In a time when being good enough is enough to sell out, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 is a competent graphics card.
A Quick Look
Rating: 3
Pros:
- 1080p gaming
- Memory: 12 GB
- G-Sync, DLSS, Reflex, and other outstanding Nvidia software/features
- Small, calm and quiet EVGA’s XC Black Gaming
Cons:
- Frequent graphic adjustments are required to reach a 60 FPS rate in 1440p gaming,
- Compared to the previous generation, there is a minor improvement in the performance and a slight fall in cost.
- The MSRP is a little higher than we’d like.
- In today’s volatile GPU market, it’s difficult to find at MSRP.
- EVGA’s XC Black Gaming has no backplate or extras.
Table of Contents
Conclusion
In a time when being good enough is all it takes to sell out, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 is a sound graphics card for no-compromises 1080p gaming. The EVGA XC Black Gaming edition has no frills but operates cool and quietly.
The $329 GeForce RTX 3060, at least in theory, offers Nvidia’s next-generation Ampere GPU architecture to the masses.
The debut of Nvidia’s 60-class graphics cards always gets a lot of buzzes. They are usually the most popular card in a GeForce generation. This time, a combination of sky-high demand, logistics issues created by the pandemic, a cryptocurrency boom that’s driving miners to suck up GPUs, and inevitable component shortages have resulted in a months-long lack of graphics cards.
Nvidia also set higher pricing for this card than before (the beloved GTX 1060 is meant to replace it launched for $80 less). It’s the perfect storm, and things are so bad that Nvidia has brought back the GTX 1050 Ti.
But set it aside for a moment. How well does Nvidia’s latest GPU perform? We got an EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming to find out. The RTX 3060 MSRP is $329 for this entry-level version of the GPU (again, in theory). If we were, to sum up, the graphics card in one word, what would it be? It’s all right. However, there are a few significant under-the-hood features worth mentioning.
If you want a shorter, easier-to-read analysis of the card before we get into the pages of benchmark data, check out our related piece, GeForce RTX 3060: 5 things you need to know about Nvidia’s new GPU. Let’s get started.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060: Specs, Features, and the Price
Nvidia surprised everyone by releasing the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti before the original RTX 3060, and the Ti version is a great 1440p gaming option. The GeForce RTX 3060, which is more affordable (in theory), is better suited to no-compromises 1080p gaming, while 1440p gaming is absolutely viable in most cases.
The non-Ti RTX 3060 features an entirely different GPU than the Ti model and the $500 RTX 3070: the smaller GA106 graphics processor. As a result, although sharing the same moniker, the RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti are vastly different beneath the hood.
Here’s how the GeForce RTX 3060 compares to the RTX 3060 Ti performance.
…and the $350 GeForce RTX 2060 from the previous generation.
The GeForce RTX 3060 has a higher boost clock than the GeForce RTX 3060Ti, which is helpful during high-stress gaming sessions but has significantly fewer CUDA cores. Overall gaming performance is considerably lower than the 3060 Ti. However, the new graphics card remains competitive in the categories it targets.
Memory is the most intriguing aspect of the RTX 3060’s architecture. This GPU comes with a whopping 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, which outperforms the RTX 3060 Ti and 3070’s 8GB and even the behemoth GeForce RTX 3080’s 10GB (although of the much faster GDDR6X version). AMD’s choice to pack a lot of RAM into its new Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards caught Nvidia off guard.
The RTX 3060’s 192-bit memory bus can support 6GB or 12GB memory sizes, and we believe the RTX 3060 was designed to support 6GB until AMD got involved.
Resizable BAR allows the CPU to access all of the GPU’s RAM, improving speed in some cases.
From a marketing standpoint, it’s arguably the best option—upcoming AMD’s Radeon RX 6700 XT will actually come with 12GB of dedicated memory—but it’s a strange decision in practice.
For the 1080p gameplay that Nvidia claims this card was designed for, the huge 12GB memory buffer is excessive. When you push games up to 1440p, you’ll typically have to lower graphical settings to get 60 fps at that resolution, reducing memory needs.
8GB of RAM would suffice–and cost less–if this wasn’t a hasty response to AMD’s initiatives. Going with 6GB of RAM would have been too little given that some games are constantly hitting the 8GB barrier, so we’re delighted the RTX 3060 comes with 12GB. It’s preferable to overshoot than to undershoot!
