# A sealed 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra, four years after EVGA left the business *A 2022 graphics card, still sealed in 2026, cost more than its chipmaker's published launch price. The company that built it announced in September 2022 that it was leaving the graphics-card business, and never said when it built its last one.* *Published 2026-09-28 (UTC) · A small (human) team and a fleet of AI agents.* **the short version:** many of the graphics cards this workshop keeps buying are EVGA's, and EVGA told two interviewers on 16 September 2022 that it was leaving the graphics-card business. a sealed 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra came out of its box here on 17 September 2026 at $2,119.99 — $120.99 above the launch price NVIDIA published for the model in March 2022 — and below are six dated readings for cards like it, each quoted from the page that printed it. 1,547 words · about 7 minutes (at 220 words/min) · 1 table · data kit: no https://research.strata2signal.com/a-sealed-3090-ti-after-evga-left/ --- *[strata→signal](https://strata2signal.com) is a small workshop that runs its own machines and writes up what it measures. Nothing new is measured on this page.* ## The card that arrived {#the-card-that-arrived} An **EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming 24 GB**, ordered 15 September 2026 and out of its box on the 17th; its first hours under load became [a test](https://research.strata2signal.com/one-3090-against-one-3090-ti/), published the next day. It cost **$2,119.99** — **$120.99 above** the **29 March 2022** launch price of **$1,999** in NVIDIA's own announcement, four and a half years earlier. What this particular board sold for in 2022 is not something this page has. In that test, against an **EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra Gaming 24 GB**, each at its factory limit (**450 W** and **350 W**, read off the card, not a specification), it was **8.0** and **22.4 per cent** faster at writing text on two models and took **9 to 12 per cent less time** per picture; over ten minutes of drawing it ran **twelve degrees cooler, 62 °C against 74**, while drawing 31 W more and making 37 more pictures, so not equal work. Those are **core** temperatures, and they are the only ones there are: the test read no memory-die figure on either card at any cap, because "the driver answers `[N/A]`, asked three ways, on every arm." An operator, unboxing it: a new card is "the closest thing to Christmas for an adult nerd who grew up taking apart and building systems," and of this one, "they nailed it on this card" — "especially when it's new." Then, the same day: "before today, before you told me, I had no idea they stopped making GPUs." ## What EVGA said, in September 2022 {#what-evga-said-in-september-2022} From that test's short history: "On **16 September 2022**, less than six months after this card shipped, EVGA told Gamers Nexus and JayzTwoCents in closed-door interviews that it was ending its partnership with NVIDIA and leaving the graphics-card business altogether, and would sell through the RTX 30 stock it had; the reporting of those interviews put GPU sales at close to 80 per cent of its gross revenue, which is the interviewers' figure and not a number EVGA published." What EVGA sells now is not something this page checked. **No last-built date was ever given**, so how long these boards kept being made is not on the record. "Closed-door" is that test's word, not the report's. One public report was read against that on **2026-09-18 (UTC)**: ServeTheHome, [*EVGA Exits the GPU Business in a Split from NVIDIA*](https://www.servethehome.com/evga-exits-the-gpu-business-in-a-split-from-nvidia/), 16 September 2022. It agrees throughout, adds that warranties would be honoured and that EVGA was not picking up AMD or Intel graphics, and carries no last-built date. ## The day before {#the-day-before} Ethereum changed how blocks are made — "The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022" — and with it the first job some of these boards had: "Mining is no longer the means of producing valid blocks." Read 2026-09-18 (UTC). A day apart, stated here as a coincidence and nothing else. An operator's recollection, measured nowhere here: "the best power was at 220 W for 30-series, 3080s or 3090, mining ETH in 2021." No test here has read that figure; the lowest cap the test above set on a 3090 was 250 W. That 3090 mined too — "a used board bought in 2021, on its third life" — "it mined Ethereum, it flew Flight Simulator, and now it serves language models, draws pictures and trains." ## Six readings, on named days {#six-readings-on-named-days} Nobody here tested why the first two rows moved; demand for 24 GB cards to run AI on is the obvious candidate. Four rows are asking prices on the day named; two are what this workshop paid. *Renewed* is refurbished retail stock; where a page named the terms, prices are before tax and before shipping. | What was read | When | The reading | Printed on | |---|---|---|---| | EVGA 3090 XC3 Ultras, renewed, bought as a pair | May 2026 | **$1,449.99** each, $2,899.98 the pair — paid | [the rig page](https://research.strata2signal.com/home-inference-and-diffusion-rig-cost/) | | The same renewed listing | 13 September 2026 | **$1,849.99** each, $3,699.98 the pair — **28 per cent dearer** in four months | The rig page | | EVGA's own new 3090 FTW3 Ultra, "one seller, one left" | 13 September 2026 | **$1,965.00** | The rig page | | An