GeForce RTX 3060 Ti: Changing The RTX Game Under $400?
The RTX 3070 hit the market not long ago and challenged the previous RTX 2080 Ti handily, this time the RTX 3060 Ti is doing the same to the RTX 2080 SUPER and quite handily. This is the expected behavior for quite some time where the incoming 60 series class tackles the outgoing 80 series class. But if I'm honest I expected this round to more target the vanilla RTX 2080 and not the RTX 2080 SUPER, so that is a welcome move.
The card itself comes in the exact same design and cooler as its bigger brother the RTX 3070 but this time is a much brighter and more cheerful silver finish. I am not going to let the RTX 3060 Ti FE off the hook here for no illuminated GeForce RTX logo, especially since I thought this one was going to based on the way it looked when pulled from the box.
The new cooler design does allow for the card to run very cool, much cooler than expected for the unusually high 200w TDP for a 60 class series card. The GeForce RTX 3070 does retain the now expected 12pin connector but only needs a solid 8-pin to be plugged in. I did ask NVIDIA if there was any harm in using a dual 8-pin to 12-pin adapter because most of the modular PSU cables plug into dual 8-pin on the PSU itself and they assured me there was no issue.
The performance was absolutely solid. Want to pick the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for a high refresh rate 1080p gaming machine? It'll kill it. 1440p? It'll kill that too, but I would recommend stepping up a class but the 3070 will get you in the game if you're okay with dialing back some settings. You're going to find RTX enabled games running very well at the 1440p mark when paired with DLSS, especially if the game is one of the ever-growing titles that support DLSS 2.0 which is quite killer and upcoming games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Watchdogs Legions are titles you'll want to take advantage of the RTX suite with.
The real kicker here for this card is if you're a high fidelity 1080p gamer then you're going to get the absolute best experience with the latest games here. The RTX 2060 SUPER got kicked a lot for still requiring DLSS in order to have playable framerates with RT effects enabled in games, but with the RTX 3060 Ti, this is not the case. it is able to deliver very fluid and smooth performance at 1080p with everything cranked wide open, something you would have needed either a heavily overclocked RTX 2080 SUPER or an RTX 2080 Ti to pull off the last generation.
Features like AV1 might not be fully mainstream yet but the GeForce RTX 3070 carries support for it. And other features like the NVIDIA Broadcast suite are absolutely undeniable in the value department, but that one is available across a large swath of GeForce cards, but something worth mentioning still.
As far as overclocking goes the RTX 3060 Ti has fared much better than previously released RTX 30 Series cards and manages to come so close to the stock RTX 3070 performance that it really makes it an easy choice for the more cost-conscious gamers who aren't trying to push crazy high resolutions.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti has raised the bar on what to expect in terms of performance at $399 for now. It's able to deliver high frame rate gaming at 1080p and Ultrawide 1080p while still being able to punch about in the 1440p class with the RTX 3070. But its solid RTX feature support and performance all-around at 1440p keeps it firmly in the strong arm of the market for that highly coveted 1440p high refresh market but it's spectacular RT effects performance at 1080 gives those holding onto their quality 1080p panels the ability to enjoy those features without relying on DLSS to deliver excellent performance. Of course, as such with all at the time of the launch, we can only hope availability is good and pricing holds close to the MSRP otherwise you might be better off stepping up to the RTX 3070 if the pricing gets too close to that card.
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