Image Source - © Nvidia | Image By- © NvidiaYou don't know what this GPUhas been through to get here, nor do you know how manyof them didn't make it, but here it is, the GeForce RTX 3060 Nvidia long awaited premium mid range Ampere architecture GPU. This, this is the one that destined to top SteamCharts for the most popular gaming card on the freaking planet for at least as long as it's forefather or fore grandfather the GTX 1060 did. But that assumes a couple of things doesn't it? One, that it's actually any good. And of course number two, that Nvidia can make enough of them.
That's how long it's been sinceanything has even come close to the level of bang for the buck that this card represented. It beat out the contemporaryPolaris-based RX 480 and AMD's hey at leastyou tried RX 580 Refresh, then Nvidia themselves tried to make the magic lightening strike again. First with the RTX 2060, thenwith their GTX 1600 series.
I mean those are both goodproducts, don't get me wrong, but the 1060 is still the top dog on Steam's Hardware Survey, so it's clear that mid range gamers were hungry for something better. That's why so much isriding on the RTX 3060. Nvidia is explicitly targeting you, the nearly 10% of you outthere who are watching this on a 1060 and spoiler alert, this is it. This is going to be theGPU to finally topple it.
At least that's what I would say, if the replacement were comingin at the same price point while the $329 US pricetag does make sense next to the GTX 1060 6 GBFounders Edition at $299 at least after we adjusted for inflation there is no Founder'sEdition this time around just a reference design. So you are definitelystill paying an RTX tax. This may give AMD and inwith their tease there of what is almost certainlythere RX 6700 series. Get subscribed by the way soyou don't miss our coverage of those cards when they launch. Unlike the RTX 3060 TI which does have a Founder's Edition, the RTX 3060 comes with50% more GDDR6 memory but that's constrainedto a slower 192 bit bus as for it's faster clocked CUDA Cores.
Well, they're faster clocks,but they've been cut to just shy of threequarters of its TI sibling. Compared to the GTX 1060 though, the RTX 3060 gets all the goodies that come with Nvidia'slatest Ampere architecture like Ray Tracing, HDMI 2.1 forup to 4K 120 Hertz displays, Nvidia broadcast andthe Turing NVENC engine that's just so good for streaming. That means that as longas performance is good the extra ask from Nvidia is likely to be more than worth it. So then here's our GPU bench and here's the cards we'llbe comparing against. We wish there were more but we really didn't have a lot of time.
We got this via very unconventional means 'cause our other ones werestuck, that thing we said before. Starting the Shadow of the Tomb Raider then, it's no surprise that intraditional rasterization the GTX 1060 falls waybehind the new RTX 3060.
What is a little surprising? And this could be good news for you. Is that the RTX 2060 SUPER come so close. So if you did shell outfor last generation, well you shouldn't feel toocompelled to upgrade here. Back to those who didn't though, well this might finally be it the card that makes RTX mainstream. I mean check this out, with RTX on the 3060 managers higherperformance numbers at 1080p than the GTX 1060 gets with RTX off. As for the 1060 withRTX on, well we tried it but it crashed out dueto a display driver reset that nearly took therest of the PC with it. F1 2020 sees the 3060pulling further ahead of the RTX 2060 SUPER with a total improvemententering the high 20% before dipping back down to the low 10s in Forza Horizon 4, as for the GTX 1060 well, it struggled to maintain aframe rate much higher than 60.
Then there's Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Youngblood is a highlyoptimized Vulkan title and it shows in how much ofa performance chasm there is between the GTX 1060 andthe rest of the pack. And the 1060 straightup refuses to even run Vulkan Ray Tracing since non RTX cards rely onthe DirectX 12 Fallback Layer. As for Microsoft Flight Simulator it's basically unplayable on the GTX 1060 unless you're willing toreduce the graphics quality. And remember guys, this is at 1080p so you can't exactly justkeep dropping down the Rez and still have a great experience.
