Packaging

The Card

EVGA created a new design identity for their GeForce 30 graphic cards. Instead of a transparent cooler shroud, we now get classic black paired with silver metal highlights and a red highlight on the back. Earlier GeForce 30 cards from EVGA had red plastic trim on the edges, which some jokingly called "clown lips"—these have been removed for the RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate.


Dimensions of the card are 28.5 x 11.5 cm, and it weighs 1019 g.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and one HDMI 2.1. Interestingly, the USB-C port for VR headsets, which NVIDIA introduced on the Turing Founders Editions, has been removed—guess it didn't take off as planned. The DisplayPort 1.4a outputs support Display Stream Compression (DSC) 1.2a, which lets you connect 4K displays at 120 Hz and 8K displays at 60 Hz. Ampere can drive two 8K displays at 60 Hz with just one cable per display.

Ampere is the first GPU to support HDMI 2.1, which increases bandwidth to 48 Gbps to support higher resolutions, like 4K144 and 8K30, with a single cable. With DSC, this goes up to 4K240 and 8K120. NVIDIA's new NVENC/NVDEC video engine is optimized to handle video tasks with minimal CPU load. The highlight here is added support for AV1 decode. Just like on Turing, you may also decode MPEG-2, VC1, VP8, VP9, H.264, and H.265 natively, at up to 8K@12-bit.

The encoder is identical to Turing. It supports H.264, H.265, and lossless at up to 8K@10-bit.


Unlike the Founders Edition, which uses the NVIDIA 12-pin power connector, EVGA uses standard PCIe power plugs. The card uses two 8-pin power inputs, which are specified to provide up to 375 W.


The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti does not support SLI. Only the RTX 3090 has very limited SLI support.

Teardown

EVGA's thermal solution uses four heatpipes. The heatsink not only cools the GPU, but also provides cooling for memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.