Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Review: Ampere at $400 Beats Everything Else

[arrowflash]

Any teen sitting in a grandparent's home basement at an ordinary neighbourhood can type anything similar. Just saying.

Another kind of people that could type these sorts of things, would be any paid industry shill or shills, working to leverage consumer hype on sites and social media by astroturfing while making have-nots feel inadequate to trigger their urge to consume and purchase overpriced things they don't need. Nowadays you have marketing companies with social media departments dedicated in doing nothing else through sockpuppet accounts. Some even invent fully fledged characters for that. Also, just saying.

 

[Irata]

I'm a bit confused what you meant by your comment, is it just a jab at another paper launch exploited by scalpers I assume?

Anyways your mention of a 3060 Super got me thinking, with these performance numbers, there's plenty of room in the lineup for a base 3060 and a 3060 Super to coexist with the 3060 Ti.

Depends how they use GA 106. 3060Ti and 3070 are on GA 104, 3060 and probably the 3050Ti will be on GA 106. A 3060 super would have to slot in between the GA 106 3060 and GA 104 3060Ti.

Another thing: The Super series was probably a response to AMD‘s 5000 series. One could argue that the Super SKU were what the plain vanilla SKU should have been from the start. For Ampere it seems that nVidia launched with the Super specs from the start. That‘s just my impression.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Maybe, but why would I pay $500 for a 3060Ti AIB when I can get a 3070 FE for the same price that has better performance and lower power consumption ?

Look at the PCAT numbers - 3070FE uses 226W, the Asus 3060Ti also uses 226W and the MSI model 255(!) W for Doom.

Can't find performance numbers but as the 3070 is quite a bit ahead at 1440p, I guess it's the same at 4k.

I agree that the 3070 FE at $500 is clearly a better option than a high end AIB 3060 Ti at the same price. Right now. If you can find stock of either.

However in a few months time when lower-end AIB 3060 Ti models come out at around the $400-$420 mark, they may have better cooling than the AIB model and thus be better options.

 

[Lew Zealand]

According to Steam survey, which is not definitive but somehow representative, its GTX1060 or 1050 Ti, so both under $150, the most affordable cards for people that actually live. American excluded, cause obviously Their income, and unicorns, are outside of the realm of regular people.

Assuming that those cards were bought when they were the current generation, they are $250 and $150 cards, more expensive than you suggest so really $250 is what a lot of people were willing to spend for PC gaming.

Also remember that the 1050 Ti and 1060 were popular video cards in reasonably affordable $800-1200 gaming laptops (at the time) so those numbers are also part of those totals.

 

[Didou]

I'm a bit confused what you meant by your comment, is it just a jab at another paper launch exploited by scalpers I assume?

Anyways your mention of a 3060 Super got me thinking, with these performance numbers, there's plenty of room in the lineup for a base 3060 and a 3060 Super to coexist with the 3060 Ti.

As a general rule (& it's been somewhat exacerbated lately) there's always something slightly better (or much better) &/or cheaper &/or less power consuming right around the corner.

What's changed recently is the holy-grail level of scarcity for any tech-related products.

 

[Bulllee]

As a general rule (& it's been somewhat exacerbated lately) there's always something slightly better (or much better) &/or cheaper &/or less power consuming right around the corner.

What's changed recently is the holy-grail level of scarcity for any tech-related products.

Loads of old gear out there and quite a bit more new.
Scarcity has never been more welcome!

 

[Ren128]

Ethereum (probably misspelled that) and Bitcoin are very high again. I don't follow that stuff, but its hard not to notice when it pops as trending in your twitter feed.

Anyways, do you think this will have a negative impact on GPU prices/availability?

 

[PEnnn]

"Then again, if availability is anything like what we’re seen with the 3070, 3080 and 3090, buying a 3060 Ti is going to be extremely difficult at launch."

May I suggest a new naming convention, something like" 30xx Scalpers Edition"??

And what's the point of hammering the $400 price when you and everybody else knows it will never be sold at that price??

 

[PEnnn]

Not sure, but the 3070 FE looks very attractive to me after this review. The AIB OC models have a lower performance and higher power consumption than the 3070 FE.

If the tested AIB models are available for MSRP (once the market has settled), that would be an attractive price / perf option over the 3070FE, but given that they are at best only $50 less - or worst case same price, I‘d definitely get the 3070 FE over an AIB 3060 Ti.

Agreed, assuming one is able to find the FE anywhere!!

 

[Eldritch]

As a 5500XT 4GB owner, this would be a very good update to get to 1440p gaming.

What irks me a bit is that neither nVidia nor AMD are willing to offer a true Polaris or 1060 replacement. These GPU allowed to play then current games at high quality settings and frame rates for $200-250 back in 2016.

Would it be too much to ask for a card in the same price range that could achieve this @1440p ?

That's a great point. It would seem that the $200 cards segment which was expected to play games at reasonably high settings, is now dead.

The 1060 was launched at $250.
The 2060 was launched at $350. Also, there was no 2050.
The 3060 (ti) is launched at $399. No one is selling it at that price though and prices easily reach $530 and upto $592. Which is, obviously, absurd considering these are vendor stated prices (the above example were Gigabyte models) and not scalpers.

Quite a leap, if you ask me!
I would prefer if the PC gaming is enjoyed by larger section of society as I am getting annoyed by what is generally passed as 'gaming' by mobile developers and how new generation thinks paying to win (paid guns, item drops, xp rates, reward cards, gems etc etc etc) is part of gaming.