EVGA K\|NGP\|N Hybrid, new, from the same 3090 search | 13 September 2026, 06:02–06:05Z | **$1,839.00** | [the Mistral page](https://research.strata2signal.com/a-short-history-of-mistral/) | | This 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra, new | 15 September 2026 | **$2,119.99** — paid | The test | | The same XC3 Ultra, renewed, read by hand at the store | 17 September 2026 | **$1,879.99** | The test | Why one row reads *one seller, one left*: reading its prices on 13 September 2026, the rig page called every new EVGA 3090 on sale "old stock in a reseller's hands." ## One operator's preference {#one-operators-preference} On the rig page, in an operator's own experience across several cards of the same chip, EVGA's are "usually better built than the reference cards, with a clean design, a solid heatsink and thermal pads where they should be" — and, in that page's own caveat three sentences later, "It is a preference stated as one, from a handful of cards, not a measurement; nothing on this page benches one vendor against another." The test ran both boards stock: "nothing re-padded, re-shrouded or flashed." An operator has overclocked a 3090 here — "quite a bit actually — locking voltage, core and memory speeds" — on no date this page has printed and with no numbers kept; that test says a power cap "is a power limit, not an undervolt … nothing on this page touched a voltage curve." The habit is older than the cards, in the same operator's recollection and measured nowhere here: in 1999 those hands ran two 300 MHz Celerons at 450 MHz under closed-foam Peltier cooling. ## What this page does not know {#what-this-page-does-not-know} - **Why these boards are still working**, or why one that mined does. Nothing here has measured a mined card against a fresh one. - **Whether they keep working, or whether this one is covered.** No failure rate, no service record, no warranty claim; the warranty sentence above is a 2022 promise, not a 2026 one. - **What the used market does to a brand that stopped making them.** Nothing here measures supply or demand. - **How many of these boards there are.** The pages quoted here date each board by when it was bought or by the test it ran, and none of them lists every board, so this one prints no count. ## What to take with you {#what-to-take-with-you} - **$120.99 above the launch price — of the model, not of this board.** $2,119.99 paid on 15 September 2026, against NVIDIA's $1,999 of 29 March 2022. - **The announcement has a date; the last board does not.** 16 September 2022, to two interviewers; no last-built date, ever. - **Six dated readings, $1,449.99 to $2,119.99 a card** — four asking prices, two paid; one renewed listing rose 28 per cent in four months. - **The build quality here is a preference, not a measurement** — one operator's, "from a handful of cards", caveated three sentences later on its own page. ## How to check our work {#how-to-check-our-work} - **Open the test.** Every figure here about this card's speed, heat and power comes from [RTX 3090 vs RTX 3090 Ti](https://research.strata2signal.com/one-3090-against-one-3090-ti/), which carries its own tables and says how each was read. - **Check a price against its page.** Each of the six readings above names the page that printed it; each of those pages gives its own read date and where the price came from. - **Read the two outside sources yourself.** ServeTheHome's report of 16 September 2022 and the Merge on ethereum.org are both linked in the thanks below. ## The rest of the seminar {#the-rest-of-the-seminar} - [RTX 3090 vs RTX 3090 Ti](https://research.strata2signal.com/one-3090-against-one-3090-ti/) — the test this page quotes. - [The cost to purchase and run a very capable home AI rig](https://research.strata2signal.com/home-inference-and-diffusion-rig-cost/) — the two-card desktop, priced part by part. - [Two 3080s against one 3090, and the cap decides](https://research.strata2signal.com/two-used-3080s-priced/) — a stock EVGA FTW3 Ultra and a Gigabyte re-padded by hand, in one box. - [Two 3090s out, one 3090 Ti in](https://research.strata2signal.com/two-3090s-out-one-3090-ti-in/) — where this card went to work, the day its test was published. - [One 3090 out, one 3090 Ti in, and the cap that decided it](https://research.strata2signal.com/one-3090-out-one-3090-ti-in/) — the same card a week later, in the computer behind the workshop's public services. ## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks} **EVGA** built the boards named here, and gets the credit for hardware still doing serious work. **Gigabyte** built the other 3080 in that box. **NVIDIA** published the 29 March 2022 launch price. Two dates come from public sources, both read **2026-09-18 (UTC)**: the exit from ServeTheHome, *EVGA Exits the GPU Business in a Split from NVIDIA*, 16 September 2022, at [servethehome.com](https://www.servethehome.com/evga-exits-the-gpu-business-in-a-split-from-nvidia/); the Merge from the Ethereum project's own roadmap page, at [ethereum.org](https://ethereum.org/en/roadmap/merge/). **Gamers Nexus** and **JayzTwoCents** took the interviews; the revenue share is theirs. Every price and every quoted page sentence comes off four pages this workshop already published with their receipts; an operator's own spoken words, said on 17–18 September 2026 (UTC), appear here first. A small human team owns the cards, bought them on the days named and signed the numbers; a fleet of AI agents checked every page quotation against its page.