Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 GAMING OC (Tech) Review

Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX™ 3060 GAMING OC 12G is the gaming branded counterpart to their slightly pricier GeForce RTX™ 3060 VISION OC 12G. It doesn’t feature the rectangular white rounded edge design of the Vision OC but that doesn’t mean it’s a slouch when it comes to performance. The Gaming OC card looks and performs just as great as its arguably prettier counterpart.

Looking at the Gaming OC, users can immediately see that it’s a different take on the same architecture compared to the Vision OC. Gone are the rounded edges and instead, we have sharper edges and sleek lines. Nothing too over the top though which makes this card retain a certain elegance over competing brand’s cards. Before we get into the performance aspects of the card, check out the technical specifications below:

The key features of the card are that is makes use of NVIDIA Ampere Streaming Multiprocessors, 2nd Generation RT Cores, 3rd Generation Tensor Cores, is integrated with 12GB GDDR6 192-bit memory, has a WINDFORCE 3X Cooling System with alternate spinning fans and has a core clock of 1837 MHz (Reference Card: 1777 MHz).

The RTX 3060 Gaming OC has a protective metal plate on its back and has support for Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion 2.0 Software. The RGB Fusion 2.0 Software is used to control the RGB LED on the graphics card which displays the word “GIGABYTE” in rather bright RGB colours. Users can easily change the colours to match their setup using the software which can be downloaded from Gigabyte’s website.

The RTX 3060 Gaming OC now sits near the bottom of the RTX 30 series food chain with only the laptop RTX 3050 and RTX 3050ti being below it. The RTX 3060 however, at the time of writing, still remains on of the best “Budget” entries into being able to play Ray-Tracing enabled video games at max graphics settings at 1080p on your desktop PC. To test this, we ran a series of benchmarks to see just how well it stacked up.

Starting off with 3D Mark Timespy, the card performed as follows:

With a score of 8077, at 1080p resolution, the RTX 3060 Gaming OC will easily run every single modern game out there with no issues. Running the 3D Mark Port Royal test which focuses more on Ray-Tracing further drives this point home with the following score:

Lastly, running 3D Mark’s DLSS test at both the 2K and 4K resolutions yielded some interesting results. Most notably that even at a higher output resolution of 4K, the RTX 3060 Gaming OC still holds up quite well with decent FPS scores. Users should stick to 2K resolution though for better performance if they are going to use DLSS.

Ultimately though using the card to game is the best indicator of what it can do for gamers. We loaded up Control with every setting maxed out and motion blur disabled. We played through a combat heavy segment in the synchronicity lab and obtained a rather high 81 FPS. Even with so many effects, explosions and particles being thrown around, the FPS count never dipped below 60. Gamers could therefore enable Vsync in the settings and they’ll get a solid, consistent 60 FPS throughout the entire game without any issues. 

Much like with its Vision OC counterpart, gamers should take note of the card’s Memory Type, Memory Bus and Memory Bandwidth. These being GDDR6, 192 bit and 360 GB/s respectively. Gigabyte’s own RTX 3070 cards have less GDDR6 memory since the RTX 3060 has 12GB but importantly, the Memory Bus and Memory Bandwidth are significantly higher on the RTX 3070 card since they are listed at 256 bit and 448 GB/s. The RTX 3060 was therefore specced with more GDDR6 memory in order to compensate and give users more value for their card and “future-proof” it somewhat. 

The problem with this though is the fact that purchasing the RTX 3070 version of the card is still a better idea in the long term. Gigabyte also have an RTX 3060TI available that performs extremely similarly to their RTX 3070 products. Therefore it all comes down to price, availability and what you’re looking for. Given that graphics cards have become a rare commodity, if you have the chance to purchase an RTX 3060 for a price that isn’t exorbitantly inflated, it will still deliver solid performance. 

Playing games like Destiny 2: Beyond Light and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was a breeze for the card with consistently high framerates. Battlefield V ran smoothly too. Running the graphically intensive Watch Dogs: Legion’s benchmark to finalize our game testing resulted in the following scores.

Turning down a couple of settings will result in a consistent 60 FPS or more in Watch Dogs: Legion but it’s important to note that even a very graphics intensive game like this can be run with every setting maxed out. Averaging around 40 FPS with all settings maxed out is remarkable for a card that’s aimed at the “Budget” consumer. 

The RTX 3060 Gaming OC features 2 DisplayPort 1.4a ports and 2 HDMI 2.1 ports. This is good news for gamers that have a multi-monitor setup or want to connect a big screen TV to their desktop. The card has a low power supply recommendation at only 550 watts so if you are still running a 600 watt power supply, you don’t need to upgrade to a more powerful one if you opt to purchase this card.

As with all RTX 30 series cards, if you aren’t running a newer generation CPU (2^nd Generation Ryzen or 8^th Generation Intel or above), your performance in games will be severely bottlenecked. Installing the RTX 3060 Gaming OC into our test desktop was easy with the card fitting perfectly into our motherboard and having enough clearance in our chassis. Please double check your chassis measurements though and be sure to look at the graphics card’s measurements too before purchasing it. Nobody wants to have to break out a power tool and destroy their chassis just to install a graphics card. With all that said though, the card isn’t overly large so should fit in most cases with no problems.

Quite a nifty feature of the card is that it has a convenient LED near the power cable slot which indicates if there’s an issue with power when fully installed into a motherboard. The GPU doesn’t get too hot under load either running at a cool 60 degrees even during an intense gaming session. The WINDFORCE fans clearly do a good job here and aren’t extremely loud when ramped up.

Overall, much like the RTX 3060 Vision OC, the RTX 3060 Gaming OC is a graphics card that’s well worth purchasing. That’s if you can even find one available for purchase. As a “Budget” or “Entry-level” card, users may want to try purchasing the RTX 3060Ti or RTX 3070 instead, for longevity purposes and future-proofing themselves a bit more. However, if the other cards aren’t available or are exorbitantly priced, the RTX 3060 is still an extremely solid choice of graphics card and one that won’t disappoint you in terms of performance. If you’re upgrading from a previous generation of graphics cards such as maybe a GTX 1060 or GTX 1070, the RTX 3060 will deliver substantially higher framerates. Just be sure to have a newer generation processor to go with it to unlock its full potential.