA purposely gimped the card (and wouldn't ever have imagined that they'd do something like this) - where would a person go to find a replacement fuse and could that fuse be upgraded to a 20 amp? Also, where exactly is this fuse on the 3090? I know a guy who said he fried his 3090 with a shunt mod and when I asked him to describe what happened there is no doubt in my head that he just popped the fuse. Since he purchased the card from a scalper he has no warranty and I'd love to turn his $2500 paperweight into a functioning device again.

tt0ne
Sooooo... Let's say someone blows the 10 AMP fuse on the 3090 FTW Ultra because they didn't realize that EVGA purposely gimped the card (and wouldn't ever have imagined that they'd do something like this) - where would a person go to find a replacement fuse and could that fuse be upgraded to a 20 amp? Also, where exactly is this fuse on the 3090? I know a guy who said he fried his 3090 with a shunt mod and when I asked him to describe what happened there is no doubt in my head that he just popped the fuse. Since he purchased the card from a scalper he has no warranty and I'd love to turn his $2500 paperweight into a functioning device again.
 

tt0ne
Arestavo,
 
Amazing. I had no idea. Thank you for the education!
 
Cerealkiller,
 
I ordered the following from www.mouser.com:
 

I honestly have no idea which is the right one - maybe none of them - but I'm hoping one of them is. The one on the card is labeled with a "R" but I could only find "S" and "X". I also picked up some 20 amp versions to see if you can just drop one in.
Thanks for your help so far :-)
 

evgablee

whaleboy_2048

ajreynol
 
Sorry I forgot to update this.
I did all my testing on the same rig, case sides off, 100% fans, reasonably cool room. As benchmarks went, for the silicon I received:
 
XTrio w/500W EVGA Bios > FE > Strix >> FTW3U
 
XTrio was shockingly quiet even at max fan speed. Card was the second coolest of the bunch, maxing out at around 73C in stress testing and did the best job maintaining its clocks stable. All of the reviews saying it is super quiet are spot-on. 500W bios allows the card to bounce between 480W-510W in benchmarks. This was the card I decided to keep, and am running it daily at 0.956mV @ 2040MHz. It's rock solid there and is drawing 380W-420W typical. Memory is very strong, and actually goes up to about +1248 before seeing performance degrade. That memory clock wasn't stable @ 0.956mV so I dialed that down to +1048 daily usage.
BEST STABLE OC (Afterburner): +161 / +1148
CLOCK STABILITY: 2085-2130, ~480W-510W, max temp 69C
 
FE at 100% fans is extremely loud. Like, unacceptably loud. But the nice thing about the FE is that it will likely never reach 100% fan speed because its cooler is SO GOOD. The same stress tests? Card maxed at 56C. That's almost 20C cooler than the XTrio. Even when undervolting the XTrio to around 400W (which is where the FE hangs around in benchmarks), it's still a solid 10C warmer than the FE. I continue to go back and forth on keeping this one because that EK FE waterblock is gorgeous and a shunt mod would be a trivial way to really find out how good this card could be. I have another couple of months to decide if I want to keep it or not (Best Buy), but I'm probably going to return it as I am now VERY intrigued by the EVGA FTW3 HC. 
BEST STABLE OC (Afterburner): +170 / +698
CLOCK STABILITY: 1950-2010, ~390W-408W, max temp 56C
 
Strix just ran too damn hot. It would get up to about 80C with stock bios, and around 84C on the 500W EVGA bios. Volume at 100% fan speed was acceptable but was definitely audible. Under water or with a repaste it may have performed better, but I'm not going to open a card that I'm not 100% sure I want to keep and this wasn't the impression I was looking for out of the vaunted Strix model. What sealed my decision was being able to compare OC's for this and the XTrio on the SAME 500W bios. The XTrio could simply do more. Higher core OC, higher mem OC. Strix kept it close and I do think it was very limited by temps, but again, wasn't ready to take any risk given the cost of the card.  I was going to return it but I ended up selling this one for my cost + ship which worked out because someone who wanted a Strix got one and I got to keep my credit card's reward points. lol.
BEST STABLE OC (Afterburner): +141/+898
CLOCK STABILITY: 1980-2070, 463W-480W, max temp 74C, stock bios
CLOCK STABILITY: 2010-2115, ~510W, max temp 84C, 500W FTW3U bios
 
