Is it worth paying more money to get the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, or are you going to be
just fine with the non Ti model? I’ve compared both graphics cards in 10 games at 1080p,
1440p and 4K resolutions to show you the differences.
The strangest difference to me was that the 3060 Ti has 8 gigs of VRAM, while the lower tier 3060
actually has 12. Now the Ti card’s memory is faster, but this still seems a bit strange.
Part of me is wondering if Nvidia decided to double it from 6 to 12 after AMD started
offering 16 gig options. Otherwise the 3060 Ti has around 35% more CUDA cores compared to the non Ti,
however the base and boost clock speeds are lower on the Ti.
Now the newer 3060 actually launched with resizable BAR support, and I did have this
enabled in my previous 3060 comparison over here. At the time of making this video though,
the 3060 Ti does not currently have resizable BAR support. Nvidia said that it’s coming
in a VBIOS update in March some time, so rather than wait for that I have retested
the 3060 with resizable BAR disabled, just so that we’ve got a fair comparison here.
This is the system that I’m using to test both graphics cards in, so overclocked 10900K and
32 gigs of memory are the key specs, and both cards were tested with the same Nvidia drivers.
Alright so with all of that in mind, we’ll first start out by seeing how both of these
graphics cards perform in 10 games at 3 resolutions. Then we’ll check out things
like power draw, content creator workloads and pricing and availability afterwards.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the games benchmark. I’ve got the 1080p results down the
bottom, 1440p results in the middle, and 4K up the top. The 3060 Ti was still able to deliver
60 FPS in this test even with 4K high settings, putting it almost 37% ahead of the 3060 below it.
The differences are generally going to be lower at lower resolutions, which was the case here.
The Ti was reaching 32% higher average FPS at 1440p, then a little lower still at 29% at 1080p.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little China with the street kid life path.
These results are with ray tracing off, we’ll look at ray tracing and DLSS in the next graph.
Even the 1% lows from the 3060 Ti were ahead of the average frame rates on offer from the non Ti
card at all three resolutions. The difference in 1% lows was particularly large at 1080p,
where the Ti was 81% ahead, while average FPS was 30% higher comparatively.
Here’s how things look with the RT Medium preset in use with DLSS set to quality. The 1% low from
the 3060 improves now, though the average FPS lowers in all instances as ray tracing is a heavy
workload, even with DLSS. The difference between these two graphics cards was smaller compared
to running with ray tracing off, so there don’t appear to be big ray tracing gains with the Ti.
Like Cyberpunk, Control was tested with and without ray tracing,
and we’ll start with ray tracing off results. I’ve found this game to be heavy on the GPU,
which explains why the performance differences between these two cards are some of the biggest
out of all 10 games tested. At 1080p the Ti was 32% ahead of the non Ti in average FPS,
the largest difference at this lower resolution. Either were still offering a playable experience
at 1440p even with max settings, though 4K wasn’t great with either, but you could of course
turn settings down - I’m just using GPU heavy settings as this is a GPU comparison after all.
The frame rates don’t actually change that much with Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled. That said,
like we saw in Cyberpunk with ray tracing enabled, the performance difference
between the two cards is lower at all three resolutions compared to not using ray tracing,
again showing that there appears to be less of a performance difference when it comes to RT.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the Sydney landing challenge. The differences to
1% low performance were smaller here compared to the last couple of games. Both cards were
able to offer above 60 FPS at 1080p even with the second highest high-end setting preset,
though only the Ti was capable of this at 1440p, putting it 29% ahead of the non Ti.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was tested with the game's benchmark,
and saw one of the smaller differences out of all 10 games that we’re looking at here. At
1080p the Ti was 19% ahead of the non Ti, 21% ahead at 1440p, then 25% ahead at 4K,
so the gap increases as we raise the resolution and the GPUs get better utilized.
Watch Dogs Legion was also tested with the games benchmark, and was a game where 4K ultra settings
was using more than 8 gigs of VRAM. The Ti was 32% ahead in average FPS compared to the non Ti
at 1440p, but rather than this gap increasing at 4K which is the case in most of the games tested,
it lowers a little to the Ti being 30% ahead. Honestly it’s not much of a difference,
but it may be due to the non Ti having the edge in VRAM capacity,
granted the Ti’s memory is faster despite being smaller in size.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature and saw some of the largest performance differences
between these two cards. This was one where the 1% lows from the Ti even beat the averages from
the non Ti, and even at max settings with 4K the Ti was still above 60 FPS, putting it 38%
ahead of the non Ti in average frame rate, the biggest difference at this resolution.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode, and again the Ti was above 60 FPS
even with max settings at 4K, putting it 34% ahead of the non Ti. As an older game
compared to most of the others covered so far, higher frame rates are possible,
honestly either graphics card is going to run well even at max settings with 1080p or 1440p.
