Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new GeForce graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduces its Ampere GPU. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel previous generations at everything.
The Ampere GPU architecture has a lot to be talked about in this review, but so does the new RTX lineup. The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ampere lineup earlier this month & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ampere architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ampere and how it performs against its predecessors.
Today, we will be taking a look at a custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black. This card was provided by NVIDIA for the sole purpose of this review & we will be taking a look at its technology, design, and performance metrics in detail.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History
Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.
The Ampere GPU does many traditional things that we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:
- New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
- New Turing Tensor Cores
- New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
- New Shading Enhancements
- New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
- New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
- New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
- New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. With the launch of the GeForce RTX 3060, the GeForce RTX 30 series now starts at $329 US followed by $399 US for the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, $499US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090.
The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in-line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 the "BFGPU" and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan-based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.
With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point, the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point while the RTX 3060 Ti replaces the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER at the same price point. The GeForce RTX 3060 on the other hand is primarily meant to replace the GeForce RTX 3060 while offering twice the VRAM capacity. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2014-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | Titan X (Maxwell) | Titan X (Pascal) | Titan Xp (Pascal) | Titan V (Volta) | Titan RTX (Turing) | GeForce RTX 3090 |
| Price | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $2999 US | $2499 US | $1499 US |
| Ultra Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti? |
| Price | $649 US | $649 US | $699 US | $999 US | $999 US | $999 US? |
| Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Price | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US |
| High-End Tier | GeForce GTX 970 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3070 |
| Price | $329 US | $379 US | $379 US | $499 US | $499 US | $499 |
| Mainstream Tier | GeForce GTX 960 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660 |
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB |
| Price | $199 US | $249 US | $249 US | $249 US | $399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US |
$399 US $329 US |
| Entry Tier | GTX 750 Ti GTX 750 |
GTX 950 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 |
TBA |
| Price | $149 US $119 US |
$149 US | $139 US $109 US |
$139 US $109 US |
$159 US $149 US |
TBA |
In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA's RTX technologies are being widely adopted by major game engines and APIs such as Microsft DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.
In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Card
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is going to be a brand new entry in the RTX 30 series lineup. It is aimed at the mainstream segment of around $330 US and will deliver performance close to the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER while coming close to the GeForce RTX 2080 with RTX & DLSS options enabled.
NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3060, not just for any gamer but all gamers who want to have the best graphics performance at hand to power the next-generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. It's not just the FPS that matters these days, it's visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Card Specifications - GA106 GPU & 12 GB GDDR6 Memory
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card lies the GA106 GPU. The GA106 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA106 GPU is the third gaming GPU that NVIDIA has produced.
The new shader core on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture is 2.7x faster, the new RT cores are 1.7x faster while the new Tensor cores are up to 2.7x faster than the previous generation Turing GPUs. The 2nd Generation RT core delivers dedicated hardware-accelerated ray-tracing performance & features twice the ray/triangles intersection with concurrent RT graphics and compute operations.
For the GeForce RTX 3060, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 28 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 3584 CUDA cores, 112 TMUs. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units. The graphics card has a TDP of 170W.
