Question RTX 3060 Review Thread

[Mopetar]

It doesn't look like anyone else is jumping on this, so I may as well. I'll update this main post frequently as I add reviews for various sites and the different cards they've covering.

Written Articles:
Tom's Hardware: (EVGA XC)

It's nice that Nvidia equipped the card with 12GB (though we still think a 6GB 3060 is coming), but more VRAM can't make up for the reduction in memory bandwidth and GPU computational prowess. Slightly better performance than an RTX 2060 Super at a moderately lower price is the least we could expect, and that's pretty much what we got.

TechPowerUp: (EVGA XC), (MSI Gaming X Trio) , (PALIT Dual OC), (Zotac AMP White)

Overclocking the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio worked extremely well. We gained almost 10% in real-life performance. Overclocking worked better than on any other RTX 3060 tested today, possibly helped by the low temperatures and excellent VRM circuitry design.

Guru3D: (ASUS STRIX Gaming OC), (EVGA XC), (MSI Gaming X Trio), (PALIT Dual OC), (Zotac AMP White)

That's said, in the 300 to 350 USD range, the price on the 3060 is a bit steep already; however, I could warrant it solely based on your framebuffer; the 12 GB GDDR6 is really nice value that will help you at least a few years. The performance does not disappoint either; I mean, roughly RTX 2070 levels are the best comparative not that I can make.

ComputerBase: (ASUS STRIX Gaming OC and MSI Gaming X Trio)

(translated) Unlike the GeForce RTX 3080, for example, the GeForce RTX 3060 is not a spectacular ampere graphics card, but compared to the GeForce RTX 2060 it shows progress on all fronts and is therefore a rock solid product.

PCGamer: (Zotac Twin Edge)

For my money, then, I'm sticking with the RTX 3060 Ti as the mid-range champion. The Nvidia RTX 3060 strays a little too far from the pack of high-end Ampere to have the same impact generation on generation. But in that same breath it must be said that the RTX 3060 a fine upgrade for a 10-series or older card, especially if it stays anywhere close to MSRP, and one that will likely see you confidently through the next few years of major game releases.

Sweclockers: (Gigabyte Gaming OC and MSI Gaming X Trio)

(translated) If we put the availability issue aside and instead look at what the Geforce RTX 3060 offers in terms of performance, it is clear that the newcomer lands a good distance behind his big sibling with the Ti suffix. That being said, the level of performance is by no means bad, as it is on average just above the Geforce RTX 2070 and 23 percent better than its predecessor Geforce RTX 2060 when playing in 1080p.

HotHardware: (EVGA XC)

If you haven't upgraded for a few generations and have a GeForce GTX 1060 or anything below a 1660-class GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060 would offer a big performance and feature boost. If you've already got an RTX 20-series card, the RTX 3060 will be less appealing, since it trades blows with the GeForce RTX 2060 Super. Saving up some additional money for a 3060 Ti (again, when street prices come back to reality), will net significantly better performance.

TweakTown: (MSI Gaming X Trio)

If you're gaming away on the older-gen GeForce GTX 1060 and want to upgrade, it's a great upgrade -- but the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition and stock AIB models can be found for the same $500-ish pricing... so why would you get the gimped RTX 3060 that fails to touch the RTX 3060 Ti?

ArsTechnica: (EVGA XC)

Really, the worst thing I can say about the RTX 3060 is that it's not as tantalizing a jump from the 2060 as other "plus-1,000" RTX cards have proven over the past six months.

Eurogamer: (Zotac Twin Edge)

While there's a lot to like here, the RTX 3060 is undoubtedly not as strong a value as the RTX 3060 Ti. That card costs around 20 per cent more ($400 vs $330), yet provides a significant boost to frame-rates - especially at 1440p and 2160p, where the Ti is often 26 to 36 per cent faster. For 1080p gaming, the RTX 3060 is sufficient, but in a world where graphics cards are freely available at their recommended retail price, I'd suggest that people with a bit of flexibility in their budget consider the Ti instead.

PC Perspective: (EVGA XC)

Let’s pretend that we are living In a world where both the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti are available at their starting list prices (isn’t it glorious?). In that world I would strongly recommend the RTX 3060 Ti at $399 – $70 above the $329 price level of the RTX 3060 but with performance closer to the RTX 2080 Super. An outstanding overall card, the RTX 3060 Ti is just a significantly faster option in spite of the lower 8GB VRAM total.

KitGuru: (Gigabyte Gaming OC)

All told, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 is certainly a decent graphics card, but I wouldn’t go further than that. My main lack of enthusiasm stems from the fact the gen-on-gen gains are just not that big with the RTX 3060, and certainly not as big as we’ve seen from the other Ampere GPUs.

Video Reviews:
Gamer's Nexus: (EVGA XC)
Digital Foundry: (Zotac Twin Edge)
Hardware Canucks: (EVGA XC)
Linus Tech Tips: (MSI Ventus 2x)
Paul's Harware: (EVGA XC)
Hardware Unboxed: (Gigabyte EAGLE)

Mining Performance:
Since this is a bit of a hot topic, particular for this card given Nvidia has artificially limited performance through drivers and locked them down, there were a few reviews that addressed points concerning mining.