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 is the first desktop graphics card to implement PCIe Resizable BAR, following AMD’s Smart Access Memory innovation (based around ReBAR). On compatible systems, resizable BAR allows your CPU to view your graphics card’s memory instead of accessing it in 256MB chunks, resulting in performance advantages.
Most of these improvements are minor, as we observed while testing Smart Access Memory on the RX 6900 XT, but they can reach 10% or more in the appropriate games with the correct graphics settings and resolutions. The uplift of ReBAR is quite varied.
To enable Resizable BAR support, you’ll need a compatible CPU and motherboard. AMD began things off with its Ryzen 5000 CPUs and X570/B550 motherboards, but BIOS upgrades have also brought compatibility to a range of Intel platforms.
The graphic above, obtained from Nvidia’s ReBAR explainer, depicts which PC hardware supports the technology at the moment. Support differs from one vendor to the next and even from one motherboard.
If you wish to utilise it, seek a BIOS update compatible with your motherboard. Nvidia has only unlocked ReBAR compatibility for eight titles. Thus its utility is restricted. Nvidia claims that it will swiftly whitelist new titles. (All games support AMD’s Smart Access Memory.)
Nvidia has introduced a hash rate limitation that reduces Ethereum mining performance by half, which should deter cryptocurrency miners from picking this up in droves. Let’s see how long it lasts.
As a current GeForce GPU, the RTX 3060 offers the latest ray tracing and tensor cores (more on that later) and support for all of Nvidia’s value-adding technologies like this Shadowplay, DLSS, Nvidia Broadcast, Nvidia Reflex, G-Sync, and more.
Check out our far more extensive description of what’s new in the RTX 30-series “Ampere” GPU architecture at the start of our RTX 3080 review for a more in-depth look at what’s new in the “Ampere” GPU architecture of the RTX 30-series GPUs.
EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming: Design
In today’s scorching-hot graphics card market, Nvidia isn’t releasing one of its flashy Founders Edition versions for the RTX 3060 instead of relying on custom cards from its partners to handle the burden. (For reference, the GTX 1060 and RTX 2060 FE models have been released.)
Under the hood, the XC Black Gaming keeps to the RTX 3060’s standard specs, allowing it to compete with the GPU’s $329 retail price. Which enables us to assess the RTX 3060’s base performance. However, suppose previous RTX 30-series and Radeon RX 6000-series launches are any indications. In that case, we can expect graphics card makers to focus most of their attention (and manufacturing output) on pricier custom models, such as EVGA’s own overclocked $390 RTX 3060 XC Gaming (no “Black”). Before scalpers got their hands on them, most early custom RTX 3060 units sold in shops priced over $500.
While the current GPU bottleneck exists, don’t expect to find RTX 3060 GPUs on sale for $330 in reality.
Despite its high MSRP, EVGA did a good job designing the XC Black Gaming. The card operates cool and quietly, as you’ll see later. Unlike many other custom RTX 30-series graphics cards, the XC Black Gaming keeps to a typical two-slot thickness that should easily fit into most PC cases, especially as the card is just 7.94 inches long, far less than the standard 10.5 inches or more.
It requires a single 8-pin power connector, which must be connected to a 550-watt or higher power source.
Cost-cutting strategies are readily apparent. The shroud is made of plastic, there is no RGB lighting, and there is no backplate to conceal the electronics.
However, in keeping with the new RTX 30-series trend, there’s a cut-hole in the PCB to let air pass through the heat sink of your card. In an era where backplates have primarily become the standard, the EVGA XC Black Gaming is an eyesore due to the lack of a backplate. Still, it’s generally unobtrusive aesthetically, with a blacked-out design.
You’ll find the standard RTX 30-series connection loadout on EVGA’s card, which includes one HDMI 2.1 connector and three DisplayPorts.
EVGA backs up its products with a guarantee and well-liked customer service representatives in the gaming industry. The company’s exquisite Precision X1 GPU control software has all you need to monitor and overclock the card, so you can put the dual-axial fans and four copper heat pipes to extra work. One of our favourites is the well-designed programs. However, the stage has been set. Let’s get down to business with the benchmarks.
