Should I get a 3060?

[F1ZZY]

It's not just the scalpers though is it? The entire supply chain is upping prices / recouping costs.

The 3060ti was supposed to be £369 and it's now closer to £600 if you can even get one.

The 3060 is supposed to launch tomorrow starting at £299 - I bet retailers will have these up for £450+ and they'll still sell out in milliseconds.

[Ulti]

Hopefully this doesn't count as going off topic but can someone tell me if my thinking is right as I was also thinking of upgrading from my aging GTX 1070.

So RTX 3060 Ti relative performance over the GTX 1070 is roughly +60%.
It also uses around 33% more power (200W vs 150W) so does that mean performance per watt improvements is around 160/133 = 20% better?

If so then considering it came out in 2016, for a card that has the same RRP, that isn't amazing for 4.5 years worth of development.

[kalniel]

Hopefully this doesn't count as going off topic but can someone tell me if my thinking is right as I was also thinking of upgrading from my aging GTX 1070.

So RTX 3060 Ti relative performance over the GTX 1070 is roughly +60%.
It also uses around 33% more power (200W vs 150W) so does that mean performance per watt improvements is around 160/133 = 20% better?

If so then considering it came out in 2016, for a card that has the same RRP, that isn't amazing for 4.5 years worth of development.

You're right - in terms of rasterisation performance efficiency then Pascal was a good leap that hasn't been replicated by the green side since. And if rasterisation performance efficiency is your thing then definitely look at the red side as an alternative. Nvidia have jumped on the raytracing bandwagon for their main feature improvements since Pascal - and then claim that since Pascal *could* do raytracing in software then recent RTX comparisons to Pascal are valid.

But we can probably blame the Samsung process they chose for at least some of the less-than-stellar efficiency improvements. The next process node should be a lot better - whether that's a true 7-5nm node from Samsung or heading back to TSMC.

[F1ZZY]

DLSS can also give solid performance improvements when supported and implemented well. Although considered cheating by some, it can massively improve framerate and image quality via upscaling. A pretty neat feature, especially for the lower end cards such as 3060 and 3060ti.

[kalniel]

Although considered cheating by some, it can massively improve framerate and image quality via upscaling.

DLSS framerate improves via rendering at a lower resolution and then upscaling - this usually results in an image quality decrease rather than increase, it's more that the decrease in quality isn't as bad as if you were to do a more traditional render down, upscale and sharpen. As an anti-aliasing method it's a lot better than TAA for quality, but that's not a great starting point for image quality comparison.

[Zhaoman]

DLSS can also give solid performance improvements when supported and implemented well. Although considered cheating by some, it can massively improve framerate and image quality via upscaling. A pretty neat feature, especially for the lower end cards such as 3060 and 3060ti.

Yes it improves performance massively which is great but I don't agree with this often peddled line that it also 'improves' image quality. As far as I'm concerned that is Nvidia marketing speak and Digital Foundry has helped propagate it which lowers their esteem in my eyes. DLSS 2.0 can sharpen well defined lines especially text and sharp edges in the distance however it can also overcompensate by increasing contrast over and above native and end up with plenty of artefacts too. However it is particle effects, shadows and small details where it can struggle e.g. fog, smoke, steam, dust, film grain, tiled materials, shadows etc to the point where they are inaccurate, entirely missing or just plain wrong. A sharpening but potential over-contrast and over-sharpening of text and hard lines resulting in artefacts along with potential for botched effects is not a net gain in image quality imo and this needs to stop being repeated. It is, at the end of the day, a clever upscaling solution that is great for performance and in most cases does not sacrifice much immediately noticeable image quality but in some cases it can cause immersion breaking artefacts or errors and should be treated as such.

Not saying that DLSS isn't great, it plainly is for performance, but claiming it provides an improvement to both performance AND image quality is wrong.

[Tea1023]

Hey, so I'm new here (long time lurker of old before abandoning the forum format but missing this kind of info so I'm back again) but I just want to thank everyone for their contributions to this discussion, it's very interesting to read. I've been out of the scene for a long time now, running a pair of dual 780Ti's (when released, I know I'm old), previously 2x gtx690's (0.001% of steam users at the time), so this move to DX12 and nvidias abandonment of SLI has hit me pretty hard in recent times. I'm not big into the AAA/FPS titles so I have been able to get by without issue so far, but I had the opportunity to run a 3070 for 2 weeks on loan from a friend and I was honestly pretty disappointed in the performance upgrade. I try to make sure that every upgrade I did was at least double the performance of my current setup, accounting for SLI etc, so the 3070 seemed an appropriate upgrade. Not looking closely at the settings and DLSS I assumed everything would be linear @1440p. From what I've read here it's not that straight forward and probably my fault in disappointing results. I will hold out for a 3080FE in the mean time.

[ik9000]

Yesterday you could preoder this 3060 card for £400 from Amazon. Today? The scalpers who did that preoder are listing it on the same site for £1400 shipping conveniently just after the original Amazon date. Amazon apparently don't have a problem with this. FFS I'd be cancelling their orders if it were me.



According to Amazon seller info they're not even in the UK but a German outfit. Unsurprisingly with only negative feedback.

[Tea1023]

So with the reviews in, it looks like the 3060 competes with the 2070 (MSRP £380) and better than the 2060 (MSRP £280). It is fair to say that 12gb of VRAM is decent and will likely future proof the card for longer than it's competitors, but currently it's retailing for £450+ if you can find it and I really don't think it's worth that. The 3060Ti far better and should be similar price if you can wait out this nightmare.

[F1ZZY]

it feels like this whole scenario is going to get much worse before it starts to get better.

[Dilwar]

At the current pricing from retailers, I would say no. But it all depends how long you are willing to wait or play the game to snag yourself one. If it ends up several weeks, or months in cases, you might just think the time waiting is not worth it and pay a bit extra (from retailers who are selling it or similar cards for higher than RRP).

[JahRule]

Any 3060 under 450gbp is 'good value' in the current mkt