In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3060 comes packed with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory runs across a 192-bit bus wide interface and features an effective clock speed of 15.00 Gbps which delivers a cumulative bandwidth of 360 GB/s which is slightly higher bandwidth than the RTX 2060 6 GB model & you also end up with twice the memory while Ampere's brand new compression architecture makes sure that the GPU isn't bandwidth starved.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications:
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | Ampere GA106-300 | Ampere GA104-200 | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-300 |
| Process Node | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm |
| Die Size | TBC | 395.2mm2 | 395.2mm2 | 628.4mm2 | 628.4mm2 |
| Transistors | TBC | 17.4 Billion | 17.4 Billion | 28 Billion | 28 Billion |
| CUDA Cores | 3584 | 4864 | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
| TMUs / ROPs | 112 / 64 | 152 / 80 | 184 / 96 | 272 / 96 | 328 / 112 |
| Tensor / RT Cores | 112 / 28 | 152 / 38 | 184 / 46 | 272 / 68 | 328 / 82 |
| Base Clock | 1320 MHz | 1410 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1440 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1780 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
| FP32 Compute | 13 TFLOPs | 16 TFLOPs | 20 TFLOPs | 30 TFLOPs | 36 TFLOPs |
| RT TFLOPs | 25 TFLOPs | 32 TFLOPs | 40 TFLOPs | 58 TFLOPs | 69 TFLOPs |
| Tensor-TOPs | 101 TOPs | 192 TOPs | 163 TOPs | 238 TOPs | 285 TOPs |
| Memory Capacity | 12 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 10 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Speed | 16 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 384 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 760 Gbps | 936 Gbps |
| TGP | 170W | 175W | 220W | 320W | 350W |
| Price (MSRP / FE) | $329 US | $399 US | $499 US | $699 US | $1499 US |
| Launch (Availability) | 25th February 2021 | 2nd December 2020 | 29th October 2020 | 17th September 2020 | 24th September 2020 |
EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black In Detail
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black comes in the updated styling of EVGA's packaging where the card stands vertically and on the inside is held in place by cardboard supports. Inside that cardboard support, it's wrapped in multiple padded antistatic bags, a good combo for safe travels.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black is a surprisingly small card as all the other cards I've worked with this generation from both vendors have been quite large. It's refreshing to hold something so compact and modern as it started to feel like the days of reasonable-sized graphics cards were over. But that doesn't stop EVGA from stuffing two large fans onto the card.
In terms of the two fans, you have a pair of large chunky swept fans you've likely come to expect from EVGA with their raised logo adorned all over. The two fans are surrounded by a very subdued all-black shroud that is quite clean and free of any lighting, a plus to those who don't want to deal with RGB or the software to control it.
The Rear of the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black is a rather uneventful affair and one of the efforts to maintain the $329 MSRP of the design. You will however find hints of the ever-growing trend of allowing air to pass through the PCB with the dinky cutouts towards the rear of the card. The effectiveness of these cutouts in aiding cooling wasn't really tested but it's a fun little addition, to say the least.
Power connectors include a single 8-Pin PCIe power connector along the back edge of the card. The card does not feature any sort of multiple vBIOS options and is set to the reference clocks for the GeForce RTX 3060 aiding in maintaining that price point. There are overclocked models but with their price premium and how well our EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black sample clocked I'm not sure I'd bother with spending the extra.
Rear I/O on the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black are much more akin to what you've likely grown to expect from modern graphics cards. The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black maintains the triple Display Port 1.4 adapters and a single HDMI 2.1 making this a great option for those newer TVs if you're looking to upgrade a home theater PC.
Clean and simple is the best way to describe the overall aesthetic of the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black as it'll manage to fit right into most any build thanks to its sleek monochromatic design and white text, free of lighting means you don't have to fight with any additional software to keep it clean.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 10. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
*Note on Resizable BAR. The GeForce RTX 3060 marks the beginning of the rollout for NVIDIA with Resizable BAR support. With Radeon supporting it through Smart Access Memory and my test bench is fully compliant with both, going forward this feature will be enabled through the testings. So in this review and future reviews, it will be noted that the results are with that feature enabled.
