- You don't know what this GPU has been through to get here,
nor do you know how many of them didn't make it,
but here it is, the GeForce RTX 3060 Nvidia long awaited
premium mid range Ampere architecture GPU.
This, this is the one that's destined to top SteamCharts
for the most popular gaming card on the freaking planet
for at least as long as it's forefather
or fore grandfather the GTX 1060 did.
But that assumes a couple of things doesn't it?
One, that it's actually any good.
And of course number two,
that Nvidia can make enough of them.
One thing we can always make enough of though
is smooth segues to our sponsors.
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It's hard to believe that the GTX 1060
is nearly five years old at this point.
That's how long it's been since anything has even come close
to the level of bang for the buck
that this card represented.
It beat out the contemporary Polaris-based RX 480
and AMD's hey at least you tried RX 580 Refresh,
then Nvidia themselves tried to make
the magic lightening strike again.
First with the RTX 2060, then with their GTX 1600 series.
I mean those are both good products, don't get me wrong,
but the 1060 is still the top dog
on Steam's Hardware Survey,
so it's clear that mid range gamers
were hungry for something better.
That's why so much is riding on the RTX 3060.
Nvidia is explicitly targeting you,
the nearly 10% of you out there who are watching this
on a 1060 and spoiler alert, this is it.
This is going to be the GPU to finally topple it.
At least that's what I would say,
if the replacement were coming in at the same price point
while the $329 US price tag does make sense
next to the GTX 1060 6 GB Founders Edition at $299
at least after we adjusted for inflation
there is no Founder's Edition this time around
just a reference design.
So you are definitely still paying an RTX tax.
This may give AMD and in with their tease there
of what is almost certainly there RX 6700 series.
Get subscribed by the way so you don't miss our coverage
of those cards when they launch.
Unlike the RTX 3060 TI
which does have a Founder's Edition,
the RTX 3060 comes with 50% more GDDR6 memory
but that's constrained to a slower 192 bit bus
as for it's faster clocked CUDA Cores.
Well they're faster clocks, but they've been cut
to just shy of three quarters of its TI sibling.
Compared to the GTX 1060 though,
the RTX 3060 gets all the goodies
that come with Nvidia's latest Ampere architecture
like Ray Tracing, HDMI 2.1 for up to 4K 120 Hertz displays,
Nvidia broadcast and the Turing NVENC engine
that's just so good for streaming.
That means that as long as performance is good
the extra ask from Nvidia
is likely to be more than worth it.
So then here's our GPU bench
and here's the cards we'll be comparing against.
We wish there were more
but we really didn't have a lot of time.
We got this via very unconventional means
'cause our other ones were stuck, that thing we said before.
Starting the Shadow of the Tomb Raider then,
it's no surprise that in traditional rasterization
the GTX 1060 falls way behind the new RTX 3060.
What is a little surprising?
And this could be good news for you.
Is that the RTX 2060 SUPER come so close.
So if you did shell out for last generation,
well you shouldn't feel too compelled to upgrade here.
Back to those who didn't though,
well this might finally be it
the card that makes RTX mainstream.
I mean check this out, with RTX on
the 3060 managers higher performance numbers at 1080p
than the GTX 1060 gets with RTX off.
As for the 1060 with RTX on, well we tried it
but it crashed out due to a display driver reset
that nearly took the rest of the PC with it.
F1 2020 sees the 3060 pulling further ahead
of the RTX 2060 SUPER
with a total improvement entering the high 20%
before dipping back down to the low 10s
in Forza Horizon 4,
as for the GTX 1060 well,
it struggled to maintain a frame rate much higher than 60.
Then there's Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
Youngblood is a highly optimized Vulkan title
and it shows in how much of a performance chasm there is
between the GTX 1060 and the rest of the pack.
And the 1060 straight up refuses to even run
Vulkan Ray Tracing
since non RTX cards rely on the DirectX 12 Fallback Layer.
As for Microsoft Flight Simulator
it's basically unplayable on the GTX 1060
unless you're willing to reduce the graphics quality.
And remember guys, this is at 1080p
so you can't exactly just keep dropping down the Rez
and still have a great experience.
The CUDA Grass for Pascal though
really is CS: GO performance.
And you might look at these numbers and think
what's the problem?
But Nvidia's Frames Win Games, motto isn't for nothing.