Our testing system and gameplay benchmarks begin on the next tab.
Our Testing Rig
To test how PCIe 4.0 affects present GPU performance and the performance-enhancing AMD Smart Access Memory and Nvidia Resizable BAR features. We’re upgrading to a new AMD Ryzen 5000-series test rig (which are both based on the same underlying PCIe standard).
We’re testing it right now on an open bench with AMD’s Wraith Max air cooler; in the future, we’ll put it in a case and add an NZXT Kraken liquid cooler to the mix.
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5900X
- Cooler: AMD Wraith Max cooler.
- Motherboard: MSI Godlike X570
- Memory: 32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800
- Power supply: EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 ($352 on Amazon)
- Storage: SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD, 1TB
At $330, EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming is pitted against the $350 Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition from the previous generation and the Founders Edition edition, the current $500 RTX 3070.
Because we didn’t have Nvidia’s FE card on hand, we added EVGA’s overclocked, custom FTW3 Ultra version of the $400 RTX 3060 Ti. Finally, we have benchmarks for AMD’s $350 Radeon RX 5700 and $400 RX 5700 XT graphics cards. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to thoroughly test the $400 RTX 2060 Super FE and $500 RTX 2070 on the new system.
We put a wide range of games through the tests, including different genres, engines, vendor sponsorships (AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Unless otherwise stated, each game is evaluated using its in-game benchmark with VSync, real-time ray tracing, frame rate caps, or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled. Additionally, with other vendor-specific technologies such as FidelityFX tools or Nvidia Reflex.
We’ve activated temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these cards to their maximum. Each benchmark is done at least three times, with the average result shown for each test.
We won’t be providing outcomes commentary for each game. Check out the “Should you Buy It?” section of this review for overall performance ratings.
Benchmarks for gaming performance
Watch Dogs: Legion
One of the first games released on next-gen consoles is Watch Dogs: Legion. Ubisoft’s Disrupt engine has been updated to include cutting-edge features such as real-time ray tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS.
We turn off those effects for our test, but Legion is still a demanding game, even with the optional high-resolution texture pack loaded. Even at 1440p, the game uses more than 8GB of RAM.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Yes, PlayStation exclusives are now available on the PC. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by Guerrilla Games’ Decima engine, also used in Death Stranding. It started off rough, but it’s a lot better now, and it’s a beauty.
Gears Tactics
Gears Tactics takes the XCOM-like genre and gives its vicious, fast-paced spin. We enjoy including a tactics-style game in our benchmarking suite because this Unreal Engine 4-powered game was created from the bottom up for DirectX 12. Even better, PC snobs will appreciate the game’s visual settings.
More games should spend as much time as this one explains what all of these visual knobs imply. You can’t use the presets to evaluate Gears Tactics since it automatically scales to operate best on your installed hardware. Thus “Ultra” on one graphics card can load different settings than “Ultra” on another. All options were manually adjusted to their maximum possible settings.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is more enjoyable when played collaboratively with a friend, but it’s a bold experiment—and a technological showpiece. Youngblood runs on the Vulkan API and supports a variety of cutting-edge technologies, including ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, asynchronous computing, and Nvidia’s Content Adaptive Shading. A built-in benchmark with two different sceneries is included in the game; we’ll start testing Riverside soon.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus, one of the best games of 2019, is also one of the best-looking games out there. With one of the most impressive real-time ray tracing implementations published to date, the current version of the 4A Engine produces extraordinarily lush, ultra-detailed images.
As you’ll see below, the game’s Extreme graphics option can burn even the most powerful current hardware, yet the game’s Ultra and High presets still look beautiful at far higher frame rates.
Ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS are disabled in DirectX 12 mode.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands has returned! Because Gearbox’s game defaults to DX12, we’ve done the same. It provides us with a look at the performance of the wildly popular Unreal Engine 4 in a classic shooter. This game is best played on AMD hardware.
Strange Brigade
Strange Brigade is a cooperative third-person shooter in which a group of adventurers must fight their way through swarms of legendary foes. It’s a technological showpiece, with features like HDR support and the option to toggle asynchronous computing on and off.
It’s based using the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies. It’s powered by Rebellion’s own Azure Engine. We do our tests with the Vulkan renderer, which is significantly quicker than DX12.
