In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 9 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 48 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the RTX 3060 XC Black end up performing? Well in the 1080p compilation graph we can see that of all 16 of the results they were all at least over 60 FPS but with half of the results even up over the 120 FPS high refresh rate range. The RTX 3060 is going to handle anything you throw at it at 1080p. In the 1440p graph, we still have a majority in the smooth 60+ FPS range but at 1440p there were four results that came in between 30-59 FPS and would potentially require you to adjust the detail down slightly. Then at 4K, even with the large VRAM the RTX 3060 struggles with almost all of the results playable but not exactly smooth in the 30-59 FPS range. One result was still smooth and two were unplayable. For comparison with the RTX 3060 Ti that I tested with these same games came in at 10 120 FPS and 6 60 FPS at 1080p. At 1440p it had 5 at 120 FPS, 10 at 60 FPS, and 1 over 30 FPS. Then at 4k 8 over 60 FPS, 7 over 30 FPS, and 1 under 30 FPS. The 3060 Ti is better if you want to run a high refresh rate at 1080p and 1440p but both will play the same games.

Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. With these, I wanted to take a look at where the RTX 3060 ended up falling in comparison with AMD's cards as well as Nvidia’s older cards. In the synthetic tests the 3060 was running around the RTX 2060 SUPER a majority of the time but in real games, this varied a lot more. For example, in Metro Exodus the 3060 and the 2060 SUPER were right there together along with the RX 5700. But then in War War Z the 3060 was up closer to the RX 5700 XT and above the 2060 SUPER. Then in Total War Three Kingdoms the 2060 SUPER was faster. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 3060 was all the way up with the 2070 SUPER. Overall though the RTX 3060 falls right in between the AMD RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT in all of my tests.