Test System
| Components | X570 |
|---|---|
| CPU | Ryzen 9 5900X (stock) |
| Memory | 32GB Hyper X Predator DDR4 3600 |
| Motherboard | ASUS TUF Gaming X570 Plus-WiFi |
| Storage | TeamGroup Cardea 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 |
| PSU | Cooler Master V1200 Platinum |
| Windows Version | Latest verion of windows at the time of testing |
| Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling | On if supported by GPU and driver. |
Graphics Cards Tested:
| GPU | Architecture | Core Count |
Clock Speed | Memory Capacity |
Memory Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX 3070 FE | Ampere | 5888 | 1500/1730 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti FE | Ampere | 4864 | 1410/1665 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| EVGA RTX 3060 XC Black | Ampere | 3584 | 1320/1780 | 12 GB GDDR6 | 15Gbps |
| AMD Radeon RX 5700XT | Navi 10 | 2560 | 1605/1755/1905 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER | Turing | 2176 | 1470/1650 | 8GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
| NVIDIA RTX 2060 FE | Turing | 1904 | 1365/1688 | 6GB GDDR6 | 14Gbps |
Drivers Used
| Drivers | |
|---|---|
| Radeon Settings | 21.2.3 |
| GeForce | 461.72 |
- All games were tested at 1080p, UW 1080p, and 1440p resolutions for traditional rasterized games and 1080p and 2560x1440 (QHD) for Ray Traced gaming tests.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
- The "reference" cards are the stock configs.
Firestrike
Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike which runs at 1440p and 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.
Time Spy
Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.
Port Royal
Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to really tax the performance of the graphics cards that either have hardware-based or software-based ray tracing support.
Thermals
Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.
*Hot Spot only reported on cards that feature that monitoring point.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.
DOOM Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan powered idTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next-generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the two major PS4 exclusives that rocked their way onto the PC scene with massive acceptance and sales. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by the Decima Engine and has been ported to DX12. We used the in-game benchmark to account for performance.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate UW 1440p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility
Total War Saga: Troy
Total War Saga: Troy is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.
DOOM Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan powered idTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next-generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the two major PS4 exclusives that rocked their way onto the PC scene with massive acceptance and sales. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by the Decima Engine and has been ported to DX12. We used the in-game benchmark to account for performance.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate UW 1440p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility
Total War Saga: Troy
Total War Saga: Troy is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.
DOOM Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan powered idTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the two major PS4 exclusives that rocked their way onto the PC scene with massive acceptance and sales. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by the Decima Engine and has been ported to DX12. We used the in-game benchmark to account for performance.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate UW 1440p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility
Total War Saga: Troy
Total War Saga: Troy is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title, and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy. SotTR features Ray Traced Shadows and enabled in the benchmarks with the game set to the 'Highest' preset and RT Shadows at High.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Control
Control is powered by Remedy's Northlight Storytelling Engine but severely pumped up to support multiple functions of ray-traced effects. We ran this through our test run in the cafeteria with all ray tracing functions on high and the game set to high.
Battlefield V
Battlefield V was one of the earlier games in the RTX 20 Series lifecycles to receive a DXR update. Battlefield V was tested on the opening sequence of the Tirailleur war story as it's been consistently one of the more demanding scenes for ray traced reflections that are featured in this game.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus was the third entry into the Metro series and as Artym ventures away from the Metro he, and you, are able to explore the world with impressive RT Global Illumination. RTGI has proven to be quite an intense feature to run. Advanced PhysX was left disabled, but Hairworks was left on.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Boundary
Boundary is a multiplayer tactical shooter...in space. It's not out yet so treat this one as more of a synthetic benchmark as there are likely to be quite a few improvements but for now, we had access to the benchmark and it's a doozy to run. Featuring full raytracing effects for the benchmark.
Amid Evil
Amid Evil is a high-energy old-school shooter that seems like an unlikely recipient of RT features, but here we are with insane DXR support in a modern retro shooter. Feature RT Reflections, RT Shadows, and NVIDIA's DLSS support we had to put this one through the rounds and see how things went. The RTX version of this game is still in beta but publicly available for those who want to try it. We tested with all RT features on and DLSS disabled.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title, and because of that, we test this title in DX12. I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy. SotTR features Ray Traced Shadows and enabled in the benchmarks with the game set to the 'Highest' preset and RT Shadows at High. DLSS was used only when labeled.
Call of Duty Modern Black Ops Cold War
Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is the latest installment of the Call of Duty Series. Returning with DX12 support just like the Modern Warfare remake we tested this game during the opening of the Fractured Jaw level with the highest settings selected.