 

[swagman]

Will y’all ever do a cpu+gpu comparison? Like Ryzen 3 + 3070 vs Ryzen 5 + 3060ti, etc

 

[Lew Zealand]

That's a great point. It would seem that the $200 cards segment which was expected to play games at reasonably high settings, is now dead.

The 1060 was launched at $250.
The 2060 was launched at $350. Also, there was no 2050.
The 3060 (ti) is launched at $399. No one is selling it at that price though and prices easily reach $530 and upto $592. Which is, obviously, absurd considering these are vendor stated prices (the above example were Gigabyte models) and not scalpers.

Quite a leap, if you ask me!
I would prefer if the PC gaming is enjoyed by larger section of society as I am getting annoyed by what is generally passed as 'gaming' by mobile developers and how new generation thinks paying to win (paid guns, item drops, xp rates, reward cards, gems etc etc etc) is part of gaming.

Did you forget the the 1660 Super, which was a much faster card than the 1060 for a lower price, $240. The 3060 Ti was just released tomorrow, you'll need to give Nvidia more time to milk everyone with the higher-margin products before the actual value products are released, that's just sensible business practice.

 

[madboyv1]

Will y’all ever do a cpu+gpu comparison? Like Ryzen 3 + 3070 vs Ryzen 5 + 3060ti, etc

They sometimes revisit a GPU to see how they scale with different processors/processor speeds but rarely do they ever do that for the initial review. They'll try to use the "best case scenario" for processor that they have available (in this case the 3950x until they can get a a 5950x themselves) and test all cards with that to limit potential CPU bottlenecks or differences in architecture.

 

[STbob]

Forgot 4k and 1440P spend the money on a 240HZ 1080P Alienware monitor. I can never go back to 60hz. Buy a 4k sluggish monitor and make all your games run slow, hotter card and lag. Smooth as silk 1080P at 240hz in a fast pace FPS is the top of the heap. 30 or even 60 fps feels like being stuck in mud. I would keep a 1080gtx take the money and get a better monitor and don't bother with 4k if you are a FPS fast twitch type player.

 

[Irata]

Agreed, assuming one is able to find the FE anywhere!!

With the current market situation for all GPU that was highly theoretical. It seems right now you either wait or those who absolutely want / need a new card buy whatever is available for their budget.

 

[Zarak84]

Great to see the GTX 1060 included (I use one), even if it does fail miserably!

 

[Farkinell]

Forgot 4k and 1440P spend the money on a 240HZ 1080P Alienware monitor. I can never go back to 60hz. Buy a 4k sluggish monitor and make all your games run slow, hotter card and lag. Smooth as silk 1080P at 240hz in a fast pace FPS is the top of the heap. 30 or even 60 fps feels like being stuck in mud. I would keep a 1080gtx take the money and get a better monitor and don't bother with 4k if you are a FPS fast twitch type player.

1080p on anything above a 24” looks like you’re playing through a screen door. The only reason to keep that resolution in 2020 is if you need the absolute max fps for competitive reasons and aren’t too bothered about image quality or crispness.

 

[Zarak84]

Great to see the GTX 1060 included (I use one), even if it does fail miserably!

OOPS, wrong board!

 

[QuantumPhysics]

When I got to Microcenter there were about 30 people ahead of me. They had plenty of 3060Ti.
I just missed out on the FE, but they had plenty of 3rd party cards.

No 3070, 3080 or 3090 in stock for now.

 

[m3tavision]

My friends, Ampere's architecture is not engineered, nor designed for gaming. It is a hand-me-down uArch from nVidia's Business pursuits into AI/Cloud/big-business.

As such, the FRAMES in which nVidia's RTX 30 Series achieves in most benchmarks are only momentary. Because Ampere can NOT sustain frames, like RDNA2 can... and if you look at ANY game, you will see that Navi21 holds considerably more stable frames in games, than Ampere. Even nVidia's 3090 has frame rates that are all over the place and inconsistent.

While again, AMD's RDNA2 is 100% engineered for frames and consistency.

.

 

[meric]

3060 Ti is very close to 3070 in performance but considerably cheaper. On the other hand, every time I check gaming benchmarks (especially perf/watt aspect) I keep remembering what AMD accomplished with RDNA 2. I really appreciate RDNA 2's perf/watt considering it's on the same process node as first gen. Never have I imagined they would top Nvidia in perf/watt.

 

[Paultimate]

Really well done testing, That will be helpful in the future.

However saying "Ampere at $400 Beats Everything Else" is out-of-forking-touch. Say this in 6 months when the price is actually $400.

Interesting to see AMD is the 1080P king now. And a very good contender for highend 1440 and 4k considering the price.

 

[GEEM13]

I see no point in anything below the 3080 with the exception of GPU for laptops.

PC Gamers are chasing 4K 60fps and 120fps if possible.

Not true. Way more 1440p gamers looking for 144hz than 4k gamers currently. Blabber as always

 

[Paultimate]

Not true. Way more 1440p gamers looking for 144hz than 4k gamers currently. Blabber as always

Agree, as someone who plays mostly at 4k, there is a huge gaming crows that rightly chooses 1440p 144-240hz. I can personally see that framerate and input advantage more than the moderate bump in fidelity.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Not true. Way more 1440p gamers looking for 144hz than 4k gamers currently. Blabber as always

Do you even have a good card?