FTW3 was slightly louder than the Strix at 100% fan speed, but not offensive like the FE. Not a lot to say here; clocks would regularly dip below 2GHz and the max temp got up there much higher than I would consider acceptable. Just a reminder at this point: all 4 cards were tested in the exact same environment. Huge room, nice and cool, open case. This card and the Strix were literally 20C+ hotter than the FE. This card had the most average performing silicon on the core of the bunch, maxing at +90 core offset AND the second weakest memory offset, beating out only the FE.
BEST STABLE OC (Afterburner): +90/+800
CLOCK STABILITY: 1950-2045, ~425-450W, max temp 80C, stock bios (did not try 500W bios because of the issues)
 
--
 
There was a bunch of other data and scores and stuff (scoring as I incrementally rose core and mem offsets, some game bench scores), but I'll only post some of those if someone is really interested. They were all close enough to consider them a wash in real world applications, but the FTW3 was about 300 points behind the other 3 cards which were all within 50 points of each other. The FE beat out the Strix and FTW3U in both Port Royal and Time Spy despite having 100W less power available to it. 
 
In the end, as we should all know at this point: the silicon lottery is more important than the make and model on the side of your box. The chips for these cards are not binned; you can get a core that can't OC much...or one that can OC a lot. Same with memory.
 
Back to the Hydro Copper, I didn't expect them to be so competitively priced and was always planning to put whatever card I settled on under water. The HC represents a savings of at least a couple hundred depending on the card + block (Strix + block is like $200 more than the HC, for example). Unless I deem teh XTrio to be a proper golden chip (I think it might be given those offsets and ease of applying the 500W bios), the HC value proposition seems unbeatable for the price. Also, what a nuts air cooler the FE has. If I were building on air and not concerned at all about leaderboard benchmarking, I don't see why I would purchase any other card. It's beautiful, it runs cold, boosts to 400W (which is where you want to be for daily gaming regardless of card to keep temps down on air), and sits right around 2GHz. At best, we're looking at a few FPS advantage for one of the more expensive AIBs? While being able to gawk at arguably the sexiest waterblock ever made in that EK FE block.
 
So yea, having a bit of paralysis of analysis. FE + EK block? XTrio + someone's block? Sell everything and try to score a Hydro Copper sometime next month? Decisions, decisions.

Thanks for the detailed write up. Interesting results. I think you should bold this line...
 
In the end, as we should all know at this point: the silicon lottery is more important than the make and model on the side of your box. The chips for these cards are not binned; you can get a core that can't OC much...or one that can OC a lot. Same with memory.
 
This is a huge factor, and based on your writeup I could see myself ordering an MSI (the gaming X trio line is my normal go-to), but with my luck I'd lose the silicone lottery as i always seem to do. At this point I'll likely just keep my FTW, for which I have a WB on order, and hope that EVGA eventually gets a 500w bios that works on all intended cards. Then again, I'm too impulsive for my own good and may grab something else if the opportunity arises before my block ships (I expect it to take a few weeks). 

I am running my 3090ftw ultra ram at +1200 all day long! getting 200 fps in cod cw with ray tracing minimal at 3840x1600.  the clock in game sits slightly above 2000mhz all the time - I find it strange you only got +800 on the ram for this card.  Anyway - I am not sure there is anything wrong with the bios as it is, the card pulls the Watts when it needs it, most of the time it doesn't though.  If you run a benchmark you can get it to consistantly pull more than 450 watts continuous.  In my opionion this card is badass.