Control
Control is powered by Remedy's Northlight Storytelling Engine but severely pumped up to support multiple functions of ray-traced effects. We ran this through our test run in the cafeteria with all ray tracing functions on high and the game set to high. DLSS was enabled for this title in the quality setting when it was available.
Battlefield V
Battlefield V was one of the earlier games in the RTX 20 Series lifecycles to receive a DXR update. Battlefield V was tested on the opening sequence of the Tirailleur war story as it's been consistently one of the more demanding scenes for ray traced reflections that are featured in this game. DLSS was enabled for this game when available.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus was the third entry into the Metro series and as Artym ventures away from the Metro he, and you, are able to explore the world with impressive RT Global Illumination. RTGI has proven to be quite an intense feature to run. Metro Exodus also supports DLSS so it was used in our testing. Advanced PhysX was left disabled, but Hairworks was left on.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Boundary
Boundary is a multiplayer tactical shooter...in space. It's not out yet so treat this one as more of a synthetic benchmark as there are likely to be quite a few improvements but for now, we had access to the benchmark and it's a doozy to run. Featuring full raytracing effects for the benchmark as well as DLSS, we ran that in Quality mode when available.
Amid Evil
Amid Evil is a high-energy old-school shooter that seems like an unlikely recipient of RT features, but here we are with insane DXR support in a modern retro shooter. Feature RT Reflections, RT Shadows, and NVIDIA's DLSS support we had to put this one through the rounds and see how things went. The RTX version of this game is still in beta but publicly available for those who want to try it. We tested with all RT features on and DLSS enabled.
Graphics cards and power draw have always been quite synonymous with each other in terms of how much performance they put out for the power they take in. Measuring this has not always been the most straightforward when it comes to accuracy and methods for reviewers and end-users. NVIDIA has developed their PCAT system, or Power Capture Analysis Tool in order to be able to capture direct power consumption from ALL graphics cards that plug into the PCIe slot so that you can get a very clear barometer on actual power usage without relying on hacked together methods
The Old Way
The old method, for most anyway, was to simply use something along the lines of a Kill-A-Watt wall meter for power capture. This isn't the worst way, but as stated in our reviews it doesn't quite capture the amount of power that the graphics card alone is using. This results in some mental gymnastics figuring out how much the graphics card is using by figuring the system idle, CPU load, and the GPU load and estimating about where the graphics card lands, not very accurate, to say the least.
Another way is to use GPU-z. This is the least reliable method as you have to rely entirely on the software reading from the graphics card. This is a poor method as the graphics cards vary in how they report to software when it comes to power usage. Some will only send out what the GPU core itself is using and not consider what the memory is drawing or any other component.
The last way I'll mention is the use of a multi-meter amperage clamp across the PCIe slot by way of a riser cable with separate cables then more power clamps on all the PCIe power cables going into the graphics card. This method is very accurate for graphics card power but is also very cumbersome and typically results in you having to watch the numbers and document them as you see them rather than plotting them across a spreadsheet.
The PCAT Way
This is where PCAT (power capture analysis tool) comes into play. NVIDIA has developed quite a robust tool for measuring graphics card power at the hardware level and taking the guesswork out of the equation. The tool is quite simple to set up and get going, as far as components used there are; a riser board for the GPU with a 4-pin Dupont cable, the PCAT module itself that everything plugs into with an OLED screen attached, 3 PCI-e cables for when a card calls for more than 2x 8-pin connectors, and a Micro-USB cable that allows you to capture the data on the system you're hooked up to or a secondary monitoring system.
Well, that's what it looks like when all hooked up on a test bench, you're not going to want to run this one in a case for sure. Before anyone gets worried, performance is not affected at all by this and the riser board is fully compliant with PCIe Gen 4.0. I'm not so certain about those exposed power points however, I will be getting the hot glue gun out soon for that. Now, what does this do at this point? Well, two options: Plug it into the computer that it's all running on and let FrameView include the metrics, but that's for NVIDIA cards only so a pass, OR (what we do) plug it into a separate monitoring computer and observe and capture during testing scenarios.
