Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle OC
A 3060 for those on a budget.
If you’re looking to upgrade but don’t want to spend the bigger bucks on a premiumtier card, the Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle OC may be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s Gigabyte’s entry level card. There are two models available, one with the Nvidia reference clock, and the OC model that we have on hand for this roundup which features a boost clock of 1,807MHz. This is quite a way below the Asus at 1,882MHz and the MSI 1,837MHz, but then don’t forget that Gigabyte offers highly overclocked Aorus cards too.
It features a compact PCB that’s surrounded by a grey shroud and backplate. The rear of the card features a large cut out to allow air to pass out the back and into the path of the airflow towards a rear mounted case fan. There is a small RGB light at the front of the card.
The Gigabyte has a couple of key characteristics that will appeal to many buyers. Firstly, it’s a genuine two slot card. If you’ve got a small form factor system, that could be a deal maker right there. The second is the inclusion of two HDMI 2.1 ports along with two DP 1.4a ports. Although the Asus Strix has two as well, it is actually somewhat rare to find two HDMI ports on a GPU, with Gigabyte cards being the most likely to feature them. If you want to take advantage of all that HDMI 2.1 has to offer with more than one display or device, the Eagle has you covered.
The 3060 Eagle’s cooler can be described as adequate. It has to work surprisingly hard to keep the 170W GA106 GPU under control. During a stress test the peak recorded temperature was 69°C at a fan speed of 77 percent. Luckily the cooler makes a non-invasive kind of tone at high speed. It functions well enough but there are quieter 3060s out there, including the dual fan MSI. This also means that overclocking headroom is limited. The cooler doesn’t have a lot of headroom to allow the card to boost well above 1,900MHz.
The Eagle performed surprisingly well across our benchmark suite. If your temperatures are low and there’s sufficient power budget, the card will boost well above its rated clocks. The Eagle can peak over 1,900MHz at times, though it settled around 1,870 to 1,890MHz most of the time. Not bad!
The Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle is a good example of a minimalistic, no fuss card that’s well suited to driving a 1080p screen. The 12GB of memory gives you a bit of future proofing too, particularly at 1440p where 8GB is already running into some limitations. The Eagle isn’t the quietest card around but thankfully it’s nothing like those annoying leaf blower reference cards.
In a topsy turvy market, value carries a high weighing. At the time of writing, the Eagle OC is only a little cheaper than the MSI, which we feel is the superior card. If you’re a budget conscious buyer, we’d go for the non- OC Eagle. That card happens to be one of the cheapest 3060s on the market – even with the massive boost in cost recently. In a tough market where value is hard to come by, the reference clocked Eagle is the better choice.