Is it worth investment – ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card? The Asus TUF uses the same core technical configuration as all GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards, with 4,864 CUDA cores, 38 dedicated second-gen ray tracing cores, and 80 ROPs. Get details in ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card review.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extra HDMI 2.1 port
- Dual-BIOS switch
- Dead silent and exceptionally cool
- Spectacular 1440p gaming
- Attractive all-metal design
- Superior ray tracing performance vs. AMD GPUs
Cons
- 8GB of GDDR6 memory limits future 4K gaming potential
- Massive size
- Factory overclock provides no real-world performance uplift
Specs
- GPU GA104
- Architecture Ampere
- CUDA Cores 4864
- Tensor Cores 152
- Transistor Count 17.4 Billion
- Manufacturing Process Samsung 8nm
- Boost Clock 1785MHz (OC), 1755MHz (Gaming)
- TDP 200W
- Power Connectors 1x 8-pin PCIe
- RT Cores 38
- Memory 8GB GDDR6
- Display Connections 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, 2x HDMI 2.1
- Dimensions 301 x 143 x 54mm
Compare ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card
| RTX 3060 Ti | RTX 2060 SUPER | RX 5700 XT | RTX 2080 Ti FE | RTX 3080 FE | RTX 3070 FE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ampere | Turing | RDNA | Turing | Ampere | Ampere |
| Stream Processors/ CUDA Cores | 4864 | 2176 | 2560 | 4352 | 8704 | 5888 |
| Boost frequency | 1665Mhz | 1650Mhz | 2010 Mhz | 1635Mhz | 1710 MHz | 1725 MHz |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 | 11GB GDDR6 | 10GB GDDR6X | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 352-bit | 320-bit | 256-bit |
Price
We’re comparing the $460 Asus TUF RTX 3060 TI against Nvidia’s own GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition, of course. We’re also including results for the $500 GeForce RTX 3070 and last-generation’s $350 RTX 2060, $500 RTX 2070, and $800 2080 Super, as well as AMD’s new $580 Radeon RX 6800 and last-gen $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT.
ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card review
Build
The TUF 3060 Ti includes a massive aluminum heatsink bristling with heatpipes. A polished coldplate provides coverage for the memory modules as well, with the help of well-placed thermal pads. The black shroud is also aluminum and holds a trio of axial fans with nine blades apiece and dual ball bearings.
Design
While the Founders Edition measures 9.5 inches long and 3.75 inches wide in a standard two-slot design, the pleasantly plump Asus TUF RTX 3060 Ti falls a hair under 12 inches long and a full inch wider. It’s also thicker, expanding to fill 2.7 slots.
Ports
The stock layout includes a single HDMI 2.1 connection and a trio of DisplayPorts, but the TUF adds a second HDMI 2.1 output—perfect for people who want to power both a monitor or TV and a VR headset without swapping wires constantly. It’s a welcome inclusion.
RGB lighting
It’s not all business on this card. Asus equipped it with an illuminated RGB TUF logo on its edge, and a tiny RGB strip of light underneath that. Those mild accents are the only RGB lighting on the card, and they’re controllable with the Aura Sync feature included as part of Asus’s Armoury Crate package.
Frame rate
The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is an exceptional no-compromises 1440p graphics card, as we covered extensively in our Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition review. It exceeds 60 frames per second in all games tested at that resolution—often by a wide margin—even with all visual bells and whistles enabled. Getting your games to run at 90 fps shouldn’t be an issue in most games.
BIOS
Asus ships this card with a welcome dual-BIOS switch next to its sole 8-pin power connector, and in an especially welcome move, it clearly labels the behaviors exhibited by each BIOS position with labeling on the backplate.
Cooling
Asus builds on that solid foundation with a fantastic custom cooler. While the $400 Nvidia Founders Edition delivers relatively cool temperatures and unobtrusive, but definitely noticeable fan noise, the Asus TUF RTX 3060 Ti stayed a frosty 58 degrees Celsius even under intense gaming loads—a whopping 14 degrees chillier than Nvidia’s FE card. Better yet, the Asus TUF remains inaudible even with its default high-performance BIOS.
The fans stop spinning when GPU temperatures fall below 55 degrees Celsius, ensuring silence while you’re engaged in lower-intensity activities on your desktop.
