With the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, NVIDIA is finally pushing Ampere below the $500 price point, which makes it attractive to an even larger audience of gamers, at least in theory. With supply levels as low as they are, it will be a while before we see the RTX 3060 Ti that cheap. Right now, prices are inflated by around +50%, so expect to pay $600–$700 for an RTX 3060 Ti. The new RTX 3060 Ti is based on the same GA104 graphics processor as the RTX 3070, just with some rendering units disabled. The RTX 3060 Ti is targeted at definite 1440p gaming with 60 FPS and entry-level 4K at lower details or with DLSS enabled. Raytracing is a core focus of NVIDIA's Ampere lineup, too. The RTX 3060 Ti will offer a great RT experience at 1080p and 1440p in most titles.

EVGA has overclocked their RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra to a rated boost of 1800 MHz out of the box, which is +135 MHz, or 8%. Averaged over our whole test suite at 4K resolution, we measured a GPU frequency of 1957 MHz, 80 MHz higher than the 1877 MHz we saw on the Founders Edition. Guess these boost ratings are a bit optimistic, but other custom designs aren't doing much better. The EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra is 3% faster than the Founders Edition at 1440p. Against other cards, it beats the RTX 2080 Super by 5%, which makes it only 9% slower than the RTX 2080 Ti that cost a fortune not long ago. The performance uplift over the RTX 2060 is a staggering 61%, 41% more than the RTX 2060 Super. The RTX 3060 Ti sits right in the middle of the AMD competition—the RX 5700 XT is 23% behind the RTX 3060 Ti, and the RX 6800 is 17% faster, suggesting we'll see an AMD RX 6700 Series soon, which will go head-to-head with the RTX 3060 Ti.

With these performance numbers, the RTX 3060 Ti is an excellent choice for gaming at 1440p. It also has enough horsepower to handle 4K, but you'll have to reduce details a little bit in the most demanding games. Considering the price, this will be a reasonable tradeoff for many. I can also imagine plenty of 1080p Full HD gamers wanting the RTX 3060 Ti because it will net them enough FPS for high refresh-rate monitors even with enabled raytracing at maximum details—just check out the Average FPS page, where the card scores over 144 FPS on average.

Raytracing performance on the RTX 3060 Ti is comparable to other Ampere cards. Of course, there is still a significant performance hit from enabling raytracing, but it's much smaller than on AMD, which introduced raytracing just weeks ago. For example, RTX 3060 Ti raytracing performance is comparable to the RX 6800 non-XT with DXR raytracing enabled—a card that's otherwise 20% faster in rasterization. Of course, there are only a few raytracing titles out there, but the new game consoles are using RDNA 2 technology, so this might change in the future. NVIDIA also has DLSS, which uses upscaling to improve performance, a technology AMD does not have at all, but they are working on something similar.

EVGA has created a new cooler design for their GeForce 30 graphics cards—I really like it. The backplate design is pretty, too, because of various silver highlights and a red trim for additional impact. The cooling solution on the FTW3 Ultra is smaller than the top-end RTX 3060 Ti custom designs, only slightly thicker than two slots, and the card uses the standard-slot height, so it will fit in nearly all cases. That does mean some compromises had to be made in terms of cooling potential. We measured 70°C under load, which is a few degrees better than the Founders Edition. In our apples-to-apples direct cooler comparison test, we confirmed that the design is indeed slightly more powerful than the FE cooler. It looks like EVGA absolutely wanted to beat the 73°C of the Founders Edition, which makes the FTW3 Ultra a bit noisier than the NVIDIA reference design. With 34 dBA, the card isn't noisy in any way, just more audible than the Founders Edition, which is very quiet. It's surprising how well NVIDIA's dual-slot design can compete with much bigger coolers. NVIDIA introduced fan stop on their Founders Edition with Ampere, which means all board partners are expected to adopt this crucial feature, too. Outside of gaming, the fans on the EVGA FTW3 Ultra will shut off completely for the perfect noise-free experience.

A unique feature on EVGA graphics cards is the iCX sensors, which are nine additional thermal probes located at strategically important spots on the PCB: GPU, memory, and VRM phases. Sensor buffs will have a clear view on all these measurements from within the EVGA Precision software, which also offers overclocking and fan control.

While NVIDIA is using their new 12-pin power connector on the Founders Edition, EVGA is sticking with standard dual 8-pin PCIe—good. Other RTX 3060 Ti cards I've reviewed use quite a bit more power to realize the factory overclock—not so the EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra. It's the least power demanding custom design, only 20 W higher than than Founders Edition. Still 8% worse energy efficiency for 3% OC performance gained is not impressive, although much better than the -20% we saw on some cards.

While there has been a lot of discussion on 10 GB VRAM for the GeForce RTX 3080, even more so considering AMD offers 16 GB on their cards, the RTX 3060 Ti will be perfectly fine with 8 GB. It offers substantially lower shading power compared to these "4K" cards, so the limiting factor will be the shading-rate capability, not the amount of memory. Next-gen consoles do have more memory, but their 16 GB is for the OS, game, and graphics combined, which means effective graphics memory is close enough to the 8 GB offered by the RTX 3060 Ti. I've been hearing good things from developers about the direct-to-GPU disk streaming capabilities of the new consoles, especially on PS5, which could reduce VRAM requirements considerably. Guess we'll have to wait and see. Should you ever feel VRAM is running out, just sell the RTX 3060 Ti and buy whatever card is right at that time.

NVIDIA is positioning the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition at $399, which is an extremely competitive price. Today, two weeks after launch, there is zero stock of the RTX 3060 Ti, no matter the model. I'm seeing a bunch of cards listed on eBay, sold by scalpers for around $600 or $700, which is not worth it. The official MSRP for the FTW3 Ultra is $450, or $50 higher than the Founders Edition. Looking at my results, I'm not convinced if such a price increase can be justified, but other custom designs are similarly positioned. The out of the box factory overclock yields 3% performance, or the equivalent of $12. The cooler is technically a little bit better, but I'm not convinced it's worth trading +4 dBA for -3°C. The iCX sensors, on the other hand, can definitely be worth some money, especially if you like to keep a close eye on temperatures. What I suspect will happen in the foreseeable future, as stock trickles in, is that prices will move closer to their respective MSRPs, with cards selling out quickly, no matter the price. The NVIDIA Founders Edition will only be available in tiny volume, just enough to pop up from time to time so that people believe in the "$399" MSRP. Let's hope I'm wrong and the supply situation normalizes soon so that more people can enjoy these fantastic new cards.