Review & Test: Video card Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC Pro

The lineup of GeForce RTX 3060 Ti video cards from Gigabyte has six series – Eagle, Vision, Gaming OC, Gaming OC Pro, Gaming OC Pro rev. 2.0 and Master. The Gaming OC Pro rev.2.0 model is a cross between the Gaming OC and the Gaming OC Pro, but today we will talk about the last voiced one, since, apart from the design version of the Master, this is the most advanced RTX 3060 Ti among the “regular” models both in terms of the component base and the cooling system.

Appearance

The video card is delivered in a box with the manufacturer’s classic design – in black and orange colors (except for the green inserts that demonstrate the model’s belonging to a particular GPU) with the image of a robotic eye on the entire front side. There is a sticker on the side, which should be studied carefully when buying a video card, if you are aiming just at the “original”, and not at the 2nd revision of this model.

There is no explicit image of the video card – only partial and with a mention of the key features of the model – this is an advanced cooling system Windforce 3X, in which the fans rotate so as not to create turbulence; technology of direct contact of heat pipes with a graphics processor; an enlarged radiator and slots in the backplate at the back of the card in order to blow it through; a large metal backplate that covers the entire PCB and even more; the presence of RGB backlighting Fusion 2.0, albeit in a minimal amount. There is nothing interesting in the package, so you should go straight to the study of the video card itself. If you compare it with the previous generation Gaming OC variants (RTX 20), then multiple design changes are immediately noticeable. Unless the fans have remained the same, but we’ll come back to them later. For the RTX 3060 Ti, we have a fairly large video card – its length is 28.6 cm, and its thickness is 51 mm, which is noticeably more than two expansion slots. For reference – the new rev.2.0 has a length of 28.1 cm and a thickness of 40 mm (two expansion slots). The black casing with gray inserts is made of thick plastic.But the backplate on the back is made of metal. It plays a protective role – both from external damage (you never know something will fall on the card or you will touch it during installation in the case), and to strengthen the rigidity of the structure. This is certainly not a huge RTX 30-series flagship, but it is still a fairly massive representative. The design of the cooling system uses three 80 mm fans, each with a unique impeller shape and rotates in such a direction so as not to create a counterflow of air to adjacent fans. This technology is called Alternate Spinning. In addition, the ability to completely stop the fans at low GPU temperatures has been implemented. To connect monitors, we have two DisplayPort 1.4a and two HDMI 2.1 ports available. The same photo shows not only the increased thickness of the video card relative to the 2-slot design, but a slightly increased width of the cooling system, which, however, applies only to the plastic casing – the heatsink itself fits into the dimensions of the printed circuit board in width. The video card requires the connection of one 8-pin and one 6-pin power cable. The rev 2.0 model has the same power connection scheme, but the connectors are located directly on the printed circuit board, and not outside of it. And the model without Pro has only one additional power connector in the name – 8-pin. In the central part of the board, you can find a small switch that is responsible for selecting the BIOS with the appropriate settings profile. Silent mode differs from OC mode in that the fans will be limited in speed, which will make the video card somewhat quieter. As you can see earlier, the PCB is noticeably shorter than the cooling system. But this is not a problem, as the RTX 3060 Ti GPU does not require a very sophisticated component base. The power connectors are brought out with a set of wires to the backplate. The solution may seem strange, but there are no problems with it – the connectors and wires do not heat up at full load (all the more so – they are also blown by one of the fans). The GPU subsystem has 8 phases, each of which uses the Alpha & Omega AOZ5311 DrMOS components. The video memory power subsystem consists of 2 separate phases using a pair of UBIQ Semiconductor QN310 power cells in each. The very same GDDR6 video memory is filled with 8 Samsung K4Z80325BC-HC14 microcircuits.The entire cooling system is a massive radiator consisting of three sections of different sizes and metal plates that remove heat from the video memory chips and the power subsystem. The heatsink is in direct contact with the GPU with the entire set of heatpipes. The reverse side of the PCB is characterized by many small electronic components that are protected by a backplate. But the backplate itself cannot be called a part. Cooling systems – it comes into contact with the board only at the points of its fastening with screws. And it’s time to move on to testing the video card. The only backlighting element is the manufacturer’s logo on the side of the cooling casing.

Testing

To work with the video card, the proprietary ENGINE software has been implemented.
The main window of the program contains everything you need to configure the video card, and in separate windows you start monitoring the state of the video card and adjusting the RGB Fusion 2.0 backlight (it must be installed separately, though).

Information about the video card obtained using the GPU-Z utility. Here you can see that we can increase the Power Limit value by 13%. In the nominal mode, the graphics processor operates at a frequency of 1950-1965 MHz in games. The GPU temperature will not exceed 63 degrees, and the fan speed will be up to 1800 rpm. As for overclocking, everything is predictable here – it is about 2115-2130 MHz for the GPU and 2000 MHz (16000 MHz effective) for the video memory. Depending on the game, the result may differ both upward and downward. Before presenting the test results in games, let’s look at the video card using a thermal imager. The backplate comes into contact with the PCB only in the places where it is fixed with screws, but it still heats up – under game load, its temperature was about 53 degrees.No problems were found in the area of ​​the power connectors (we are talking about heating the adapter wires). What can we say – if the RTX 3090 Gaming OC had no problems, then it certainly won’t. The power subsystem in its visible area warmed up to 80 degrees, which is a common situation. For testing in games, a test bench was assembled based on an Intel Core i9-10900KF processor (5.3 GHz) and 32 GB of RAM with a frequency of 3600 MHz. In games, the settings are set to their maximum values, except for some parameters that inadequately affect performance.

Conclusion

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC Pro is a mid-range graphics card among the RTX 3060 Ti options available on the Russian market. At the same time, this modification is distinguished by considerable factory overclocking (over 100 MHz for the GPU) and quite good overclocking potential in manual mode. If the dimensions of the video card are critical for you in terms of thickness, then you can look towards the Gaming OC without Pro in the name and the recently appeared version of OC Pro rev.2.0, which has a somewhat simplified design of cooling and the board relative to the model studied in this material. The heroine of the review demonstrates a really high level of performance, which is largely the merit of Gigabyte, which allowed the graphics processor to work at a noticeably increased frequency. This was achieved not only by using an advanced component base, but also by installing a massive cooling system that removes heat from all the hottest components of the video card and does not give a reason to think about high temperatures. It remains only to wait for the moment when the video card market “comes to its senses” in order to get this model for adequate money.