The faster a frame can be rendered
and pushed to your display.
The more up-to-date the information
that hits your eyes is going to be.
And for a game like CS: GO especially in a competitive match
that makes a big difference.
So the rule of thumb then
is that you want minimum frame rates
that are no lower than double
the refresh rate of your display.
That gives you optimal frame pacing and input leg.
So on a 60 Hertz display, hey, you're good to go with this,
don't even worry about it, 187 FPS minimum, no problem.
As soon as you upgrade to a 120 Hertz display though,
which is surprisingly affordable
you are not gonna be doing so hot.
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Moving on to productivity,
the GTX 1060 has an obvious disadvantage going in
lacking both the Turing
and Ampere generational performance improvements.
Even knowing that though it is staggering
to see just how badly it gets beaten here.
The RTX 3060 manages to significantly outpace
the last gen RTX 2060 SUPER, let alone the geriatric 1060
where that card it's rendering performance
can charitably be described as adequate
if you don't value your time.
The RTX 3060 easily doubles even the 2060 SUPER scores
across the board up until we hit OctaneBench
where the gap does narrow
but then interestingly, the RTX 3060 TI widens its lead.
SPECviewperf meanwhile looks like it's largely a tie
between the RTX 3060 and the 2060 SUPER
with a few wins here and there but nothing mind blowing.
It's worth mentioning
that the RTX 3060 narrower 192 bit memory bus
puts it at a disadvantage in some of these tests
but it still keeps well ahead of the 1060
thanks to its higher speed GDDR6
and everything else it's better about it.
As for our particular variant
we were supposed to have an EVGA card, then a Asus one,
then a different EVGA one,
we ended up with a MSI VENTUS 2X.
It's got a pretty modest cool
compared to some of the top end variants of RTX 3060
but even this card peaked at temperatures
of about 70 degrees throughout SPECviewperf,
with a very similar cooling and noise profile
to not only the RTX 3060 TI
but also the 2060 SUPER and even GTX 1060.
And all of this was while maintaining
roughly our cards maximum boost clock of 1.9 gigahertz,
which suggests that this GPU
has significant thermal headroom
and may be able to be pushed much harder
with the right board and cooler.
With an 8-Pin PCI Express power connector.
It goes without saying that the RTX 3060 draws more power
than the 6-Pin GTX 1060,
and this is reflected in its official power rating.
At peak, it drew a cool 40-watts less though
than the more powerful RTX 3060 TI
with a peak of just over 160-watts.
That's good, but what's more impressive
is that it drew less power than even the RTX 2060 SUPER
which peaked it over 175-watts.
While the older GTX 1060 certainly did manage
lower power consumption on average though,
it actually manages to spike to around the same maximum.
So RTX 3060 is looking pretty darn good
as far as thermals and power consumption.
I mean overall there's very little to complain
about in terms of performance.
It's just that,
and this at risk of beating a dead horse here.
Availability may be a different issue.
Now it is possible that these will be more widely available
than previous RTX 30 series launches
but while Nvidia seemed confident
that there would be lots of supply,
a couple of retailers that we've spoken to locally
have some doubts about that, at least out of the gate.
So if that's true, today could be yet another payday
for filthy scalpers.
We can only hope then that supply is good enough
that demand falls and those scalpers end up
with a whole bunch of extra cards they have to liquidate
into actual gamers as quickly as possible.
Now you might've noticed
that one thing we didn't talk about today is mining.
And the reason for that
is that we've set our peace on it already.
And we only want to evaluate this product
from a gaming perspective on its merits for gamers
not the political decisions that Nvidia makes.
So whatever we said before,
it's important for you guys to know we don't hate Nvidia
and we definitely don't hate this product.
It's just that when any company makes a boneheaded decision
Apple, Dell, Intel, AMD doesn't matter who
it's our job to call them out.
And then by the same token, it's our job to praise them
when they get something right.
And they got a lot right with the RTX 3060.
So that's it, go upgrade your GTX 1060 or your RX 580,
guys, it's time.
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So thanks for watching guys.
If you do wanna know more about the mining angle of this
go check out our recent video,
exploring why we think Nvidia limiting this card's hash rate
and introducing dedicated mining GPUs
is not as good as it might seem on the surface.
It's a little more complicated than you might think.