Second last game before the big comparison. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with
the game's benchmark, and again similar deal, 80 FPS at max settings from the 3060 at 1440p
is still quite decent, though even the Ti couldn’t quite make the 60 FPS sweet spot at 4K,
but again you could of course just lower settings if that’s your target.
The Witcher 3 is a game I’ve been testing the same way for about 5 years now,
so it’s a good one to throw in if you want to see how results compare to any of my older videos.
Even the non Ti was around 60 FPS with 4K max settings, though the Ti was reaching 37% higher
average FPS in this one, with 1% lows above the non Ti’s average FPS at all resolutions.
These are the differences in all 10 titles tested between the RTX 3060 Ti
and non Ti at 1080p. The Ti was 27% faster on average in these games,
though some games like flight simulator down the bottom saw much smaller differences. Best
case we’re looking at a little above a 30% boost with the Ti at this lower resolution.
Stepping up to 1440p and the Ti was now more than 30%
higher than the non Ti in average frame rate. We’re expecting the difference
between the two graphics cards to widen at higher resolutions as this is more demanding on the GPU.
This continues on at 4K, where the Ti was now almost 33% ahead of the non Ti
on average in these 10 games. Some games like Cyberpunk with ray tracing and DLSS
enabled saw a smaller difference at this resolution, which I suspect could be due
to the VRAM differences between the two cards. For the most part though,
even with higher settings at 4K most games covered didn’t show warnings about going over 8 gig.
That’s just today though, there’s no doubt that future games will probably require more VRAM,
so the performance could shift over to the 3060
in future - if memory capacity becomes more of a bottleneck.
Here’s the difference in total system power draw from the wall in Control at 4K.
The same system with the Ti card installed required around 15% more wattage, however in
this specific game the Ti was also offering 37% higher average FPS, so that sounds pretty decent.
This of course results in the 3060 Ti offering better efficiency in terms of
performance per watt - well at least for this one game that I’ve measured power draw for.
I haven’t tested thermals here as both cards have different cooling designs,
so temperature would vary due to this, it just wouldn’t be a really fair comparison.
Now let’s check out the differences in content creator workloads followed by pricing afterwards.
I’ve tested DaVinci Resolve with the Puget Systems benchmark. This software seems to
be fairly GPU heavy, though the differences here were much smaller compared to the games earlier,
the Ti was scoring just 11% higher than the non Ti card.
Adobe Premiere was also tested with the puget systems benchmark,
however the GPU seems to be less of a factor here,
which is why the 3060 Ti system was scoring less than 7% more than the non Ti.
It was a different story in the V-Ray benchmark though, the Ti was scoring almost 43% higher
than the non Ti in the ray tracing test, and just a little below this in the CUDA test.
Blender was tested with the Open Data Benchmark with the BMW and Classroom tests using CUDA,
and it was a similar deal here too. The Ti card was completing the longer classroom test 56%
faster than the non Ti card, so there can be fairly significant gains with the Ti
in specific GPU heavy workloads like these.
Now let’s discuss pricing, you can find updated prices linked down in the description,
of course assuming there’s actually stock available, which has been a big issue.
The 3060 is meant to have a $330 USD MSRP, and there are actually listings for it at
that price on Newegg, but yeah they’re all out of stock. Some people might have
actually been able to buy it at that price, but at the moment there’s no option to buy.
The 3060 Ti on the other hand seems to start at around $480
on Newegg, despite Nvidia’s MSRP of $400, and again it’s out of stock too.
This puts me in a tough position as prices on both are changing so much,
plus there just isn’t enough information available to say what accurate prices are,
things are constantly changing and a lot of people are prepared to pay more than MSRP.
So with all of that in mind, take the cost per frame graph with a grain of salt.
Hopefully the MSRP values are more useful in future if we ever get enough stock. At Nvidia’s
prices though, the 3060 Ti is offering better value. Yeah it costs more but it performs better
too, from a cost per frame perspective this is worthwhile, however if we instead consider the
$480 price the Ti is listed for on Newegg at the moment then it shifts to the 3060 looking better,
but then if the 3060 starts selling higher than that, then that changes too.
It really sucks but that’s just how it is at the moment. Assuming there was actually adequate stock
and these were the correct prices, personally I’d probably go for the 3060 Ti. When I compared the
3060 against the 2060 from last generation in this video over here, there just wasn’t really that
much of a difference, I don’t know personally I’d want the extra performance of the Ti,
it’ll just make my upgrade more worthwhile, and at the correct prices it was better value.
Anyway let me know which of these graphics cards you’d get down in the comments, and of course if
you’re new to the channel then get subscribed for future comparisons and tech videos like this one.