Graphic Card, nvidia

Review of the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio.

NVIDIA has officially introduced its GeForce RTX 3060 “Ampere” graphics card, and the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio represents the company’s high-end version of this latest midrange product. Traditionally, NVIDIA has generated a significant portion of its revenue from gamers purchasing new graphics architectures within its xx60 series, a trend that dates back to the 9600 GT, which NVIDIA designates as the “sweetspot.” Graphics cards in this category provide sufficient performance to enable users to play games at maximum settings in standard resolutions or at elevated resolutions with adjusted settings.

The new GeForce RTX 3060 retains the “sweetspot” entry price, or roughly that of the Xbox Series S. It debuts the new 8 nm “GA106” silicon on the desktop platform and allows NVIDIA’s custom board partners enormous headroom to either beef up the chip, as is the case with this MSI Gaming X Trio card, or keep costs low to come up with simple designs that skirt the baseline price. It is also designed to offer a significant performance uplift from the GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB “Pascal,” another very popular card from the NVIDIA stable. The card is designed to offer 1440p gaming with fairly high details, or 1080p gaming with maxed out raytracing. You could also leverage DLSS 2.0 to crank up the display resolution.

The latest GeForce Ampere architecture represents the second generation of RTX Technology, integrating advanced Ampere CUDA cores that support simultaneous FP32 and INT32 mathematical operations. It features second-generation RT cores that enhance intersection performance twofold compared to the prior generation, dedicated hardware for ray-traced motion blur effects, and third-generation Tensor cores that utilize the sparsity phenomenon in neural networks to substantially boost AI inference performance.

The GeForce RTX 3060 is equipped with 3,584 Ampere CUDA cores, 112 Tensor cores of the third generation, 28 RT cores based on the Ampere architecture, 112 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 48 raster operation pipelines (ROPs). NVIDIA enhances the offering by increasing the memory capacity to 12 GB, which is double that of the RTX 2060. The specifications for memory bus width and type remain consistent at 192-bit GDDR6, while the memory clock has seen a modest increase to 15 Gbps.

MSI enhances the performance of the RTX 3060 with its premier GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio. This graphics card features an advanced VRM solution and a robust Tri Frozr cooling system designed to maintain exceptionally low noise levels during gaming. It is adorned with an abundance of RGB lighting and presents a sophisticated aesthetic when installed. Additionally, MSI has equipped this card with its highest factory-overclocked speeds, achieving a maximum GPU Boost frequency of 1852 MHz, surpassing the reference speed of 1777 MHz. While MSI has not disclosed any pricing information for this model, it is anticipated that the cost will be significantly higher than the initial price point, which is unlikely to remain valid for more than a day or two.

Shader
Units
ROPs Core
Clock
Boost
Clock
Memory
Clock
GPU Transistors Memory
GTX 1060 3 GB 1152 48 1506 MHz 1708 MHz 2002 MHz GP106 4400M
3 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1060 1280 48 1506 MHz 1708 MHz 2002 MHz GP106 4400M
6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1660 1408 48 1530 MHz 1785 MHz 2000 MHz TU116 6600M
6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti 1536 48 1500 MHz 1770 MHz 1500 MHz TU116 6600M
6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060 1920 48 1365 MHz 1680 MHz 1750 MHz TU106 10800M
6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700 2304 64 1465 MHz 1625 MHz 1750 MHz Navi 10 10300M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
GTX 1080 2560 64 1607 MHz 1733 MHz 1251 MHz GP104 7200M
8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super 2176 64 1470 MHz 1650 MHz 1750 MHz TU106 10800M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64 4096 64 1247 MHz 1546 MHz 953 MHz Vega 10 12500M
8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti 3584 88 1481 MHz 1582 MHz 1376 MHz GP102 12000M
11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT 2560 64 1605 MHz 1755 MHz 1750 MHz Navi 10 10300M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 2304 64 1410 MHz 1620 MHz 1750 MHz TU106 10800M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 3584 48 1320 MHz 1777 MHz 1875 MHz GA106 13250M
12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
MSI RTX 3060
Gaming X Trio
3584 48 1320 MHz 1852 MHz 1875 MHz GA106 13250M
12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2070 Super 2560 64 1605 MHz 1770 MHz 1750 MHz TU104 13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII 3840 64 1802 MHz N/A 1000 MHz Vega 20 13230M
16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080 2944 64 1515 MHz 1710 MHz 1750 MHz TU104 13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super 3072 64 1650 MHz 1815 MHz 1940 MHz TU104 13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti 4864 80 1410 MHz 1665 MHz 1750 MHz GA104 17400M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti 4352 88 1350 MHz 1545 MHz 1750 MHz TU102 18600M
11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070 5888 96 1500 MHz 1725 MHz 1750 MHz GA104 17400M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 3840 96 1815 MHz 2105 MHz 2000 MHz Navi 21 26800M
16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT 4608 128 2015 MHz 2250 MHz 2000 MHz Navi 21 26800M
16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080 8704 96 1440 MHz 1710 MHz 1188 MHz GA102 28000M
10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit