Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 Review

1. Introduction
2. Everything You Need to Know About Ampere
3. Inno3D marketing
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Overclocking
11. Power Consumption & Temps
12. What's Hot, What's Not
13. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

Inno3D's custom GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers fantastic performance at 1080p and 1440p, with some ultra-impressive thermals. An easy recommendation.

Introduction

Up on the review table today we have the custom Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 graphics card, offering some great performance that topples the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER.

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Inno3D steps in with its custom iCHILL X3 design, and more performance than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition. It's cooler, has some OC headroom to squeeze a few more FPS out of the card, and a cooler that is either something you love or hate.

If you can find the card in your market, the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 graphics card offers some great value for money as it is a kick ass 1080p and 1440p offering with NVIDIA DLSS and RTX technologies ready to rock and roll through the Ampere GPU architecture.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super Founders Edition Graphics Card

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$399.00	$399.00	$389.00	$399.00	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 5/6/2024 at 8:08 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Everything You Need to Know About Ampere

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Inno3D marketing

You can read all about the card on the official Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 website.

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Detailed Look

Inno3D has the same retail packaging for all of its iCHILL X3 family of graphics cards, with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 standing out on a retail shelf with some great looking packaging.

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You're either a fan of the front and back style of the card, or not -- but I actually like the backplate

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It's a thick card for a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, but it also runs pretty iChill... get it?

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Just a single 8-pin PCIe power connector required.

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The usual 3 x DP 1.4 and 1 x HDMI 2.1 connectivity.

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Test System Specs

Latest upgrade:

Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

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I've got a new upgrade inside of my GPU test bed before my change to a next-gen test bed, where I will be preparing for NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere graphics cards and AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Right out of the gate SAPPHIRE is kicking ass and taking names with the NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT dominating the Assassin's Creed: Valhalla benchmark charts at 1080p, with the overclocked NITRO+ RX 6800 XT beating out the faster, flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card.

The same goes for Shadow of War, but the NITRO+ RX 6800 XT is beaten -- just -- in Metro Exodus at 1080p (96FPS versus 100FPS on the RTX 3090). Shadow of the Tomb Raider is absolutely pumping along with 278FPS average, beating out everything else in the benchmark charts.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

The domination by the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT only continues at 1440p starting with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla where it annihilates the benchmark charts when overclocked. Even at stock it's beating out the RTX 3090.

Shadow of War has the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT winning once again when overclocked, beating out the Radeon RX 6900 XT and GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards. At stock, it fends off the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 easily.

The GeForce RTX 3090 is the only card on the charts able to topple the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 6800 XT when it was overclocked, while in Shadow of the Tomb Raider it roars along with 203FPS average at 1440p, a huge feat.

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

SAPPHIRE takes the cake at 4K gaming with Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, with the custom NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT pushing out a huge 72FPS average -- beating out the 64FPS average from the flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT and the 59FPS from both the Radeon RX 6800 XT and GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards.

Shadow of War has the GeForce RTX 3090 back on top -- just -- but the overclocked SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT holds its ground here in 4K on Shadow of War. Things are still close in Metro Exodus between the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 6800 XT and the GeForce RTX 3090 -- both at around 60FPS average.

117FPS average at 4K with the NITRO+ Radeon RX 6800 XT... I don't need to say anymore there.

Overclocking

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Out of the box the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 graphics card was running at around 63C, with the fan profile on automatic the card has its fans at 41% (1400RPM or so). The card is pretty much silent under load, especially if you've got headphones or speakers on.

The card was running at around 1920MHz GPU boost in stock form.

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Inno3D's custom GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 has some small OC headroom to play with, where I was able to push up to and around 2000MHz out of the GPU. With the fans at 100% the GPU is pretty chill indeed, at just 42C.

Power Consumption & Temps

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The Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 graphics card was running at around 63C, which is very chill -- but when the card has the fans turned up to 100% (and the GPU cranked up to max overclock) the card was running at only 43C under benchmarking and gaming loads.

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You won't need an 850W PSU to run the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 graphics card, with my entire Ryzen 7 3800X system using 300-320W at stock and overclocked GPU clocks, respectively.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

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• Great performance, beating RTX 2080 SUPER: If you wanted a new power efficient card that offers performance that beats out the second-fastest Turing GPU -- the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, then the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 offers that. Great 1080p and 1440p performance, and even decent 4K gaming performance on the cheap.
• Totally unique Inno3D aesthetic: You either love it or hate it, but you can't not call it unique.
• Single 8-pin PCIe power connector: I'm a big fan of neater PCIe power connectors on graphics cards, so the use of a single 8-pin PCIe power connector on the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a custom one at that, is great. Unless it has insane OC headroom the single power connector is all that is required.
• OC headroom: There's a nice little gain in performance with overclocking, a nice chunk up and over the stock GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition depending on the game. It also runs much, much cooler than the RTX 3060 Ti FE when overclocked as well -- even more so when the fans are cranked up.

What's Not

Hard to buy: This isn't Inno3D's fault at all, as all cards are hard to find -- but it's an issue right now and it sucks.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA really changed the game with the introduction of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card, and AIB partners have been hard at work tweaking their custom GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offerings -- with Inno3D expanding its family of iCHILL X3 graphics cards with the custom Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 being another member of that family.

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You will get performance that rivals the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER and even the flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at a much cheaper price than those cards ever were, at launch or after. The Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 runs much cooler and uses less power than the previous-gen Turing flagships, too.

Most people are still waiting for more graphics cards to find their way into their countries, but if you can find the Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Ti iCHILL X3 in your market and haven't pulled the trigger on another graphics card -- and are coming from something like the GeForce GTX 10 series -- then the new RTX 3060 Ti is a kick ass card for the money.

It easily handles high FPS gaming at 1080p and 1440p if you're into something like Call of Duty: Warzone, PUBG, Overwatch, CS:GO and a million other games -- and even some decent 4K gaming if you tweak the settings. It can run Cyberpunk 2077 as well, which is like a badge of honor these days.