Total War: Troy
Troy, the next chapter in the popular Total War series, was given away for free on the Epic Games Store for the first 24 hours, selling over 7.5 million copies before going on sale. Total War: Troy is a turn-based strategy game developed on a modified version of the Total War: Warhammer 2 engine, and it looks great on DX11. We put the fighting benchmark to the test.
F1 2020
F1 2020 is the newest in a long line of excellent racing games, and it’s a joy to play, with a broad range of graphics and benchmarking choices that make it a far more reliable (and exciting) alternative than the Forza series.
It’s based on the most recent version of Codemasters’ buttery-smooth Ego game engine, which includes DX12 and Nvidia’s DLSS compatibility. With clear skies and DLSS turned off, we tried two circuits on the Australia course.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The last chapter in the reboot trilogy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, is still stunning two years later. Square Enix designed this game for DX12, and DX11 is only recommended if you have outdated hardware or Windows 7. Thus we tested it on DX12.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider empowered by an improved version of the Foundation engine, which initially powered Rise of the Tomb Raider and contained real-time ray tracing and DLSS.
Rainbow Six Siege
Rainbow Six Siege continues to top the Steam rankings years after its initial release, and Ubisoft continues to support it with regular updates and events. Over the years, the creators have put a lot of effort into the game’s AnvilNext Engine, finally releasing a Vulkan version that we tested.
The game’s render scaling is reduced by default to enhance frame rates, but we increased it to 100% to test native rendering performance on graphics cards. Even so, frame rates are skyrocketing.
RTX 3060: Ray tracing performance
We also put the RTX 3060 through its paces in a few games that use cutting-edge real-time ray-tracing effects. Because earlier AMD Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs did not support ray tracing, we removed the Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT from these tests.
Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling technology (DLSS) uses AI tensor cores in RTX GPUs to render games at a lower resolution internally. And then uprez them to your preferred resolution using machine learning to fill in the gaps, giving it a significant edge in ray-traced games. Nvidia has a big advantage in ray tracing performance because of DLSS 2.0, which operates like black magic. Without it, you won’t be able to play ray-traced games at resolutions higher than 1080p.
However, all of the Nvidia GPUs listed below support DLSS. We’ve provided three findings for each card: native performance with ray tracing turned off, native performance with ray tracing turned on, and performance with both ray tracing and DLSS turned on.
We hope to extend our ray-traced game suite soon, but for now, we’re playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs: Legion and Metro: Exodus to see how well they work, with ray tracing parameters set to Ultra in each game.
Ray-traced reflections are included in Legion, ray-traced shadows are included in Tomb Raider, and Metro has more demanding (and mood-enhancing) ray-traced global lighting.
Let’s start with the ray-traced shadows in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We’ve only used raw ray tracing performance in the game because it uses the first-generation version of DLSS, which doesn’t support 1080p resolution.
Ray tracing is used for global illumination in Metro: Exodus. We’ve mainly included raw ray tracing performance on that chart because it uses DLSS 1.0 and doesn’t enable upscaling at 1080p.
With the high-resolution texture pack loaded, Watch Dogs: Legion batters your machine regardless of whether you have ray tracing turned on. Turning on ray-traced reflections worsens the problem.
Unlike Tomb Raider and Metro, Watch Dogs employs the quicker and superior DLSS 2.0 technology. We put it to the test in DLSS Balanced mode. Although Balanced allows you to achieve higher frame rates than quality, the even faster Performance setting begins to cause visual variations that can be seen in some scenarios. Balanced is right on the money.
Noise, thermals, and power draw
After we’ve benchmarked everything else, we evaluate power draw by repeating the F1 2020 benchmark at 4K for roughly 20 minutes and recording the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro metre, which monitors the power consumption of our whole test system. The first stage of the race, when all competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, is usually the most difficult.
This isn’t a worst-case scenario; it’s a GPU-bound game running at a GPU-bound resolution to see how well the graphics card performs while it’s working hard. You can experience increased total system power consumption by playing a game that also hammers the CPU. Take this as a warning.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming consumes somewhat more energy than the RTX 2060, which is understandable considering its slightly higher power needs. The energy needs aren’t as great as those of the higher-end RTX 30-series GPUs. It’ll be fascinating to see how AMD’s future Radeon competitors stack up.
