RTX 3060 review: solid performance, but at what cost?

This is a strange time to review graphics cards. I’ve tested the GeForce RTX 3060, Nvidia’s latest GPU in the last week or so, but I’ve only been able to do so because the company sent a review unit to Reporter Door. If you are a member of the public, it is impossible to get your hands on a graphics card from Nvidia or AMD. This is a result of a confluence of factors, notably the worldwide semiconductor shortage (which is limiting production capacity) and the skyrocketing values ​​of cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (which is driving increased demand for GPUs. They can be used for mining operations).

All of this is particularly relevant to the review of the RTX 3060 as it is Nvidia’s cheapest offering of the 30-series GPU, with MSRP starting at $ 329.99. The EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming is priced at, the card that Nvidia sent us because the company is not producing a founding version for the RTX 3060.

Price-conscious gamers seeking a new graphics card may now be forced to buy something at an inflated price and / or get a different GPU than the RTX 3060. Considered in a vacuum, the RTX 3060 is a very good midrange graphics card for people. Want to play games at offers up to 1440p. But we do not live in a vacuum, so the best I can do is to evaluate the GPU and provide some context about the current market.

Nvidia released the RTX 3060 in late February, almost three months after the launch of the RTX 3060 Ti. The card, which starts at $ 399, offers a good deal of headroom at 1440p, although it is not designed for 4K gaming. The RTX 3060, on the other hand, has a 1080p-oriented GPU at heart that can also handle 1440p. This got me particularly interested in trying it out, because my desktop is hooked up to a 1080p screen – well, a 1920 × 1200 60 Hz monitor, to be exact – and because its CPU, a quad-core 3.4 GHz Intel Core i5 The -7500 is an older chip that meets the minimum specifications for some of the latest games.

The RTX 3060 that I’m testing is a standard dual-slot GPU with a pair of large fans that keep the card quite quiet. I’ve noticed that the noise on my current Gigabyte RTX 2060 Super is increasing – when it gets going, the RTX 3060 is a bit louder – but it makes sense, because the Gigabyte GPU has three fans.

The port array of the EVGA card includes three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and a single line of HDMI 2.1 outputs. (I can’t test any HDMI 2.1 features because I don’t have a display that supports it.) Unlike the more powerful RTX 3060 Ti, the installer version, which is Nvidia’s new 12-pin power connector, the RTX 3060 Depends on a conventional eight-pin hookup. It provides power of 170 W with a recommended power supply of 550 W.

In terms of how powerful the RTX 3060 is, it’s not a slam-dunk upgrade unless you’re coming from something older, such as, a GTX 10-series card.

Now, it’s probably uncertain for a GPU that is a cheaper ray tracing-capable card since Nvidia cut the price from the RTX 2060 to $ 299 in January 2020. And since I am coming from the RTX 2060 Super – which is just a generation old released in July 2019 – I did not expect to be blown away by the RTX 3060. In fact, its performance will depend a lot on the specifics of your own PC and of course, the game you’re playing.

The RTX 3060 can certainly offer some significant advantages over the RTX 2060 Super (and GPUs that are older, obviously). trying Wolfenstein: Youngblood At 1920 × 1200 at maximum settings, my average frame rate on both the Riverside and Lab X benchmarks increased from about 124 frames per second with the RTX 2060 Super to about 38% with the RTX 3060 at 170 fps.

Once i turned on ray tracing (which) young blood Supports only reflections), the improvement was small but still impressive. At Riverside, the RTX 2060 went to 109 fps with the Super with the RPSX 3060 moving an average frame rate by almost 24% over the average 24 frame rate; In Lab X, the figure went from 75 fps to 91.5 fps, a 22% jump. And I was able to return a few frames while maintaining image quality by enabling Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology.

I got good results in RTX 3060 too Control, A great performance for ray tracing. I first played through the entire game using my RTX 2060 Super, all turning all the way to high with a five ray tracing effect. Corridor-like stress testing above the NSC control room and intense fighting in the central research atrium, usually hovering in the frame rate range 45–60 fps. Of course, it was DLSS enabled, rendering the game at an internal resolution of 1280 × 800 – two-thirds of my monitor’s original 1920 × 1200. Playing with the RTX 3060 using the same settings, frame rates were typically in the more playable range of 60–75 fps, which became rare in the mid-50s.

However, my crusty PC and I had a very different experience Hitman 3, A game whose complex underlying simulation depends heavily on CPU power. If you are clinging to a 4 year old CPU that is not even a Core i7 chip, like I am, pay attention to my results.

At 1920 × 1200 at maximum settings, swapping my RTX 2060 Super for the RTX 3060 improved frame rates by less than 10% for the game’s two static benchmarks – from 99.92 fps in Dubai to 106.92 fps in Dubai (7.01%) , And FPS from 103.85 at Dartmoor (8.8%) at 112.99 fps. When I turned on supersampling at 1.3x (to run the game at a resolution around 1440p) and 2x (around 4K), the gain became even more slim. With 2x supersampling enabled, the average frame rate at Dartmoor increased from just 42.68 fps to 43.87 fps – just 2.79%.

So what is the decision? In my experience, if you are gaming at 1080p / 1200p then you should be able to play the game at high to maximum settings with the RTX 3060. And if you’re upgrading to anything older than Nvidia’s 20-series cards, you’ll have a significant advantage. Even with ray tracing enabled, you can play at 60 fps as long as the question In-game also supports DLSS.

But those with 1440p monitors would be better served by the RTX 3060 Ti instead (if they could find it in stock). While it is possible that we can start seeing a fleet of games that will make the most of the 12 GB GDDR6 video memory of the RTX 3060, this is 8 GB of RAM on Nvidia’s other 30-series cards (except RTX 3090). Hard to imagine) is soon becoming an important bottleneck. And in a review of the RTX 3060 in The Verge, my colleague Sean Hollister found that the RTX 3060 Ti “almost always” has “performance” between “15 percent and 35 percent faster” than the RTX 3060 when gaming at 1440p maximum settings. did. For $ 399 – a premium of $ 70, or 21.2%, at the MSRP of the RTX 3060 – you’ll just get a better price.

Of course, as I mentioned, all of this is contingent upon actually being able to find any of these graphics cards (and at their retail prices, to boot). If you get the opportunity to buy the RTX 3060 and it makes sense for your particular situation – your screen resolution, the age of the GPU you’re replacing, and your budget – it’s a solid card to take note of. Should provide. You must make that call for yourself.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is available now. (Theoretically.) This review was done using the EVGA RTX 3060XC Black Gaming provided by Nvidia on the author’s PC, which features an Intel Core i5-7500 CPU and 16 GB of RAM. All games tested were installed in a 2 TB 7200 rpm hard drive. The report is an affiliate of Dore. These do not affect editorial content, although reports may earn commissions for products purchased through Door Affiliate links. You can find Additional information about the ethics policy of Reporter Door here.