Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition Review

The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the latest addition to Nvidia’s “Ampere” series of graphics cards. It strikes a good compromise between performance and pricing, making it the best graphics card for most consumers. You’ll be able to run all of the greatest PC games at 1440p with Ultra settings and ray tracing and possibly 4K if you utilize DLSS with this card. In certain games, the card outperforms the Super from two years ago.

Graphics Card	RTX 3060 Ti	RTX 3080	RTX 3070	RTX 2080 Super	RTX 2060 Super
Architecture	GA104	GA102	GA104	TU104	TU106
Process Technology	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N	TSMC 12FFN	TSMC 12FFN
Transistors (Billion)	17.4	28.3	17.4	13.6	10.8
Die size (mm^2)	392.5.	628.4	392.5	545	445
TPCs	19	34	23	24	17
SMs	38	68	46	48	34
GPCs	5	6	6	6	3
GPU Cores	4864	8704	5888	3072	2176
Tensor Cores	152	272	184	384	272
RT Cores	38	68	46	48	34
Base Clock (MHz)	1410	1440	1500	1650	1470
Boost Clock (MHz)	1665	1710	1725	1815	1650
VRAM Speed (Gbps)	14	19	14	15.5	14
VRAM (GB)	8	10	8	8	8
VRAM Bus Width	256	320	256	256	256
ROPs	80	96	96	64	64
TMUs	152	272	184	192	136
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)	16.2	29.8	20.3	11.2	7.2
Tensor TFLOPS FP16 (Sparsity)	65 (130)	119 (238)	81 (163)	89	57
RT TFLOPS	39.7	58.1	39.7	31.6	23.8
Bandwidth (GBps)	448	760	448	496	448
TDP (watts)	200	320	220	185	185
Dimensions	242x112x38 mm	285x112x38 mm	242x112x38 mm	267x116x38 mm	229x113x38 mm
Weight	1031g	1355g	1034g	1278g	975g
Launch Date	Oct-2020	Sep-2020	Oct-2020	Jul-2019	Jul-2019
Launch Price	$-399	$-699	$-499	$-699	$-399

Features and Chipset:

The Ampere architecture of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is the same as that of the RTX 3080. This isn’t the graphics card that will push Watch Dogs Legion to 4K with ray tracing, but it is capable of doing so at 1080p. Each of these cards now contains 128 CUDA cores, compared to the Turing SM’s 64. The Tensor Core is the second piece of the puzzle that makes ray tracing seem reasonable when playing the greatest PC games. The Tensor core intelligently scales a scene up to full resolution using data from Nvidia’s Supercomputers. This means you may profit from ray tracing’s image quality without sacrificing too much performance.

Specification:

Despite having a cut-down GA104 GPU at its not-so-gooey silicon core, the RTX 3060 Ti delivers more than a pittance of CUDA Cores (4,864). This is significantly higher than the RTX 2080 Super’s 3,072 and demonstrates the generational leap made possible by the Ampere architecture. This is a reference Founders Edition card, thus it won’t be overclocked right out of the box. The RTX 3060 Ti, the next generation of Nvidia’s flagship Turing architecture, adds a cooler and a revamped rasterized rendering pipeline across the Ampere architecture.

But this isn’t the first time we’ve been able to say that about an xx60-level graphics card without exaggeration or caveats. For practically every aspect of programming, including PC gaming, scalability is still the name of the game. That isn’t so much a reality with which we must contend.

Design:

One of the best-looking graphics cards we’ve ever seen is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition. It has the same 12-pin power connector as the other Founders Editions in the Ampere range but uses 10% less energy. While the cooler itself is fantastic, the fact that the GPU board has to be shrunk to accommodate it has the same issue as the rest of the range.

Synthetics:

UL Benchmark created 3DMark: Port Royal, a Ray-Tracing benchmark. It uses the DirectX 12 API and is powered by an in-house engine. The 3DMark benchmark for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is also powered by the same engine.

Performance and benchmarks:

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti outperforms the graphics card from the previous generation. In synthetic testing, the new card is 7% quicker in Time Spy Extreme and 0.5 percent faster in Port Royal. With an 8 percent performance advantage when ray tracing is enabled, the third-generation RT Cores get to extend their wings.

At this price, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a mid-range graphics card capable of demanding 4K and ultra-rare 1440p gameplay. It costs about the same as the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, but it performs 35 percent better in our tests. There’s enough headroom here to check out what 4K gaming has to offer – just don’t expect the RTX 3080’s buttery-smooth 60fps experience.

Gaming:

Valve’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) is a multiplayer first-person shooter. It uses the DirectX 9 API and runs on the Source engine. Benchmark is a replay showcase from The International 2019’s grand finals match between OG and Liquid. Kunos Simulazioni created Assetto Corsa, a simulation racing game. Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

It uses the DirectX 11 API and runs on the Crystal Tools engine. Creative Assembly’s Total War: Warhammer II is a strategy game based on the WarScape engine. Eidos-Shadow Montréal’s of the Tomb Raider is a single-player adventure game based on the Foundation engine.

Power draw, thermals, and noise:

In terms of raw performance, Nvidia’s new RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition graphics card outperforms the earlier 20-class option while drawing more power than the older 60-class option. This cards cooler is substantially quieter than the cooler on the more costly $700 RTX 3080 FE. This cooler has the same design as the RTX 3070 FE, therefore it performs similarly in terms of temperature and acoustics.

Pros:

It maintains its cool.
Fashionable design.
Exceptional ray-tracing results.
Excellent 1080p video quality.
Drivers for a stable launch.
The price-to-performance ratio is excellent.

Cons:

A 12-pin power connector is a pain.
Only entry-level 4K performance is available.

Conclusion:

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition is only matched by its step-up RTX 3070 sister when it comes to price, performance, and features for 4K and 1440p gaming. This provides excellent value.