The new Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti is here, and like its fellow RTX 3000 series cards, it's almost entirely out of stock already. That's not just because scalpers and miners have been buying up the cards (although they have) but because the performance is excellent, too. If you can find one at close to its MSRP of $400, it's a great buy for anyone but those with the most powerful of RTX 2000 series graphics cards.
The RTX 3060 Ti is a mid-range solution designed to replace the aging RTX 2060 Super. It offers 4,864 CUDA cores, 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and a boost clock of 1,665MHz. This gives it performance in excess of the RTX 2080 Super — around 10 percent faster in most instances. There are times when that latter card's higher bandwidth give it an advantage, but for the most part the 3060 Ti is the more capable card, representing a $300 drop in price from that older GPU as well.
On top of that, the new RTX 3060 Ti enjoys 38 second generation RT cores, giving it vastly improved ray tracing performance — around that of the 2080 Ti, and only marginally worse than the RTX 3070 in some cases. Its faster Tensor cores also give it the ability to deliver faster and higher quality DLSS as well.
On top of it all, the RTX 3060 Ti also only demands 200W of power, which while not low, it is lower than the RTX 2080 Super's 250W demand. That makes it the only RTX 3000 card so far that has a lower power draw than the GPU it replaces.
The 3060 Ti should be a popular card this generation, if it can be found in stock anywhere any time soon. Now all eyes turn to AMD for its potential RX 6700 release, which should be a direct competitor.
