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.

 

[DeathReborn]

I can't help but feel they cut down the GA106 for the 3060 to get more stock (they'd have to cut it by 50% to come within a country mile tbh) but at probably 5-8% performance being culled. Ampere is the Nvidia GCN moment, too much compute for gaming efficiency.

 

[blckgrffn]

I can't help but feel they cut down the GA106 for the 3060 to get more stock (they'd have to cut it by 50% to come within a country mile tbh) but at probably 5-8% performance being culled. Ampere is the Nvidia GCN moment, too much compute for gaming efficiency.

Ampere seems to be that way for the whole stack IMO. Lots of transistors, power usage, incremental gaming gains.

I know DLSS and all that is considered by some to be "The Way" but I think it would be interesting to see what we could get with less of that compute and more 2020 graphics hardware onboard. In 2-3 years when we are getting the real use of that compute there will be cards that embarrass what we have in terms of performance and efficiency (IMO).

 

[Mopetar]

In 2-3 years when we are getting the real use of that compute there will be cards that embarrass what we have in terms of performance and efficiency (IMO).

But you can't really get to that point without the initial investment now. No architecture is completely perfect, but some of them do manage to refine the ideas that have been previously implemented and get a lot of performance in those areas. The earliest implementations always lag behind in the long run, but Nvidia wouldn't be able to get to wherever they'll ultimately end up with ray tracing and DLSS without having some early implementations that end up looking terribly half baked in the future.

 

[blckgrffn]

But you can't really get to that point without the initial investment now. No architecture is completely perfect, but some of them do manage to refine the ideas that have been previously implemented and get a lot of performance in those areas. The earliest implementations always lag behind in the long run, but Nvidia wouldn't be able to get to wherever they'll ultimately end up with ray tracing and DLSS without having some early implementations that end up looking terribly half baked in the future.

Oh no doubt. I am just wondering if that is why they are having a little fit right now and trying to get "gaming" cards to "gamers" - they are selling 100% of their cards right now as fast as they can make them. They are in the market to sell silicon.

But if Ampere doesn't get that much traction with "gamers" maybe there is less reason to optimize for it now and your future solutions are just that much less effective as the software doesn't break your way in terms of how developers optimize. Every RDNA1/2 console being shipped is getting into the hands of gamers.

I think we can agree that the actual impact of Ampere being - perhaps, arguably - compute heavy is lost WHEN WE CAN"T BUY THEM. GAH.

Dell/OEMs are going to be selling tons of 1660 and maybe 2060 systems with 11th Gen Intel CPUs on 14nm this year. It's like 2019 on repeat. Maybe if we are lucky we'll get 1050ti prebuilts at the $500 price point! Woo!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe if we are lucky we'll get 1050ti prebuilts at the $500 price point! Woo!

+Woo!

 

[Mopetar]

Maybe if we are lucky we'll get 1050ti prebuilts at the $500 price point! Woo!

I don't know. That might still be profitable for the miners. Even if it isn't, someone will just scalp them for $700 on eBay. I don't think we're very lucky.

 

[Ranulf]

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

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

12GB of ram is to give it at least one positive marketing point. Its not like they can up its perf because then it gets too close to the 3060ti and the 3070. If the 6700 comes out at 8GB, even if its faster, many people will buy based on ram totals.

If we didn't have the coin boom, it would be a pointless card that barely beats the previous gen that is only 2 years old and barely drops in price from the 2060. Which did hit sale prices of $275-330 over its lifetime. Nevermind if you bought during sales you could get 2060S for sub $350-375 after rebates and free games. It gets worse if you compare it to a base 5700 card or a sale prices of 5700XT's.

But hey, it looks really great to anyone still on a 1060 card. If you can get one, which most can't and those who do are paying $450-500+.

 

[MrTeal]

12GB of ram is to give it at least one positive marketing point. Its not like they can up its perf because then it gets too close to the 3060ti and the 3070. If the 6700 comes out at 8GB, even if its faster, many people will buy based on ram totals.

If we didn't have the coin boom, it would be a pointless card that barely beats the previous gen that is only 2 years old and barely drops in price from the 2060. Which did hit sale prices of $275-330 over its lifetime. Nevermind if you bought during sales you could get 2060S for sub $350-375 after rebates and free games. It gets worse if you compare it to a base 5700 card or a sale prices of 5700XT's.

But hey, it looks really great to anyone still on a 1060 card. If you can get one, which most can't and those who do are paying $450-500+.

If I bought a $250 1060 in summer 2016 and now five years later I can go out and buy a card that's twice as fast for the low low cost of $500, I know I'd be pretty excited.

 

[ozzy702]

I can't help but feel they cut down the GA106 for the 3060 to get more stock (they'd have to cut it by 50% to come within a country mile tbh) but at probably 5-8% performance being culled. Ampere is the Nvidia GCN moment, too much compute for gaming efficiency.

