Final words and conclusion
Final words
If only the GeForce RTX 3060 could be purchased for the advertised 329 USD, it would definitely be an attractive product. However, we have to face the fact that the world is a place with cryptocurrency miners hogging every GPU they can get their hands on, chip shortages, and COVID, increasing the demand for home PC gaming. All these variables create a silly mix of shortages and raised prices. For the 3060 NVIDIA did implement a restriction for miners, hopefully, it'll help. The card series performance itself is decent, at best. We do want to note that the performance fluctuated quite a bit per game title. Overall I'd say the direct competitors are RTX 2070, and team Red's Radeon RX 5700 series are close in performance (though lacking DXR/DLSS/12GB). We had hopes that NVIDIA would have enabled the full shader processor stack, they didn't, and as such sometimes we feel the performance to be a little dim for something at this price level. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for this fact alone, absolutely would have my preference over the non-Ti mode, even with fewer graphics memory. Realistically the GeForce RTX 3060 is a product series we can still recommend if the price is right; 300 to 350 USD is steep for something with x060 in its name.
The above plot is a spread over five cards we have tested, NVIDIA did not release a reference product so the base RTX 3060 entry was simply downclocked to reference values. This however reveals a performance differential of roughly up to 2% on a spread of games at 2560x1440. Depending on resolution and game application, you'd could hit 3% or 4% maybe. This means the (average) difference between the reference and fastest cards is roughly 2 maybe 3 FPS based on a 100 FPS average spread.
It does, however, offer performance levels in that RTX 2070 range, with the added benefit of 12 GB GDDR6 graphics memory included, and that I deem to be a sweet spot for the gamers that have a monitor with a resolution of up to 2560x1440. For some easier on the GPU gaming titles, Ultra HD as well. Once again, NVIDIA brings the advantage of DLSS, something that AMD is sorely missing on the latest 6000 series. It gives NVIDIA the resources of creating a leap in performance, as you do not need to run any form of antialiasing over the rasterizer/shading engine. That's a win any time in my book, as it's cheap extra performance. Be wary of DLSS, though; only quality DLSS 2.0 modes I deem worth it; otherwise, image corruption will be visible quite fast. Let's take Cyberpunk 2077:
Above: Ultra DLSS performance mode
Above: Quality performance mode
As you can see, there is substantial image degradation when selecting the DLSS ultra-performance mode. The grid in the back shows moire effects, also focus on the girl's shadow to the left. Also, the lettering on that metal plate behind the girl is much fuzzier. It is an incredible dilemma. Play around with the setting if you have an NVIDIA RTX graphics card and see for yourself what you deem to be acceptable. It ain't perfect, but it will free up your graphics processor, which can be used and utilized for other stuff.
ZOTAC has a funky-looking product with the WHITE edition AMP card, it is nice and compact. The WHITE color however is a little icky in a dark LED-lit PC. Honestly, we'd advise the dark-colored varying for better overall looks. At the time of writing, we have not received final MSRP just yet, but if the generic MSRP of the GeForce RTX 3060 sits at the 329 USD marker we expect this product to sit in a steep 369 USD range. Let's break down the test results though.
Cooling & noise levels
You've seen the FLIR images; the card is slightly lighting up, nothing really worrying though. Temps under stress load sits just under 65 degrees C, and that's okay. Acoustics-wise, this is not premium-level silence; you can hear the card while gaming. So it's not good, but not too bad either.
Energy
More recently, we changed the way we measure power consumption to bring you more precise numbers. Pulling manufacturer registers with, say, Afterburner creates the problem that you never know precisely what you are measuring. TGP versus TDP versus TBP. With our new methodology, we accurately measure the graphics card's power feeds, that's the PCIe PEG connectors and PCI-Slot. As such, we display the total board power. I mean, you can measure the GPU solely (TGP), but you also feed other components, like Memory, ICs, and let's not forget cooling and RGB. This card reveals a typical gaming power draw of 165~170 Watt averaged out.
Coil whine
The AMP WHITE exhibits minor amounts of coil squeal, very little, and it's hard to hear. In a closed chassis, that noise would fade away in the background. Graphics cards all make this in some form, especially at high framerates; this can be perceived.
Pricing
NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3060 base price at USD 329. We have not yet received the MSRP for this specific card, but this product with the tweak, you may add another 40 USD and the non OC model should have the standard MSRP of 329 USD. But with a predicted low availability, it's hard to really make a factual statement here if prices inflate due to e-tailers hiking up prices.
Tweaking
The graphics card is tweaked right out of the box. But can be pushed further manually. You'll reach 16 to 16.5 Gbps on the memory easily, a +90MHz on the Boost, and for the lucky ones even a notch higher (that's on top of that factory tweak). Important, slide open the power limiter. More power budget allows the GPU to do what it likes to do the best, go fast. Combined with the tweaks mention on the OC page, you'll sit in the realm of 2000~2050 MHz on the boost frequency. The 3060 is memory bandwidth limited on that 192-bit wide memory bus, so it likes more air to breathe in. the tweak we've been able to apply was 1.71 Gbps (effective data-rate) here you'll gain a lot of extra performance. combined with that turbo in the 2050~2085 MHz domain. Remember that values differ per workload and thus the game title. Remember, for our tweak to be called valid, it needs to pass four games in a full benchmark run at Ultra HD to be called stable. The AMPO certainly is one of the better tweakable graphics cards.
Conclusion
ZOTAC has a clean product here, under the hood things look good in phase and component design. Now I don't mean that in rendering performance, as that is fairly close and similar for all cards. No, I mean cooling and acoustics. Also, the looks, while nice, are a bit bland. For example, the backplate bracket has a different tint of white compared to the front side, it's a little yellow. And it's in these small details where the differences are made. Being a value proposition yes, it has a plastic shell and just two fans. But acoustics stay at rather average levels; your temps are fine though. The performance is a tiny bit higher than baseline, yet with a manual tweak you'll easily gain at least 5% extra performance out of it. There's little wrong with that, and for you as a consumer, it is imperative to have choices as graphics cards have gotten more than expensive enough already. The 12 GB GDDR6 is really nice value that will help you at least a few years in your VRAM needs. The performance does not disappoint either; I mean, roughly RTX 2070 levels are the best comparative not that I can make. If you stick to 2560x1440 as a resolution, you'll be able to play some games with Hybrid raytracing as well, and while we cannot care the slightest bit about raytraced shadows, it's the quality reflections that make the difference for me. Just drive around in London in Watch Dogs: Legion, looks at water and fire reflections in Battlefield V as an example; that's where it makes a difference. You're going to need DLSS 2.0 compatibility in games to make the best of it. But all these variables have been inserted into the RTX 3060 for you. Surely the card is not a powerhouse, but you can frag along with acceptable framerates. Overall we think this is a lovely compact card. I'm not sure about the white design inside a dark chassis, as that is very contrasting. The game performance however is nice, the cooling level good, the acoustics somewhat poor though. We can recommend it if you can purchase it at acceptable prices, which we know, is a paradox.
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