CONCLUSION

   The GeForce RTX 3060 was designed with a single goal in mind, to take over the mid-end segment of the market and considering that it does a very good job surpassing both its predecessor the GeForce RTX 2060 (by a large amount at that) and in large part even the Radeon RX 5700XT (at least in more tests) I think it accomplishes exactly that. Power consumption is also surprisingly good and compared to the sole RTX2060 that I’ve reviewed in the past (ASUS ROG STRIX OC) it’s actually reduced by just shy of 20W. Same applies for noise levels so unless the fans of the the iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC surpass 60-65% things are actually very quiet (they did however surpass that percentage twice during my tests so I had to include that number). Overclocking headroom is very good and delivers a nice boost in performance across the board. As expected, RT performance is far from stellar but again not nearly as reduced as the RX6800 I reviewed a couple of weeks back (percentage-wise). Still AMD is working on something so I wouldn’t be surprised if with their next line (RX7x00) they are able to match NVIDIA’s RT performance (from my next review I’ll be also including 3DMark RT tests – i was going to include Cyberpunk 2077 RT benchmarks but it doesn’t seem to allow that feature with Radeon cards).

   Unlike other members of the GeForce RTX 3x00 family a “failsafe” put in place by NVIDIA in the bios of the RTX 3060 renders it really bad at mining (up to 50% reduced performance) and so that means stock should hold, at least a lot more compared to the other models. Unfortunately, at the time of this review the iGame GeForce RTX 3060 Advanced OC by Colorful is not available in the USA and the EU but judging from what other manufacturers ask at launch i expect it to make an appearance in the 400-450$ range (will update this review when availability improves). Overall the brand new RTX 3060 represents very good value for money and that applies even more for the iGame Advanced OC model by Colorful with its very good overclocking headroom and that’s also primarily why it gets the Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Backplate / Reinforced Metal Frame)
- Price / Performance Ratio
- Factory Overclock (OC Button)
- Very Good Overclocking Headroom (Two 8pin PCIe Power Connectors)
- Noise Levels / Power Consumption / Temperatures
- Looks (RGB System)
- Supported Technologies (2nd Generation Real Time Ray Tracing & Deep Learning Super Sampling)

CONS

- Support Bracket Not Included
- Size (3 Slot Card)
- Reduced Mining Performance (For Some)