Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti review

Where to purchase RTX 3060 Ti

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a extra reasonably priced path to wonderful 1080p and 1440p gaming, so you must undoubtedly get your palms on one for those who can. Finding an RTX 3060 Ti in inventory could also be robust proper now, however we’re preserving monitor of its availability on the greatest on-line retailers for you.

While the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti does not do something particularly new, it makes the Ampere structure extra accessible (effectively, if you'll find and RTX 3060 Ti that does exist). Even extra so than the cheaper RTX 3060, it balances efficiency and value, which makes it the most effective graphics card for most individuals – once more, assuming you'll find one.

There are some video games the place the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is best than the RTX 2080 Super, a card that only a couple years in the past was almost double the value. So, positive, it is not the quickest card on the market, however that does not matter when it could actually present such energy for a low-ish value. With this graphics card, you'll run all the most effective PC video games with Ultra settings and ray tracing at 1440p – and possibly even 4K for those who use DLSS.

Furthermore, it provides a compelling prospect for customers who discover the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and the costlier RTX 3090 to pack extra energy than they might ever absolutely make the most of and whose value they merely can't justify for his or her wants. And, as such, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the most effective graphics card for many customers.

Close-up of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti name on a table

(Image credit score: Nvidia)

Price and availability

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is accessible beginning December 2, 2020, and you may choose it up beginning at $399 (about £299, AU$540). This largely falls consistent with what we’d anticipate a graphics card on this phase to value, particularly contemplating the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super began on the identical $399 (about £315, AU$580) and the RTX 2060 was $349 (about £260, AU$475).

The RTX 3060 Ti falls proper across the identical value because the RTX 2060 Super, whereas being as highly effective because the RTX 2080 Super, a card that retailed for $699 (about £560, AU$990). That card was a 1440p Ultra machine, and so it follows that the 3060 Ti can be as effectively, and now it’s method cheaper.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's ports

(Image credit score: Nvidia)

Features and chipset

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is predicated on the identical Ampere structure because the RTX 3080, and provides us a have a look at what the Ampere lineup will seem like within the mid-range and funds phase of the GPU market. This isn’t precisely going to be the graphics card that’ll push Watch Dogs Legion with ray tracing at 4K, however it's undoubtedly as much as doing it at 1080p.

With this graphics card, you’re getting 8GB of the identical GDDR6 reminiscence discovered within the RTX 3070, paired with 38 Ampere Streaming Multiprocessors (SM). However, due to modifications Nvidia has made to its SM since Turing, every of those now has 128 CUDA cores, double that of the 64 in every Turing SM. That means there at the moment are 4,864 CUDA cores within the RTX 3060 Ti, up from the two,176 discovered within the RTX 2060 Super.

Power consumption sees a rise over the RTX 2060 Super, but it surely’s not as pronounced as different playing cards within the Nvidia Ampere lineup. The whole graphics energy (TGP) is 200W for the RTX 3060 Ti, up from the 175W of the RTX 2060 Super. It’s extra, but it surely shouldn’t be a lot extra that you just’ll want to fret about upgrading your energy provide to accommodate – assuming you have got a reliable one within the first place, that's.

Back in Turing, every SM had two datapaths – one devoted to Floating Point (FP32) workloads, and the opposite devoted to Integer. With Ampere, and thus the RTX 3060 Ti, Nvidia was capable of engineer the SM to have one of many datapaths basically capable of pull double responsibility, which is why the quantity of CUDA cores has successfully doubled per SM with Ampere.

Outside of CUDA cores, every SM additionally has Tensor Cores for AI workloads like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), and devoted ray tracing cores. Each SM has one RT core and 4 Tensor Cores. The devoted amongst you might need seen that’s half the quantity of Tensor Cores in every SM than Turing had, however there’s a very good purpose for that – they’re greater than twice as quick this time round.

The RT core is what’s chargeable for the ray tracing that everybody is speaking about. The complete level is to dump the huge computational load that any type of ray tracing entails, so as to have the ability to produce playable framerates.

Basically, when a light-weight ray is forged in a recreation engine, the SM will ship that data over to the RT core, the place it should calculate the place that ray bounces, and report that again to the SM so it could actually render the picture. This doesn’t make ray tracing computationally free, although, as you’ll see from the huge hit in efficiency that having RT on in Metro Exodus entails.

However, with out these devoted RT cores, the efficiency hit would flip the sport right into a slideshow.

Luckily, the opposite devoted kind of core, the Tensor Core is the opposite a part of the equation that makes it considerably smart to allow ray tracing when taking part in the most effective PC video games. Through the Tensor Core, builders can combine DLSS in video games, which is basically an AI-enabled upscaling tech. This helps enhance efficiency by having the SM render a scene in a decrease decision, then having the Tensor Core use knowledge from Nvidia’s Supercomputers to intelligently scale that scene as much as full decision.

With DLSS, you’re capable of make up a lot of the efficiency distinction that ray tracing brings to the desk, so you may have the superior picture high quality advantages of ray tracing, with out sacrificing an excessive amount of in the best way of efficiency. In truth, with out DLSS, ray tracing merely wouldn’t be value it.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti additionally brings a wealth of options to the desk too. Esports gamers are going to like Nvidia Reflex, which goals to chop system latency, RTX IO works alongside Microsoft DirectStorage to load knowledge straight out of your system storage to your VRAM and Nvidia Broadcast permits so that you can filter out background noise and pictures whereas streaming or video chatting, whatever the software program you’re utilizing.

That final one alone has been an enormous boon to us all through lockdown, and the 1000's of video calls we’ve needed to take from our bed room all through 2020. And, whereas it’s undoubtedly true that quite a lot of software program, like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams all permit for related performance, having all of the settings in a single place is a large time-saver.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti on a table

(Image credit score: Nvidia)

Design

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition is, effectively, nearly precisely the identical because the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition. The two playing cards are precisely the identical measurement, with the identical quantity of followers, and the identical uncovered fins on the again of the cardboard that helps shoot scorching air out of the graphics card up and out of the system.

The solely core distinction right here is that it’s a lighter grey colour than the RTX 3070. And, identical to the remainder of the Founders Editions within the Ampere lineup, Nvidia has completely delivered among the best-looking graphics playing cards we’ve ever seen.

And the most effective half? The trendy cooler can be efficient. Throughout our complete testing suite, we noticed temperatures peak at 72C, which is about the identical temperature seen by the RTX 2060 Super, however whereas consuming 10% extra energy.

It’s not all sunshine and roses although. While the cooler itself is superb, shrinking down the GPU board to accommodate it brings the identical downside right here as the remainder of the lineup. Namely, the RTX 3060 Ti is utilizing the identical 12-pin energy connector. Nvidia does embody an adapter within the field, which helps you to join one 8-pin PCIe cable to the 12-pin port, but it surely does make cable administration just a little extra of a bother. Luckily, PSU producers have already began engaged on devoted 12-pin PCIe cables, so hopefully that drawback goes away as time goes on.