Power consumption
The ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3060 Ti OC Edition was running at just 56C — which is actually quiet cool under load, while the overclocked card with fans at 100% saw it drop to 48C.
Power consumption is perfectly in line with other GeForce RTX 3060 Ti cards, with the entire Ryzen 7 3800X system using 300W under load and up to 330W or so when overclocked.
The RTX 3060 Ti only has a TDP of 200W compared to the 250W of the RTX 2080 Super. This means that power consumption is lower even though they have comparable performance, at least in our synthetic benchmarks. Power savings are reflected while running games at max with the maximum load being put at 199.3W for the card and 378.83W for the whole system. Idle power is also fairly low at only 12.58W.
Overclocking
Clock speeds for the card are slightly higher than stock since this is an overclocked version. ASUS is promising a minimum of 1785MHz Boost under OC mode and 1755MHzz Boost while using Gaming Mode. Both modes are higher compared to the base boost of the RTX 3060 Ti which NVIDIA puts at around 1670MHz. Its 8GB GDDDR6 VRAM, however, is still at 14Gbps.
Software
Aura Sync manages lighting for all the Asus products in your system, while Asus’s GPU Tweak II software gives you finer control over your GPU’s behavior if you’re into fine-tuning things. GPU Tweak II’s software-enabled OC mode can boost the TUF’s clock speed by another 30MHz with a simple button-click.
As a GeForce RTX 30-series GPU, the TUF supports all of Nvidia’s far-flung software features, such as DLSS 2.0, Shadowplay, GeForce Experience, Nvidia Broadcast, Nvidia Reflex, Ansel super screenshots, CUDA and Optix optimizations for creation workloads, and Nvidia’s superior NVENC encoder for video creation.
ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card Performance review
The RTX 3060 Ti also delivers fast 1080p gameplay if you have a blazing-fast 120Hz-plus monitor. You can use it for a solid 4K gaming experience as well, though the 8GB memory capacity will probably hold the graphics card back at 4K in future titles.
You’re going to get stellar 1080p performance out of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, with the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3060 Ti OC Edition we’re matching the performance of the RTX 3070 when overclocked in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Not too bad at all.
at 4K in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla we’re looking at 39-42FPS average depending on stock/overclocked with the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3060 Ti OC Edition. In Shadow of War the card beats the RTX 2080 SUPER but loses to the RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti cards — still, we have 74-79FPS average at 4K here which is easily playable in a game like Shadow of War.
The ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3060 Ti OC Edition beats the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition in Shadow of War at 1080p, loses to the RTX 2080 Ti in Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Still, for a card that is $500+ cheaper than the $1199 that the RTX 2080 Ti debuted at is impressive in itself.
Alternate of ASUS TUF gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti V2 OC edition graphics card
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
SPECIFICATIONS
CUDA cores: 4,864Base clock: 1,410 MHzBoost clock: 1,665 MHzTFLOPs: 16.20Memory: 8GB GDDR6Memory clock: 14 GT/sMemory bandwidth: 448 GB/s
REASONS TO BUY
+Finally! Something a little more affordable+2080 Super performance+Under $400
REASONS TO AVOID
-Annoying 12-pin power connector-Not quite good enough for 4KAdvertisement
The best value Ampere to date, the RTX 3060 Ti is very closely related to the RTX 3070. Both utilize the same GA104 GPU (the RTX 3060 Ti has fewer SMs enabled), with the same 8GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit bus.
While 17% less capable in core count, the RTX 3060 Ti makes up for it with some judicious GPU Boost frequencies. That partially explains why the RTX 3060 Ti can be within 17% to just single digits off the pace of the RTX 3070, despite operating at a silicon disadvantage. Not bad for a $399 card (if you can find it for that price).
If you haven’t already done the maths: At $399, the RTX 3060 Ti is 20% cheaper than the RTX 3070, so performance per dollar is on the up with the diminutive graphics card. That’s why we love it so; it’s a great GPU for the full stack of resolutions and has decent ray tracing capability to boot, courtesy of second-generation RT Cores.
If the RTX 3080 or RTX 3070 seem out of reach, the RTX 3060 Ti certainly makes for a decent stand-in. Perhaps most impressive of this graphics card is how it stacks up to the 20-series generation: It topples the RTX 2080 Super in nearly every test.
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