The PCAT Power Profile Analyzer is the software tool provided to use to capture and monitor power readings across the PCI Express Power profile. The breadth of this tool is exceptionally useful for us here on the site to really explore what we can monitor. The most useful metric on here to me is the ability to monitor power across all sources, PCIe power cables (individually), and the PCIe slot itself.
Those who rather pull long-form spreadsheets to make their own charts are fully able to do so and even able to quickly form performance per watt metrics. We've found a very fun metric to monitor is actually Watts per frame, how many watts does it take for the graphics card to produce one frame at a locked 60FPS in various games, we'll get into that next.
Control Power
Control was the first game that we wanted to take a look at running at 1440p with RT on, and then again with RT off.
From these results for Control is shows that NVIDIAs measurements and claims of improvements were accurate, but it's not always the case. We tested Forza Horizon 4 in a spot to test the same way again but this time at 1440p and looking at when we target a 1440p60 scene in this game
Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black was a surprisingly fun affair. Loading up MSI Afterburner and cranking the Power Limit to the max at 111% we were easily able to hit +150MHz on the core resulting in a gaming frequency of ~2050MHz up from the ~1920-1950 at stock and the memory we were able to add an additional +1400 for a maximum bandwidth boost to 427GB/s from 360GB/s. It's clear the memory is going to play a bigger benefactor in the performance boost so it might be worth it to relegate the power from the core OC and let it keep the memory fed for maximum boost and minimal power impact.
Firestrike
Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike which runs at 1440p and 4K and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.
Time Spy
Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Watchdogs Legion
Watchdogs Legions sees a return of the Disrupt Engine they've been using since the early days with the original Watchdogs but this time it has been updated to next-generation feature support. Dropping DX11 for DX12 we see much better utilization than in the past. Being one of the recent top sellers it earned a place in our test suite.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the two major PS4 exclusives that rocked their way onto the PC scene with massive acceptance and sales. Horizon Zero Dawn is powered by the Decima Engine and has been ported to DX12. We used the in-game benchmark to account for performance.
Aftermarket cards will be all you're going to find for the RTX 3060 lineup as NVIDIA did not design and release a Founders Edition model With that said the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black was designed to target that MSRP and what they delivered was not only well built and attractive but also an example of what you, the end-user, should be looking for in a card of this class.
The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black is a clean card void of the pointless flash that does nothing more than to drive up the cost of cards in this price bracket and instead focuses on delivering just what you need. The $329 MSRP may be hopeful in today's market but when other vendors are dumping the RTX 3060 configuration in designs and asking more than what the RTX 3060Ti should be going for then the XC Black has a rightful place in the market with realistic expectations.
The PX1 Dual fan cooler on the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black is more than effective enough for the GPU core it's keeping tame with GPU thermals staying well under 70C during heavy gaming loads and the noise kept to a minimal. Very seldom was I able to even hear that the card was getting stressed on the open test bench.
Overall performance of the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black was fine, it wasn't mind-blowing, but it wasn't exactly underwhelming either. Coming in around the RTX 2060 Super/ RTX 2070 and RX 5700XT in typical gaming loads but much better than the RTX 2060 when RT functions were introduced. The real benefit from the RTX 3060 going forward will likely be found in expanded support for Resizable BAR, so keep an eye out for that in future titles.
But as it stands, the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black delivers an excellent gaming experience for those who care more about what's on their screen than what's on their graphics card design. No flash, no backplate, no-fuss, and NO built-in premium on the pricing. Needless to say that EVGA has delivered just what the RTX 3060 was supposed to be and did it at the $329 MSRP. Now, based on the insanity of today's going rates you're going to be best off sitting on the queue over at EVGA's website and waiting because for this card you don't need to be paying crazytown prices otherwise you really are better suited to target the higher end cards.
The post EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black – Built For MSRP When Very Few Are by Keith May appeared first on Wccftech.
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