The Tom's Hardware review in particular suggests that the drivers Nvidia used aren't effective against all currencies:

The good news is that DaggerHashimoto, aka Ethash, which is the algorithm used by Ethereum, was definitely a lot lower than expected. It would start at 45-50MH/s and quickly drop to about half that speed. . . . The bad news is that there are a lot of other mining algorithms, and in some of these — like Octopus — the RTX 3060 is still reasonably profitable. With the recent drop in Ethereum pricing, and the increased difficulty, at 45-50MH/s the RTX 3060 would have netted around $5.50 per day. In Octopus, it can still do around $4 per day, which means it could hit the break-even point in just 82 days at current rates.

Obviously, the rates are prone to wild swings, but given the potential profits, there's no way miners don't buy these cards. Plus, there's no guarantee that some future miner update doesn't figure out a way around Nvidia's driver and firmware protections, and miners are probably counting on that. It would technically be more profitable to buy a different GPU — even the RTX 2060 can beat the 3060 in mining profitability right now — but the current shortages mean that miners will try to buy up any reasonably priced graphics card.

The Ars review also comments on mining specifically:

All of these tests included GPU downclocks, VRAM upclocks, and power-level adjustments (as tweaked within MSI Afterburner) to keep the GPUs in question operating at roughly 65°C, as I'm not trying to fry this hardware to make a few fake bucks. The exception came from the lowest performer on my list, the apparently nerfed RTX 3060, which I couldn't tweak to run any higher than 55°C, try as I might.

And how easy might it be to edit Nvidia's drivers (or repurpose older ones) to make the RTX 3060 pump out a few more vertcoin per hour? We can't say. But something is going on with the RTX 3060 and its default Nvidia drivers, and based on specs, it stands to reason that this rate is half the GPU's actual mining capabilities.

It seems like Nvidia's efforts are hit and miss and that because at least some form of mining is rather profitable that miners will still be buying up these cards even if there aren't any hacks that get around Nvidia's limitations.

Availability and Pricing:
I have no idea how quickly all of these sold out, but some anecdotal evidence from other posts suggests mere minutes. Any of the sites I looked at are out of stock, even for the premium AIB models that are priced above $400. I found a few scraps of information that stated the 3060 availability will be similar to the 3070, but that isn't exactly an encouraging idea. There's also some discussion around pricing because there's no reference design for the 3060 so it's unlikely to see the $330 MSRP in most cases.

From the TweakTown review:

The price on the MSI RTX 3060 GAMING X TRIO is TBD right now... so I guess I'll update this review once I have the price. These GPU shortages are making reviews harder for us hardware reviewers too, the stock is low -- you guys can't buy them -- and then the prices are so insane pre-launch that we're being told not to even state pricing in the review of said product.

This isn't MSI's fault... but is it NVIDIA's fault? Well, they could be clearer on pricing and availability but they're not being easy with that. I'm not the only reviewer who thinks this way, and the RTX 3060 launch is having us all scratch our heads collectively.

From the Guru3D ASUS STRIX OC review:

NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3060 at USD 329. We have not yet received the MSRP for the gaming STRIX OC, but knowing ASUS, this product is a premium design, you may add another 100 USD. But with a predicted low availability, it's hard to really make a factual statement here if prices inflate due to e-tailers hiking up prices.

 

[ultimatebob]

That list is awesome, but here is the TLDR version:

It doesn't look like a big improvement over my 2060 Super.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Meh card that's going to sell out in 2 seconds and stay OOS for god knows how long.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Would have been a pretty "bleh" launch at the best of times, and will be just an absolute turd at the street prices this thing will go for.

if the 3060 TI clocked in at 2080S + 5% levels, I think the 2070S would have been the place this should have landed but it was a full 10% behind that at 2060S levels.

After 5 years we'll finally have 1080Ti performance and RAM amount at... $500.

 

[gdansk]

So it's nearly a RTX 2070 and uses a similar amount of power?
A bit disappointing but hey at least it has a lot of memory.

 

[Mopetar]

Seems like it's pretty much sold out everywhere so whether it's a disappointment or not, you can't buy one anyway.

 

[blckgrffn]

At $330 it would be a slam dunk replacement for $400+ 2060S IMO.

Realistically, this is replacing the 2060 6GB base line RTX card and compared to that you get much better performance and the right size frame buffer too. My cousin on a 3GB 1060 would not have batted an eye at paying for this but in a normal world he would have already bought a Ti.

I am not so disappointed in the card as much as I am that I can't buy one. I know, what's new.

 

[ultimatebob]

So it's nearly a RTX 2070 and uses a similar amount of power?
A bit disappointing but hey at least it has a lot of memory.

It's basically a RTX 2060 Super in most non RTX benchmarks.

 

[Golgatha]

I'll put it simply. At $330 it would be a decent value. At $500+ MSRP it's an absolute turd not even worth considering.

The only cards I'd consider a good value are the 3060 ti and 3080 these days, and those might as well be vaporware at the moment.