Surprisingly, Nvidia GPUs prevent the computer from entirely entering idle mode during the five minutes of downtime we used for this test, albeit it does so after a more extended period.
This is unique to the Ryzen 5900X platform; we didn’t notice it on our previous Intel-based testbeds or AMD Radeon graphics cards. To completely comprehend the behaviour, we’ll have to adjust our methods in the future.
We evaluate thermals by running the F1 2020 power draw test with GPU-Z open and recording the maximum temperature at the conclusion.
The EVGA XC Black Gaming is quiet and calm, and it easily handles the RTX 3060 GPU. There are no issues at all. The blower-style cooling on last-gen Radeon cards, on the other hand, are hot and noisy.
Is it worth buying the GeForce RTX 3060?
Right now, it’s difficult to recommend purchasing any graphics card. Overwhelming demand, supply issues, tariffs, scalpers, and cryptocurrency miners have contributed to a drop in availability and a rise in costs.
No stock is available at any major retailer, just a few weeks after introduction. Even before scalping, most bespoke models cost around $500. You can’t blame the makers for jumping on the bandwagon, but if you see an RTX 3060 for $330 in the wild anywhere near the time this review is published, get on it.
This is being marketed by Nvidia as a replacement for the popular GTX 1060, which is still the most popular card according to Steam’s Hardware Survey. The GeForce RTX 3060 would substantially improve the GTX 1060 performance.
However, that card was initially priced at $250. Even with ray tracing and DLSS capabilities, $330 for this update is a significant price hike. The GTX 1060, like the RTX 3060, could play 1080p games without sacrificing quality, with the capacity to play 1440p games with minor aesthetic adjustments.
It’s insane to pay $500 or more for a GeForce 60-class GPU. Instead, if you have a decent Internet connection, go play some games on GeForce Now while you wait out this massacre. Nvidia’s cloud gaming service integrates with existing PC platforms, eliminating the need to purchase new titles.
The RTX 3060 is an uninspired improvement over the $350 RTX 2060 based only on MSRP if we ignore the terrible present GPU market. Its performance places it with the $400 RTX 2060 Super and $500 RTX 2070. AMD’s older Radeon RX 5700 XT outperforms it in several games, while the non-XT 5700 holds its own in a few (though it’s destroyed in others). Those were priced at $400 and $350, respectively, when they were released.
The RTX 3060’s findings are a bit disheartening after witnessing how far the more expensive RTX 30-series pushed performance past its predecessors. We would have preferred it at $300 or even lower, but given the current market, it makes sense for Nvidia to raise the GPU’s pricing to boost its own bottom line. At $400, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a significantly more powerful and appealing option.
However, as we have stated, the RTX 3060 is enough. It’s all right. It’s nothing unique, though, compared to the other RTX 30-series cards. This graphics card will satisfy your desire for 60-fps gameplay at 1080p Ultra resolution. In select games, the RTX 3060 can even push higher refresh rates.
If you don’t mind lowering the graphic settings in popular games, 1440p gaming is also an option. You’ll never run out of memory thanks to the generous (read: overkill) 12GB of VRAM on board. That’s wonderful! Nvidia’s latency-reducing Reflex technologies and DLSS continue to be a significant differentiator in games that use them.
When it comes to the EVGA XC Black Gaming, it lacks flashy frills like a backplate, RGB lighting, and a dual BIOS, but it should fit into practically any system–and it runs calm and quiet. There’s no need to go for a more costly model only to have more excellent cooling. The pricing is quite reasonable in today’s wild GPU market if you can find one.
The low-cost RTX 3060 devices are unlikely to be produced in large numbers. Even before scalpers appear, most dealers will focus their efforts on far more costly hot-rodded models for which they can charge much more.
Don’t buy a graphics card like this for $500 or more. I wouldn’t pay $400 on an RTX 3060, even if it was a gorgeous high-end machine with all the bells and whistles.
On resale sites, they’re already fetching $600 or more. The GeForce RTX 3060 is a decent-enough graphics card in an era where even nice, fine GPUs sell out in record time for exorbitant prices.
If you have to pay, do so, but if you can, sit on the sidelines for now.
