Conclusion
In this review, we have tested and benchmarked the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING video card in overclocking. If you haven’t already, check out our original review where we did a deep-dive on 1080p, and 1440p performance on the video card and also looked at Ray Tracing and DLSS performance.
In today’s review, we overclocked the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING card to the max and performed the same deep-dive by testing at both 1080p and 1440p. In this way we could see the impact that overclocking makes at both resolutions, naturally, 1440p is more GPU limited in games, than 1080p. It was important to get an idea of how the video card performs at both resolutions.
Overclocking
Overclocking the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING was made easy with EVGA’s Precision X1 software. It provided all the controls we needed to make an overclock successfully. We were able to increase the Power Target by 12%, control fans individually, set fan curves, and even play with Voltage. There are many other features built into Precision X1 that will help you overclock the video card, such as Boost Lock and Hardware Monitoring.
With Precision X1 we managed to overclock the GPU to an offset of +200. This resulted in a near 200MHz increase from the default GPU Boost. Remember, this card really has a GPU Boost clock set at 1777MHz, but in reality, it runs much higher, to begin with, out-of-the-box. Ours managed to run at 1897MHz without even touching anything. Therefore that was our baseline for overclocking. With a +200 offset the GPU actually ran at an average of 2094MHz, and we peaked higher. That’s a 10% overclock from the baseline of the default operation or an 18% difference from the reference spec of 1777MHz.
On the memory side of things we also achieved an ok overclock, though we did wish it would overclock higher. You see, the memory bandwidth is the one constraint on this video card. While it has an amazing 12GB of VRAM, it is ultimately constrained by the 192-bit bus width and 360GB/s of bandwidth. The video card is memory bandwidth starved. To alleviate this, you want as high of a memory overclock as you can get. By default, it runs at 15GHz. We managed to get it up to 17GHz, which isn’t bad, but we did want more. This boosted bandwidth up to 408GB/s.
Power utilization followed a linear trajectory, nothing out of the ordinary. It did not consume a ton of power to achieve the overclock. It seemed efficient in both power and temperature. Though the fans do run at a high rotation by default, the GPU was still well cooled enough to overclock. We did not feel the temperature or the video card cooling device was holding back the overclock.
Overclocking Performance
On average we experienced between 8-10% uplift in performance in every game, at both 1080p and 1440p. There were a couple of outliers, like Wolfenstein Youngblood which had a 21-22% uplift. But otherwise, you mostly won’t see it that high in most games.
At 10% performance uplift, we were able to make some games playable where they were not before, especially at 1080p. We found that we could enable Ray Tracing plus DLSS at 1080p, and with the overclock games were much more playable. DLSS and the overclock make Ray Tracing playable at 1080p in the most demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion.
The Final Points
Overclocking is a sure-fire way to ensure the best value for your money when buying a GeForce RTX 3060 GPU-based video card. Overclocking the memory is a big factor in improving performance overall. The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING video card overclocked very well, higher than we thought it would. It has a rather good Power Target increase so you shouldn’t run into too many TDP issues. Mainly you’ll be restricted by physical factors such as the quality of yields of both GPU and memory.
The overclock provided us a 9-10% uplift in performance, which made a difference. If you want to enable Ray Tracing at 1080p you will still most likely need to also use DLSS to make it playable, and by overclocking you can improve the experience.
EVGA seems to have done a good job cooling the video card, the temperature was never an issue while overclocking, and the fans are remarkably quiet at high speeds. This is a well-built video card and has some chops when it comes to overclocking. It may be a no-frills, just get it done video card, but that also extends to overclocking, it just gets it done.