I haven't seen mention of it yet, but is the 3060 using an uncut GA106? Do we know for sure there isn't something a big closer to the 3060TI that they'll harvest chips for over the next six months and then release a 3060 Super. I'm honestly shocked at how poor the 3060 performance is.

 

[Ranulf]

I haven't seen mention of it yet, but is the 3060 using an uncut GA106? Do we know for sure there isn't something a big closer to the 3060TI that they'll harvest chips for over the next six months and then release a 3060 Super. I'm honestly shocked at how poor the 3060 performance is.

Heh, that would be something to see. 6 cards total in the Ampere lineup, 3 of them 3060 models all in the $300-400 range.

 

[mohit9206]

Very expensive even if it was actually available. 12GB ram looks really great on boxes and marketing. This should ideally be a $250 card. I can see that Nvidia is reserving that price point for 3050Ti

 

[Shmee]

I am more interested in them bringing SAM to other 30 series cards. Looking forward to trying it on my 3090 possibly.

 

[DeathReborn]

I haven't seen mention of it yet, but is the 3060 using an uncut GA106? Do we know for sure there isn't something a big closer to the 3060TI that they'll harvest chips for over the next six months and then release a 3060 Super. I'm honestly shocked at how poor the 3060 performance is.

Full GA106 is 3840/120/120/30/48 (Shader/TMU/Tensor/RT/ROP) while the 3060 uses 3584/112/112/28/48 of them. The 3060 mobile versions use the full die.

 

[Golgatha]

If I bought a $250 1060 in summer 2016 and now five years later I can go out and buy a card that's twice as fast for the low low cost of $500, I know I'd be pretty excited.

Or I purchased a GTX 1080 nearly 5 years ago for $500 and can get basically the same performance for the same money today. Super excited!

 

[Golgatha]

Very expensive even if it was actually available. 12GB ram looks really great on boxes and marketing. This should ideally be a $250 card. I can see that Nvidia is reserving that price point for 3050Ti

$350 would be a decent price point, but this $500 MSRP business is a horrible value.

 

[jpiniero]

I haven't seen mention of it yet, but is the 3060 using an uncut GA106? Do we know for sure there isn't something a big closer to the 3060TI that they'll harvest chips for over the next six months and then release a 3060 Super. I'm honestly shocked at how poor the 3060 performance is.

I suspect they were planning on doing something similar to the 1060 6 GB / 3 GB. But instead we got the 12 GB model with the 6 GB specs.

 

[blckgrffn]

I suspect they were planning on doing something similar to the 1060 6 GB / 3 GB. But instead we got the 12 GB model with the 6 GB specs.

Might as well go for max yields if you are going to sell them all anyway. It’s the shareholders they report to, after all.

Thinking about it more I am surprised they bothered with the 12GB. Might just be a first run SKU and then a fall back to 6GB with the full GPU maybe coming back with 12GB as the Super variant or something. I’ve read rumors about 6GB 3060s coming.

 

[ozzy702]

Full GA106 is 3840/120/120/30/48 (Shader/TMU/Tensor/RT/ROP) while the 3060 uses 3584/112/112/28/48 of them. The 3060 mobile versions use the full die.

Thanks, that confirms my suspicions. NVIDIA new they could get away with releasing this turd and it made sense given yields. They'll save the full GA106 dies for mobile and once yields improve probably expand to a 3060S model. This is the strangest product stack ever for NVIDIA.

 

[Mopetar]

It's nearly a full chip so it's hard to see an extra 256 shaders making a significant difference. I think a few reviews suspected that it might be memory bound in a few cases and the RT performance wouldn't see a massive uplift either. May as will bin for best availability at that point.

 

[ultimatebob]

Mental note: Don't trust Eurogamer for reviews:



"Great time to upgrade" my arse.

 

[Jaskalas]

$350 would be a decent price point, but this $500 MSRP business is a horrible value.

About that....

GTX 1070 Ti || vs || RTX 3060.

Roughly same price and performance?
Update, results invalidated.

 

[MrTeal]

About that....

GTX 1070 Ti || vs || RTX 3060.

Roughly same price and performance?

No, the 3060 is ~25% faster in actual games than a 1070 Ti. Userbenchmarks is entirely useless.

 

[ultimatebob]

Just when you thought that things couldn't get any crazier, Newegg is currently raffling off chances to purchase an MSI GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB model for $539.99.

Think about that... it's a raffle for a CHANCE to pay $200 over MSRP for a video card. Insanity.

 

[Mopetar]

Just when you thought that things couldn't get any crazier, Newegg is currently raffling off chances to purchase an MSI GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB model for $539.99.

Think about that... it's a raffle for a CHANCE to pay $200 over MSRP for a video card. Insanity.

How much do you think a winning raffle ticket would sell for?

 

[ultimatebob]

How much do you think a winning raffle ticket would sell for?

Considering that these cards are now selling for $800 on eBay (seriously, I just checked), I bet that it would be worth something. Maybe I should have made a burner Newegg account for this