The CUDA Grass for Pascal though really is CS: GO performance. And you might look atthese numbers and think what's the problem? But Nvidia's Frames Win Games,motto isn't for nothing. The faster a frame can be rendered and pushed to your display. The more up-to-date the information that hits your eyes is going to be. And for a game like CS: GOespecially in a competitive match that makes a big difference. So the rule of thumb then is that you want minimum frame rates that are no lower than double the refresh rate of your display.
That gives you optimalframe pacing and input leg. So on a 60 Hertz display, hey,you're good to go with this, don't even worry about it,187 FPS minimum, no problem. As soon as you upgrade toa 120 Hertz display though, which is surprisingly affordable you are not gonna be doing so hot. If you're cold, by the way try this sweater fromittstore.com, it's very warm. Moving on to productivity, the GTX 1060 has an obviousdisadvantage going in lacking both the Turing and Ampere generationalperformance improvements.
Even knowing that though it is staggering to see just how badly it gets beaten here. The RTX 3060 manages tosignificantly outpace the last gen RTX 2060 SUPER,let alone the geriatric 1060 where that card it's rendering performance can charitably be described as adequate if you don't value your time. The RTX 3060 easily doubleseven the 2060 SUPER scores across the board upuntil we hit OctaneBench where the gap does narrow but then interestingly, theRTX 3060 TI widens its lead. SPECviewperf meanwhile lookslike it's largely a tie between the RTX 3060 and the 2060 SUPER with a few wins here and therebut nothing mind-blowing.
It's worth mentioning that the RTX 3060 narrower192 bit memory bus puts it at a disadvantagein some of these tests but it still keeps well ahead of the 1060 thanks to its higher speed GDDR6 and everything else it's better about it. As for our particular variant we were supposed to have an EVGA card, then a Asus one, then a different EVGA one, we ended up with a MSI VENTUS 2X. It's got a pretty modest cool compared to some of the top-end variants of RTX 3060 but even this card peaked at temperatures of about 70 degrees throughout SPECviewperf, with a very similar cooling and noise profile to not only the RTX 3060 TI but also the 2060 SUPER and even GTX 1060. And all of this was while maintaining roughly our cards maximum boost clock of 1.9 gigahertz, which suggests that this GPU has significant thermal headroom and may be able to be pushed much harder with the right board and cooler. With an 8-Pin PCI Express power connector.
It goes without saying thatthe RTX 3060 draws more power than the 6-Pin GTX 1060, and this is reflected inits official power rating. At peak, it drew a cool40-watts less though than the more powerful RTX 3060 TI with a peak of just over 160-watts.
That's good, but what's more impressive is that it drew less powerthan even the RTX 2060 SUPER which peaked it over 175-watts. While the older GTX 1060certainly did manage lower power consumption on average though, it actually manages to spiketo around the same maximum.
So RTX 3060 is looking pretty darn good as far as thermals and power consumption. I mean overall there'svery little to complain about in terms of performance. It's just that, and this at risk ofbeating a dead horse here.
Availability may be a different issue. Now it is possible that thesewill be more widely available than previous RTX 30 series launches but while Nvidia seemed confident that there would be lots of supply, a couple of retailers thatwe've spoken to locally have some doubts about that,at least out of the gate. So if that's true, todaycould be yet another payday for filthy scalpers. We can only hope thenthat supply is good enough that demand falls andthose scalpers end up with a whole bunch of extracards they have to liquidate into actual gamers as quickly as possible.
Now you might've noticed that one thing we didn'ttalk about today is mining. And the reason for that is that we've set our peace on it already. And we only want to evaluate this product from a gaming perspectiveon its merits for gamers not the political decisionsthat Nvidia makes. So whatever we said before, it's important for you guysto know we don't hate Nvidia and we definitely don't hate this product. It's just that when any companymakes a boneheaded decision Apple, Dell, Intel, AMD doesn't matter who it's our job to call them out. And then by the same token,it's our job to praise them when they get something right. And they got a lotright with the RTX 3060. So that's it, go upgradeyour GTX 1060 or your RX 580, guys, it's time.
If you do wanna know moreabout the mining angle of this go check out our recent video, exploring why we think Nvidialimiting this card's hash rate and introducing dedicated mining GPUs is not as good as itmight seem on the surface. It's a little more complicatedthan you might think.
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