EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra Review

Name: EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra
Brand: EVGA
Price: 450 USD

W1zzard

on Dec 16th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: EVGA

(27 Comments) »

Introduction

Today, we have with us the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra, the company's most premium custom-design RTX 3060 Ti Ampere graphics card. EVGA combines NVIDIA's new performance-segment GPU with its latest-generation iCX3 Interactive cooling technology. The FTW3 Ultra also gets EVGA's highest state of tuning for the RTX 3060 Ti, its most aesthetically-appealing cooling solution, and an innovative cooler-PCB combination. EVGA's board design is surplus to the thermal requirements of the RTX 3060 Ti, letting its designers create an aggressive fan-curve that prioritizes low noise, while a proprietary network of sensors on the card lets it accurately respond to thermal loads for effective cooling.

The new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti by NVIDIA is designed to offer extreme quality gaming at 1440p resolution with RTX raytracing enabled, as well as high refresh-rate competitive e-sports gaming at 1440p and 1080p. NVIDIA's design goal with the new Ampere family of GPUs has been to vastly improve the performance of real-time raytracing, bringing it to more segments. NVIDIA claims that the RTX 3060 Ti beats the previous-generation RTX 2080 Super, a $700 high-end graphics card, but at a much lower starting price of just $400. The GeForce Ampere architecture heralds NVIDIA's 2nd generation RTX real-time raytracing technology that combines traditional raster 3D with raytraced elements, such as lighting, reflections, shadows, and global illumination.

The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is based on the same 8 nm "GA104" silicon as the RTX 3070 launched in October. It features 38 out of 48 Ampere streaming multiprocessors physically present on the silicon, yielding 4,864 CUDA cores, 152 Tensor cores, 38 RT cores, 152 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. Its memory subsystem is unchanged from the RTX 3070 (or even the RTX 2060 Super, for that matter). It features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gbps, over a 256-bit wide memory interface, achieving a memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s. The 2nd generation RTX technology combines new Ampere CUDA cores that offer concurrent FP32+INT32 math capability with 2nd generation RT cores, which offer higher performance, and the new 3rd generation Tensor core that leverages the sparsity phenomenon in deep-learning neural nets to improve AI inference performance significantly. NVIDIA leverages AI for its RTX denoiser and DLSS performance enhancement.

As mentioned earlier, EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra comes with the company's highest factory-overclocked speeds for the silicon, with the GPU Boost frequency dialed up to 1800 MHz compared to the 1665 MHz reference. This is backed by a PCB featuring a dual- 8-pin PCIe power input configuration, higher power limits, and an innovative air-through PCB construction. Unlike many other custom-design RTX 30-series cards, the EVGA card sees the PCB length roughly match the card's overall length, meaning you get power connectors right at the edge of the card, where you'd want them. However, large holes have been punched into the PCB and the backplate to let airflow from the third fan of the cooler flow through. Its dual-slot iCX3 cooler features an aluminium fin-stack heatsink with a number of copper heat pipes, ventilated by a trio of fans.

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Review Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 2060	$300	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$330	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080	$330	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$380	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$400	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$650	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$370	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070	$340	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$450	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII	$680	3840	64	1802 MHz	N/A	1000 MHz	Vega 20	13230M	16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080	$600	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$690	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti	$400	4864	80	1410 MHz	1665 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Ultra	$450	4864	80	1410 MHz	1800 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$1000	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$500	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800	$580	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	23000M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$650	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	23000M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$700	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit

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.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.