EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6 review

Is it good for cryptocurrency? The company also announced an entirely separate line of crypto-mining-specific cards under the “Nvidia CMP HX” brand. (CMP is for “Cryptocurrency Mining Processor.”) These CMP cards will specifically focus their efforts on mining coins like Ethereum more efficiently than standard GPUs, while also (hopefully) freeing up the rest of the supply chain to gamers instead. Find more in EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6 review.

The RTX 3060 comes with 3,584 Ampere CUDA cores, 112 3rd generation Tensor cores, 28 Ampere RT cores, 112 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. NVIDIA sweetens the deal by doubling the memory amount over the RTX 2060, up to 12 GB. The memory bus width and memory type are unchanged—192-bit GDDR6. The memory clock has been increased slightly to 15 Gbps.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• DLSS
• PCI-Express 4.0
• 20% faster than RTX 2060
• Faster than RTX 2070
• Nvidia’s excellent software/features: G-Sync, DLSS, Reflex, and more
• EVGA’s XC Black Gaming is small, cool, and quiet
• Overclocked out of the box
• Hardware-accelerated raytracing
• Support for HDMI 2.1, AV1 decode
• 8 nanometer production process

Cons

• Cooler too loud
• Probably not enough stock to satisfy demand
• Power limit not increased
• Gains over last generation smaller than for other Ampere cards

Specs – EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6

• GPU Boost Clock 1777 MHz
• Graphics Memory Type GDDR6
• Graphics Processor Nvidia Ampere GA106
• GPU Base Clock 1320 MHz
• DisplayPort Outputs 3
• VirtualLink Outputs No
• Number of Fans 2
• Graphics Memory Amount 12 GB
• DVI Outputs 0
• HDMI Outputs 1
• Card Width double
• Card Length 7.94 inches
• Board Power or TDP 170 watts
• Power Connector(s) 1 8-pin

Compare EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6

Price

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming 12G, along with many other models of RTX 3060, will retail starting at $329, just $70 less than the MSRP of the RTX 3060 Ti ($399). And while that card did wow us with higher-than-expected results in almost every test we ran, it still doesn’t account for the significant gap in price-to-performance between itself and its non-Ti variant.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6 review

Build

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

Design

EVGA’s GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming 12G is a dual-slot, two-fan graphics card that measures barely shy of 8 inches long (7.94 inches, to be exact), just over 1.5 inches shorter than Nvidia’s Founders Edition design of the RTX 3060 Ti. 

Ports

The card uses a single traditional eight-pin power connector on the top of the card. Moving to the backplane of the card, it’s all standard fare for the RTX 30 Series, with three DisplayPort 1.4b ports, plus one HDMI 2.1 output.

Memory

The RTX 3060 GPU comes with twice the available VRAM of its predecessor, doubling the 6GB from the RTX 2060 Founders Edition to 12GB in the newer card. That’s also 4GB more than the RTX 3060 Ti, and, on the drawing board, this should give the RTX 3060 a viable lead over its predecessors in more intensive titles running at resolutions of 1440p or higher.

Frame rates

1440p 60FPS gaming is also achievable for the GeForce RTX 3060 depending on the game, but if you’re looking to game on something like Call of Duty, etc then you’re going to need to dial down some settings to drive over 100FPS. Thankfully you’ve got the Ampere-powered DLSS technology here which will also help out at 1440p.

Performance falls in line with all of the other GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards at 1080p, where it will easily give you 1080p 60FPS in all of the latest games with a few adjustments to in-game details. You can hit high FPS in esports titles if you had a 1080p 120-165Hz panel for games like Valorant, Apex Legends and Call of Duty with ease on the RTX 3060 at 1080p.

Temperatures

GPU temps are solid on the smaller EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING graphics card, with load temps of 66-68C during benchmarking and gaming and 63C with the card manually overclocked and the fans cranked up to 100%.

Cooling

EVGA’s thermal solution uses two heatpipes that are extra long to cover a lot of surface area. he VRM circuitry circled in red is cooled by the airflow of one of the fans right above. Two chokes sit directly under the heatpipes, for both of which EVGA has placed a thermal pad to ensure good heat transfer.

