Articles about graphics cards these days are implicitly marked with a giant asterisk: the GPU market is, to use a family-friendly term, "insane." With this kind of volatility, applying any kind of price/performance analysis and trying to make a decision based on it is fraught with danger; the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is a terrible buy at $600+. An MSRP of $330 would still be better, but what will it be in six months? $279. It will be interesting when that happens.

Now let's ignore the crypto and supply-based market shenanigans and look at what this card is really about: the Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle OC.

Ostensibly, the Gigabyte Eagle is a budget-oriented 1080p gaming card that brings the Nvidia Ampere RTX feature set down to an affordable price point. However, the standard Eagle is set at an MSRP of $330 for the RTX 3060, while the OC version is currently $150 more in the US. This is due to the higher GPU frequency and the exact same cooler. In the UK, however, the difference is only $10. We said the market is going crazy. [The GeForce RTX 3060 is the first card with a GA106 GPU. Logically, one would think that the RTX 3060 would have a lot in common with the RTX 3060 Ti, but in reality they are completely different, using completely different GPUs.

The RTX 3060 has 3,584 active CUDA cores, while the RTX 3060 Ti has 4,864; the Ti's 256-bit bus is wider than the RTX 3060's 192-bit bus, so it is also significantly short on bandwidth. Next is the amount of memory; Nvidia decided to include 12GB of GDDR6 memory in the RTX 3060. Even the mighty GeForce RTX 3080 does not have that much.

While it is nice to see the RTX 3060 with more memory, it makes one wonder if Nvidia missed a trick by not putting more memory on the high-end models that could really take advantage of it.

The Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle is Gigabyte's entry-level GeForce RTX 3060; the OC version raises the boost clock to 1807 MHz, a 30 MHz improvement over the non-OC Eagle. Power is provided by a single 8-pin power connector. It is also a genuine 2-slot card, which should appeal to users of SFF systems.

The card is surrounded by a gray shroud and backplate with large cutouts to allow air to escape from the back, as seen on the Nvidia Founders Edition cards. There are no excessive RGB decorations or huge triple fan coolers in sight, but there is no need for them on a card of this class. Why spend the extra money on a premium RTX 3060 Ti that costs about the same as the RTX 3060 Ti?

The Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle OC has two HDMI 2.1 ports along with two DP 1.4a ports; few non-Gigabyte cards have dual HDMI and we want to get on the HDMI 2.1 train (LG CX OLED says hello...) ), this could be a deal maker: you can connect a PC and a home theater receiver or VR headset at the same time.

The RTX 3060 Eagle's cooler is pretty basic. It has to work surprisingly hard to keep the relatively thrifty GA106 GPU under control. In our stress test, we recorded a peak temperature of 69°C at 77% fan speed. You'd think this would be a noisy card, and it clearly sounds like it is, but thankfully, it's noninvasive. If quietness were a top priority, though, there would be a quieter RTX 3060

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The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Eagle OC performed a bit better than expected given its relatively small factory overclock, with the MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X winning by a nose, but with a higher boost clock. As expected. The RTX 3060 itself, however, does not surprise us as we have experienced with previous Ampere GPUs.

If you are using an RTX 2060 or RTX 2070, you will not get much of a performance upgrade, but you will improve the RTX feature set as it becomes more mainstream, with popular titles like Fortnite and Minecraft supporting ray tracing.

Simple overclocking tests were not particularly successful. The cooler already has to work pretty hard, so there isn't much headroom to push the power limits or keep the boost algorithm at its best before the cooler is stretched to its limits. While a few percent improvement can be expected, it is recommended that the card be left in Normal.

The Gigabyte RTX 3060 Eagle is a welcome example of a card that does the job out of sight; it is a good choice for 1080p screen gamers. It is capable of playing even the most demanding titles, and thanks to its 12GB of memory, 1440p is possible. In addition, you'll also enjoy the updated RTX feature set; the Eagle isn't the quietest card around, but it's not intrusive enough to draw attention. If you want more overclocking headroom, you can get the premium triple-fan version, but at this price you're approaching RTX 3060 Ti territory.

The RTX 3060 does not exist in a vacuum, and inventory levels and skyrocketing price issues will continue for the foreseeable future. Basically, it would be insane to pay the ridiculous prices being demanded by some retailers, as represented by the aggressive price premium the Eagle OC version currently carries over the standard RTX 3060 Eagle card in the U.S. In a month or two or three Hopefully the market will settle down and we will be able to focus on the game again without these dark clouds hanging over the industry.