Introduction
Today NVIDIA continues to roll out its line of GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs and video cards. The new Ampere generation for desktops, known as the GeForce RTX 30 Series is a series of GPUs, and it makes sense NVIDIA wants to stack the deck with GPUs at every major price point and gaming segment. NVIDIA started at the top on September 16th with the GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition at an MSRP of $699 and went to the very top with the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition at an MSRP of $1,499. Then on October 27th NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition at an MSRP of $499.
Each of these video cards takes care of a certain segment of gamers, price points, and playable game settings and resolutions. The GeForce RTX 3090 takes the cake offering the best possible this generation. The GeForce RTX 3080 offers gamers a high-end 4K experience and all settings on kind of gameplay. The GeForce RTX 3070 offers a good 4K experience but allows all settings on with Ray Tracing and such at 1440p.
Now it’s time for the next entrant into the bunch, and that is the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at an MSRP of $399. While you may think the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is meant for 1080p gaming, you may be surprised that it is capable of much more. NVIDIA actually states that the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti can perform faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, a video card that is $300 more expensive from the last generation.
Last Generation’s RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2080 SUPER
Before we talk about what the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers, and what it aims for, let’s review last generation’s $399 equivalent. The GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER launched in July of 2019. This was the successor and replacement/upgrade from the original GeForce RTX 2060 which launched six months earlier in January 2019 at $349.
The GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER launched at an MSRP of $399. The video card uses the TU106-410 chip at 12nm FinFET. This one has 2176 CUDA Cores, 64 ROPs, 136 TMUs, 32 RT Cores, and 272 Tensor Cores. It runs at a boost clock of 1650MHz. It has an upgraded 8GB (6GB on original RTX 2060) of GDDR6 at 14GHz on a wider 256-bit memory bus giving it 448GB/s of memory bandwidth. The TDP is 175W.
Therefore, price-to-price, the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at $399 compares to the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER as the upgrade from that, and not the original RTX 2060.
However, NVIDIA says the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti should perform as well as the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER. That’s a whole different ballgame, so let’s look at the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, which debuted at an MSRP of $699.
The GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER launched at the end of July in 2019. This was the successor/upgrade from the GeForce RTX 2080 which launched in September of 2018. The GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER debuted at an MSRP of $699. It is based on the TU104-450 chip at 12nm FinFET. It has 3072 CUDA Cores, 64 ROPs, 192 TMUs, 48 RT Cores, and 384 Tensor Cores. It runs at a boost clock of 1815MHz. It has 8GB of GDDR6 at 15.4GHz on a 256-bit memory bus providing 495GB/s of memory bandwidth. The TDP is 250W.
Video Card Comparisons
Based on these prices, our comparison setup in this review will be very focused. Instead of showing every single video card, we will focus on the price and performance comparisons. For that, we will be using a GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition video card. That is the $399 equivalent to the $399 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition by price. That will show what kind of a performance upgrade you get at the same price. We will also include the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition which will be our performance comparison. Though the video card is much more expensive, it is theorized that this is the level of performance the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition will attain this generation.
Finally, to pull in something from the AMD side of things, we look toward the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. The Radeon RX 5700 XT was launched in July of 2019. It’s MSRP was $399 at launch, exactly the same price as the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FE. Therefore, the price comparable video card from AMD right now is still the Radeon RX 5700 XT. AMD has not yet released a newer RDNA2 card at the $399 price point, so the Radeon RX 5700 XT is the current video card to compare with. If you are running a Radeon RX 5700 XT this review will show you what kind of an upgrade you’ll get with the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FE.