Power consumption

Power consumption is virtually identical to all of the other custom GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards with 260W total system power consumption.

Non-gaming power consumption of the GeForce RTX 3060 is a bit higher than comparable previous-generation cards from NVIDIA. Multi-monitor power draw is also much better than on AMD because AMD runs their memory clock at full speed in that state, while NVIDIA dials it down to conserve power.

With well below 200 W, power consumption is barely worth mentioning. It’s slightly lower than the RTX 2070/Super, but not by much, so PSU requirements are similar. Overall energy efficiency is slightly lower than the other Ampere cards, but still considerably better than what Turing offered.

Overlock

EVGA gave the card a large factory overclock to 1852 MHz rated boost, which turns into an average clock frequency of 1911 MHz when measured across our whole gaming test suite. Other cards tested today aren’t much different: MSI tops out at 1905 MHz (rated 1852 MHz), Palit at 1928 MHz (rated 1875 MHz), and Zotac at 1926 MHz (rated 1867 MHz). These differences are tiny indeed.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6 Performance review

All RTX 3060s feature 3584 CUDA cores, which is a dramatic 87% leap forward from the 1920 cores found in the RTX 2060. As we’ve seen in each card this generation, that doesn’t mean you’ll receive 87% more FPS, and, in fact, it’s less of a jump than we’ve seen on other 30-series cards. Impressive, nonetheless. The card I’m looking at matches the default Boost Clock of 1.78GHz, though regularly exceeded this and hovered just under 1.9GHz while gaming.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6 customer review

My First GPU

Where do we start? GPU’s are incredibly hard to find at the time of this writing. I just built my first PC back in November of 2020 and decided to wait it out on getting a GPU since they’re incredibly expensive compared to the rest of the PC. Big mistake! I originally wanted a RTX 3080, but they are very difficult to find at the moment. So I settled on this little dual fan RTX 3060 XC by EVGA. I got caught up in the GPU hunt with everyone else and figured that since I settled for a 3060 that I would be disappointed. I am definitely not! The step up from integrated graphics in an i7 10700k is astronomical! Has no problems playing 3D graphics from titles created in 2021. Quiet fans. Plus, this is one of the cheaper GPU’s to get. High quality and a cheap price – what more could you ask for??? If you are lucky enough to purchase this card, don’t forget to visit the EVGA website!

In short, the pros:
-Quiet fans, low power consumption with great capabilities
-Great support from EVGA
-Low price!

Now, for the cons:
-It’s 2021 and if you don’t RGB – then you’re not cool (least that is what it feels like these days). This card has no flashy lights. It’s just a plain ol’ GPU. Very minor con in my opinion at the end of the day.
-No one likes to talk about it, but you can mine for crypto with this card (which I do on occasion when not using this for gaming). All 3060’s have a limiter in them that takes about half the MH/s that this card has the potential to do. There’s a workaround out there, but I’d advise on individuals to read up on this issue before attempting the workaround.

Don’t be disappointed if you have to settle for the lowest tier RTX card. This thing packs a mighty punch!

By Beeyard at Best Buy

Alternate of EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC gaming 12G-P5-3657-KR 12GB GDDR6

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090

SPECIFICATIONS

Stream Processors: 10,496Core Clock: 1.40 GHz (1,70 GHz boost)Memory: 24 GB GDDR6XMemory Clock: 19.5GbpsPower Connectors: 2x PCIe 8-pinOutputs: HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a

REASONS TO BUY

+GPU performance to beat+Up to 8k performance

REASONS TO AVOID

-Extremely expensive-Very largeAdvertisement

You can’t beat the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 when it comes to performance. With a whopping 24GB of RAM, no game or, more importantly, heavy graphics project will suffer performance issues. In fact, you can even get some 8K performance at 60 fps out of the 3090. It is an incredibly expensive unit, and quite large too, so it will probably be too much GPU for most users. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is, in essence, a replacement for the Titan so it’s meant more for the creative user tackling intensive 3D and video rendering than for the avid gamer. Even so, it comes with a massive reduction in price compared to the Titan, even if it’s still out of most people’s budget.

Editor’s recommendations

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• RX 6600 XT vs RTX 3070 comparison – which is better for gaming?