Gameplay Performance
Over the past few months, we have reviewed several mid-range video cards, including the GIGABYTE RTX 3050 Gaming OC, the ZOTAC RTX 3060Ti White Edition, and the GIGABYTE Aorus RTX 3060Ti Elite.
Our PNY GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 Gaming REVEL seems to fall smack-dab in the middle of this group. For that reason, we have lined up a test suite of games at 1080p and 1440p both with and without Ray Tracing to see where this video card will perform. All the games were set to the maximum in-game settings. DLSS and FSR are utilized in games that support the technology. The PNY GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 Gaming REVEL was tested at default, out-of-the-box settings, and overclocked. We will stack our video card up against the XFX SPEEDSTER Merc 308 6600XT. Lots of run-throughs and lots of data to digest. Here we go.
F1 2022
F1 2022 was released on June 28th, 2022 on the PC and uses Codemasters Ego engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, AMD FidelityFX, and FSR. We ran the game with the highest quality settings of “Ultra High” and TAA+FidelityFX. DLSS and FSR were enabled as needed at the Quality setting for both. The built-in benchmark was used at the Imola track, in dry conditions with a far chasing cam.
Our video cards were both more than capable in F1. The 6600XT has the best result in this setting. It is almost double the frame rate of the PNY GeForce RTX 3060 12GB XLR8. There is a small advantage to overclocking. DLSS boosts our card by 20FPS, whereas the 6600XT shows a 50FPS gain.
Dying Light 2
Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC. It uses Techland’s C-Engine and supports Ray Tracing for various environmental effects including Ray Traced Soft Shadows, Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion, Ray Traced Global Illumination, and Ray Traced Reflections. It also supports both DLSS and FSR upscaling technologies. For our benchmark, we are using a custom manual run-through.
In the graphing, the game is running in DX12 and all in-game settings are at their highest values. When Upscaling is used NVIDIA DLSS Quality mode was enabled and for AMD FSR 2.0 Ultra Quality. We are using version 1.6.1c. The XFX 6600XT and the PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 are in dead heat. Upscaling gave both cards roughly a 20% gain. These are excellent frame rates for this very demanding game. Both cards were very playable, the game was very detailed. Overclocking showed about an 8% gain.
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 5 was released on PC in November of 2021. It uses the ForzaTech game engine. For our evaluation, we raise the in-game graphic settings beyond the “Extreme” preset to the maximum game settings. The “Extreme” preset does not actually utilize the highest possible settings. We, therefore, raise the rest of the settings to their highest graphics quality for our testing, this includes: SSAO Quality to Ultra, Reflection Quality to Extreme, SSR Quality to Ultra, and we disable MSAA and use FXAA instead. We also utilize AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) from the Resolution Scaling option. The built-in benchmark is used for testing.
Once again we have a dead heat. The game was smooth with sharp images. Overclocking did gain about 6% extra FPS.
Far Cry 6
Far Cry 6 was released in October of 2021 and uses the Dunia Engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and turned on. We utilize the “Ultra” graphics preset which sets all options to the highest game settings. We also test the game’s support of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 to improve performance on both GPUs.
This is getting predictable. It just depends on what you prefer here. Our overclocked PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 came out on top with FSR enabled and the 6600XT was slightly better without.
Overclocking again added about 6%. This game has excellent tropical graphics for an aging game engine and both cards perform well.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December of 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 1.6 for our testing and perform a long manual run-through driving in the game’s open world. We test using the Preset options for Ultra quality, and for Ray Tracing. The game now has three Ray Tracing modes, Low, Medium, and Ultra. This game also supports DLSS and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution FSR. We test DLSS Quality on NVIDIA GPUs and FSR Ultra Quality on AMD GPUs.
At 1080p there is little doubt which video card is the faster. Here the 6600XT is 7% better than our PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8. Once upscaling is enabled the 6600XT runs away. Both cards do a very nice job in this demanding game at 1080p. The visuals are stunning and the framerates are smooth. Upscaling is obviously a big help here, 35% gain with the 6600XT and 16% with our review card. Overclocking did not seem to do much at this resolution.
Watch Dogs Legion
Watch Dogs Legion was released on the PC in October of 2020 and uses the Disrupt game engine. We utilize the built-in benchmark for testing. We have the HD Texture pack installed and enabled for testing. We use the built-in graphics preset of “Ultra” for testing. Only DLSS is available in this game as an upscaling option.
Once again the SPEEDSTER is living up to its name. Unfortunately, there is no FSR support for this game, which is one of our most demanding selections. The PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 is thus able to forge ahead once DLSS is enabled. DLSS makes all the difference in this game with our card. The game is very playable with DLSS, but also nicely playable with the 6600XT on its own. Both overclocking and DLSS gain 6% for our test card.
1440p Gaming
Now we will up the ante and see what happens. In same game suite, the same maximum settings, rasterized run-through, and then DLSS or FSR if supported.
F1 2022
Once again we see the 6600XT perform better, even without FSR/DLSS enabled. Both video cards are more than capable. The game is smooth and fast. We can see FSR add over 40% and DLSS add 15% performance. There is an odd result with overclocking the PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 most likely a power limitation issue as discussed in the overclocking section. The resolution change enacted a 32-36% reduction in FPS.
Dying Light 2
Another close result. Both video cards did struggle a bit without the aid of upscaling. Our overclocked PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 gained 6%. DLSS/FSR added 15% extra frames and made a difference in playability. The resolution change resulted in a 33% FPS reduction.
Forza Horizon 5
This game seemed to be the least amount of struggle for our video cards. At 1440p there was minimal change in the FPS compared to 1080p and still had a smooth, enjoyable run-through. The 6600XT was just slightly faster than the PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8.
Far Cry 6
Several interesting findings come out here. First of all, the results closely mirror our 1080p testing. The 6600XT is faster without upscaling by a slightly wider margin. Both video cards arrived at the same FPS with FSR enabled. The FSR results at 1440p were nearly identical to the plain rasterized 1080p result. Overclocking gained only 3% here and did nothing for the FSR results. The FPS was reduced by about 20% at this resolution. The gameplay was very smooth and the graphics were excellent in both scenarios, however.
Cyberpunk 2077
This game was simply unplayable at this resolution and settings for either video card. The 6600XT lost over 25% performance without help from FSR. Neither DLSS nor overclocking helped the PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8. Neither video card could even gain back to 1080p plain rasterized FPS. The gameplay was choppy and the texture loading was terrible, as you could imagine.
Watch Dogs Legion
The PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 was very close to playable at 1440p with DLSS enabled. Both plain and overclocked versions reached identical FPS. The DLSS results bested the 6600XT by 16% while the plain rasterized results fell behind by 10%. Drop in performance was 22% over 1080p. For the 6600XT, FPS lost 36%. With DLSS enabled, the game on the PNY RTX 3060 12GB XLR8 was mostly smooth and graphically detailed. There is no FSR support in this game.