NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 ROUNDUP
The card that mainstream gamers have been waiting for?
It’s a really tough time to be a PC gamer. Buying any kind of current generation GPU over the last couple of months has been difficult, if not impossible at RRP. It’s almost as bad on the CPU side and the wider semiconductor market beyond that. Industries that require chips for production are increasingly being bottlenecked by supply constraints. Restricted supply contributes to empty shelves, but when you combine this with unprecedented demand for GPUs, it’s a real one-two punch. It comes down to crypto currency mining. The surge in value of mineable coins such as Ethereum means that miners are happy to pay massively inflated prices in the hope that they will pay for themselves, while also hoping that ETH and other coins continue to rise in value. All of this means that a card like the RTX 3060 is unlikely to be found at its recommended retail price.
As these problems are affecting the entire PC industry, we’ll try not to focus too much on the market woes and instead judge the 3060 on its merits. Supply is bound to pick up in the coming months, so while price/performance will change, the fundamentals of the card will not. At least Nvidia is taking the admirable step of halving the 3060’s mining performance which should make it less attractive to miners. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market. With that lament out of the way, let’s plough ahead and look at Nvidia’s mid-range hope, the GeForce RTX 3060. We’ve got three cards on hand to compare to one another. Do they make for a compelling upgrade? Read on and find out! very big dollars on flagship cards. It’s cards like the RTX 3060 that power the lion’s share of gaming PCs. Let’s take a peek under the hood.
The RTX 3060 makes use of the smallest Ampere GPU released to date, the GA106 GPU. In packs in 3,584 Shader units along with 28 improved RT cores and 112 Tensor cores. The shader count is quite a step down from the RTX 3060 Ti which features 4,864 shaders. This, along with the Ti’s 256 bit bus vs the 192 bit bus of the 3060 results in a big performance differential as you can see in the results. It makes us wonder if the 3060 could have been positioned as a 3050 Ti. The reference specification suggests a 170W TDP which is not a lot by modern enthusiast GPU standards. Even at 200W though, most 3060’s can make do with a single 8-pin power connector. Nvidia recommends that the 3060 should be paired with a minimum 550W PSU. Somewhat curiously, Asus recommends a 750W PSU for its 3060 Strix.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the 3060 is its 12GB of GDDR6 memory which is clocked at 15Gbps. 12GB might be considered overkill for this class of card, but it’s always better to have too
much than not enough. What it does do is make the 3060 Ti, 3070 and 3080 all look under specced.
The RTX 3060 brings PCIe 4.0 support. There’s also HDMI 2.1, which is often understated in terms of its usefulness. You get 8K support of course but also things such as G-Sync Compatible support, low latency mode (ALLM), dynamic HDR and improved audio support with eARC. Big screen gaming gets a huge boost with HDMI 2.1. The 3060 should prove popular as a lounge room gaming card. it’s universally supported now that AMD and the consoles are slowly increasing adoption. We’ve added Watch Dogs: Legion to our test suite specifically to test RT and DLSS. We’ll add to these benchmarks as time goes on. It’s mainstream now.
Additional Nvidia features such as its Reflex Low latency and Broadcast technologies along with an improved video engine combine to make the RTX 3060 a compelling upgrade for users of older generation cards. That is, users with Pascal generation and older cards. Users of RTX 20-series cards will appreciate the updated features and improved RTX tech, but they won’t get the generational frame rate boost that we’d hoped for. While the 3060 Ti impressively beats out all but the mighty RTX 2080 Ti, the 3060 is closer to the 2070. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by the massive intergenerational performance increases we’ve seen with other Ampere cards. RT performance has taken a large step forward though. In the 3DMark RT feature test, the 3060 is over 20 percent faster than the 2060 Super.
In truth the card lacks horsepower at higher resolutions compared to its big brothers, but at 1080p and to a lesser extent, 1440p, it’s a perfectly viable and capable performer at maximum settings, with demanding titles. 120 FPS+ is a breeze with popular e-sport titles.
The RTX 3060 needs to be priced right, with stock on shelves! If it can do that, then we can pass an accurate judgement. Pricing is volatile, and that means even the most fundamental of price/performance analysis is too. It’s a poor buy at $1,300, but at $800 it’s something else entirely. Yes, the market is that crazy and unpredictable! We simply don’t know what the market will look like in six months. Will the mining boom pass like it did in 2018? Will supply begin to catch up to demand? Perhaps an upcoming GPU will show it a clean pair of heels? Let’s toss the crystal ball aside and take a look at a selection of RTX 3060’s and judge them in the here and now. Say hello to the Asus, Gigabyte and MSI GeForce RTX 3060s!