The MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X came along at an all too interesting time. So let's get the ugly part out of the way. The one-two punch combination of a global semiconductor shortage and relentless mining demand continues to wreak havoc on the GPU market, with the Nvidia RTX 3060 selling for well above MSRP for some time and still being hard to find in stock.

Nvidia is working to reduce the card's mining performance, but it is still early days and it remains to be seen how effective this block will be or if it can truly be avoided. Rather than turning this article into a lament for the sad state of the market, let's focus more on the cards themselves and how they stack up.

In six months we may look back and laugh. It's better than crying.

The RTX 3060 is the first card with a GA106 GPU and is the most affordable Ampere GPU ever released.

A twin-fan card suited to the thermal and power consumption characteristics of GA106 chips, the RTX 3060 has 3,584 active shader units (CUDA cores). This is a significant decrease compared to the GA104-based Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti's 4,864.

The Ti also uses a 256-bit bus compared to the RTX 3060's 192-bit bus. These differences explain the large performance difference between the two cards. And then there is the most striking feature of the RTX 3060: its 12 GB of memory. It makes the faster Ampere card look a bit underspecced. [The MSI Gaming X sits at the top of MSI's RTX 3060 product stack, above the Ventus and below the Gaming X Trio, and features a compact PCB with a 6-phase VRM, one phase less than the Gaming X Trio. There is no need for an over-engineered PCB for a card in this class.

Interestingly, MSI decided to include both 6-pin and 8-pin power connectors. The card has a factory-rated boost clock overclock of 1,837 MHz, but as is often the case with modern GPUs, the boost clock is much higher than this unless you use a case with extremely restricted airflow. [12GB of GDDR6 memory runs at an effective 15Gbps. Display output consists of one currently standard HDMI 2.1 port, along with three DisplayPort v1.4a ports.

MSI usually has a very good reputation when it comes to its cooler designs; the RTX 3060 Gaming X features the latest Twin Frozr 8 dual-fan cooler, while some manufacturers have mid-range cards with very large triple-fan coolers advertised. You might want to save your money and go with one of the more affordable dual-fan versions; the cooler designed for the 350W+ RTX 3090 is overkill with a capital O.

This MSI card features a rather subtle RGB implementation, with only two small sections on the front of the card along with the MSI logo on the side; the long RGB bar on the Trio version has been omitted; the RGB bar on the Trio version has been removed; the RGB bar on the Trio version has been removed.

The Twin Frozr 8 cooler easily does its job. After about 10 minutes of 100% load, the load temperature was only 63ºC. This kept the card boosted to very high levels, constantly above 1,900 MHz, and boosted relatively quietly; the sound of the AIO pump is still the dominant noise maker in my particular system.

The RTX 3060's overall gaming performance is decent, though not as thrilling as other Ampere cards. Like its older brothers, the RTX 3060 brings better ray tracing performance and excellent technical support, including a more advanced Tensor core and upgraded video engine.

We expected RTX 2070 Super class performance, but it did not happen. In fact, the RTX 3060 is only slightly better than the 2060 Super while the much more powerful RTX 3060 Ti is comparable to the 2080 Super. As a result, it is best to consider it an upgrade for users with older generation cards.

That said, the 12GB of VRAM is appreciated. It is sufficient for any game now and for the foreseeable future, and can play 1080p high-resolution games with perfect smoothness. If you lower the settings a bit to stay above the 60fps threshold at all times, it will run fine at 1440p as well. Perhaps Nvidia should have called this the RTX 2050 Ti, put 8GB on it, and priced it at $250. In a market without drunks with no legs, that would have made it a seriously attractive option.

But performance ratings are always about price, and the RTX 3060 is actually a competent card when the pricing is at a decent level. Let's not forget the increasingly desirable Nvidia RTX feature set, which includes more powerful ray tracing support, DLSS 2.0, and features like Nvidia's Broadcast app and Reflex technology. In an alternate reality, this should be an affordable, high-performance, feature-rich mid-range option.

The MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X proved to be a capable overclocker, even with a limited power limit of 105%. It was able to run boost clocks between 2050 and 2070 MHz and memory at 17.6 Gbps. When we used "Metro Exodus" at 1080p Ultra preset for benchmarking, we saw a 6.9% improvement from the stock 67.1 FPS to 71.7 FPS. This is a pretty good result for a card that is strictly power-limited.

The MSI RTX 3060 Gaming X is a good example of what a mid-range card should be. Such a card should not pretend to be an Nvidia RTX 3080. You could opt for a premium RTX 3060, but at this price you are approaching real RTX 3060 Ti territory. And I know which I would choose.

Twin Frozr 8 cooling makes it easy to control the GA106 GPU, keeping it cool and quiet at all times so the card can perform at its best. the RTX 3060's MSRP of $329 means nothing in the current climate. At the time of this writing, the official MSRP for the Gaming X had not even been announced, but of course (in normal times) a reasonable price premium can be expected.

The RTX 3060 itself is not much of an upgrade for RTX 20 series users, but if you're buying from an older one and want to jump on the ray-tracing bandwagon, it will serve you well. But if you can wait, you might as well wait until prices stabilize. Not sure when that will be...