 

[MrTeal]

It replaces the 2060, but we're talking very similar performance at $330 to the almost two year old 2060S that was $400. Even if these were widely available at MSRP, it would be a pretty meh update vs a Turing lineup that was already pretty meh. Compare that to the $400 3060Ti tying the $700 2080S, and this really stands out as the worst card in the Ampere lineup. Even the 3090 has unique features going for it that make it a reasonable purchase if you want SLI or the bigger frame buffer.

 

[Stuka87]

What's hilarious is this morning I got an email from NewEgg about the new RTX 3060, check for availability now!

And of course, the moment the email arrived (I was in looking at email when it arrived) everything was already sold out, and listed for $500+ (Except EVGA which was $399). Who on earth is going to spend over $500 for what is basically a 2060S with a bit more vram?

 

[ultimatebob]

What's hilarious is this morning I got an email from NewEgg about the new RTX 3060, check for availability now!

And of course, the moment the email arrived (I was in looking at email when it arrived) everything was already sold out, and listed for $500+ (Except EVGA which was $399). Who on earth is going to spend over $500 for what is basically a 2060S with a bit more vram?

Scalpers and miners... Scalpers and miners.

 

[Mopetar]

What's hilarious is this morning I got an email from NewEgg about the new RTX 3060, check for availability now!

And of course, the moment the email arrived (I was in looking at email when it arrived) everything was already sold out, and listed for $500+ (Except EVGA which was $399). Who on earth is going to spend over $500 for what is basically a 2060S with a bit more vram?

Considering all of the 2060 Supers listed on Newegg are $800 or more, $500 for a 3060 is bargain.

 

[Stuka87]

Scalpers and miners... Scalpers and miners.

Can't be miners, the 3060 performance for mining is laughably bad because of the driver. I guess they can take a chance and hope for hacked drivers soon to unlock the mining performance.

 

[ultimatebob]

Can't be miners, the 3060 performance for mining is laughably bad because of the driver. I guess they can take a chance and hope for hacked drivers soon to unlock the mining performance.

It's only bad at mining Ethereum. It apparently still does a good job mining other GPU mined cryptocurrencies, and I still think that someone will bypass that restriction in a few weeks.

 

[coercitiv]

Can't be miners

It's miners.

 

[Stuka87]

It's miners.

UHG

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Seems like it's pretty much sold out everywhere so whether it's a disappointment or not, you can't buy one anyway.

It could perform like an RX 580 and would be sold out everywhere.

 

[ozzy702]

It's only bad at mining Ethereum. It apparently still does a good job mining other GPU mined cryptocurrencies, and I still think that someone will bypass that restriction in a few weeks.

I'm sure that miners may grab them, but they're not great cards like the other 3000 series. It's not great at other algos. It's still ~ 6month ROI assuming that the crypto bull run continues. That isn't great and if it wasn't gimped on mining Ethereum it would pull 2x the $$$ it does currently with other algos. That's probably why NVIDIA didn't bother to lock it down past Ethash.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm sure that miners may grab them, but they're not great cards like the other 3000 series. It's not great at other algos. It's still ~ 6month ROI assuming that the crypto bull run continues. That isn't great and if it wasn't gimped on mining Ethereum it would pull 2x the $$$ it does currently with other algos. That's probably why NVIDIA didn't bother to lock it down past Ethash.

But why did they expend R&D blocking it at all, when they didn't block the other algos? Shouldn't they have spent that money instead on improving production? Wouldn't THAT have gotten more cards "into the hands of gamers"? Seems like a lot of money for some virtue-signalling to the gamer community.

 

[BFG10K]

This card is absolute garbage. If it was a 2070 Super @ $329 it'd be quite good, but this overpriced turd can't even beat a 2070.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Nvidia logic: Sell 3060 with 12GB vram and flagship 3080 with 10GB.

Yup, that's the clown world we now live in.

 

[beginner99]

Here the scalpers won't be a problem because the shops themselves have taken that role now. Cheapest 3060 will be $550 up to $750 on more scummy shops, same same scummy has a 3060 TI listed for $1100.

 

[AtenRa]

Ampere mArch is the worst NVIDIA made the last 10 years or more.

GA106 Ampere (RTX3060) has 13.25B transistors

TU104 Turing (RTX2070 Super/RTX2080/S) has 13.6B Transistors

Ampere GA106 (RTX3060) with almost the same number of transistors has15-20% lower performance vs TU104 (RTX2080S) even in RayTracing.

 

[ozzy702]

Ampere mArch is the worst NVIDIA made the last 10 years or more.

GA106 Ampere (RTX3060) has 13.25B transistors

TU104 Turing (RTX2070 Super/RTX2080/S) has 13.6B Transistors

Ampere GA106 (RTX3060) with almost the same number of transistors has15-20% lower performance vs TU104 (RTX2080S) even in RayTracing.

How much of that is due to a massive memory bottleneck? I don't think memory bottleneck explains all of it though, 3060 really seems to be underperforming.

3060 = 360 GB/s
2070 Super = 448 GB/s

AMD's 6700 is going to curb stomp this thing, but they're probably still incredibly supply constrained so they'll be unobtanium and way overpriced like the 6800 series.