Nvidia’s been pretty good with its graphics card releases over the last couple of years, and the boost in power its new 3000-series RTX cards have when compared to even just a single generation ago is astounding. While most websites love talking about benchmarks and numbers, I’d like to take a different approach; I’d like to actually talk my general experience in gaming with the RTX 3060 Ti.
Efficiency
The RTX 3060 Ti is a brilliantly small GPU. Sure, it’s not as small as lower-end GPUs, but it’s definitely much smaller than I expected it to be, largely thanks to advances in architecture and engineering from Nvidia’s 20-series cards. Moving away from Turing and on to Ampere has definitely done the new line of graphics cards a service, as is evidenced by Nvidia’s claims that the 3060 Ti’s power is equivalent to that of a 2080 Super.
The plus side, and it’s a pretty major one, is that the 3060 Ti performs like quite the beast despite only needing a single 8-pin power connector. And when I say it performs, I mean even Cyberpunk 2077 managed to run at acceptable framerates with RTX bells and whistles. Speaking of which…
Speaking of RTX
It’s clear that ray tracing is the next major step forward game developers are taking in making video games look great. The new consoles have built-in ray tracing hardware for games that might want to take advantage of it, and AMD’s admittedly still-immature implementation in its new cards. So despite its proprietary nature, RTX is definitely quite important. Nvidia had a couple of years to help mature the tech somewhat, and it shows.
In games where RTX is an option, the lighting essentially makes things look way better. Of course, this is also down to each game’s implementation. Battlefield V’s take on ray traced lighting is cool, if not uninspired. Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City looks downright stunning. Interestingly, I’ve found that games that use darkness and coloured lighting in their settings to be some of the more inspired takes on using ray tracing. Control and Metro Exodus are still the most interesting and visually stunning uses of RTX.
But what about the RTX 3060 Ti?
The Zotac RTX 3060 Ti is an absolutely fantastic graphics card, especially for its MRP of Rs. 35,900. It’s essentially one of the best mid-range GPUs out there right now, but that, of course, assumes you can actually get your hands on it at that price. Nvidia’s supply chains have been troubled at the best of times, and with the global pandemic having messed with production lines for just about every company out there, managing to find a reasonably-priced RTX 3060 Ti is borderline impossible. Just about every store is charging quite the premium for it.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060Ti India price and availability
While the Zotac variant comes with a five year warranty, availability at Nvidia’s suggested MRP of Rs. 35,900 is unlikely. Listings on Amazon have it going for almost Rs. 60,000 though you can find it offline at select retailers for around Rs. 43,000. And it’s not just Zotac either, cards from other OEMs suffer from price gouging too.
So what’s your option for a fairly priced 3060 Ti? Nvidia’s own version of the card can be had for the advertised Rs. 35,900 price assuming you can find it in stock. The company’s web store redirects you to its distribution partner RPtech where you can send an enquiry for the card . We did just that last week and have not received any reply from RPtech, suggesting that supply hasn’t quite sorted itself out just yet.
The Verdict
Setting aside problems with actually finding someone willing to sell you an RTX 3060 Ti at a reasonable price, the graphics card is quite brilliant. Its MRP hits that sweet spot, and the performance makes it a fantastic value for money. And with just about every game on the horizon likely going the route of including ray tracing – thank the next-gen consoles for that one – having a ray tracing-capable graphics card will be quite handy. But, of course, that’s assuming you can actually find one.
