Skip to content

Main Navigation

Puget Systems Logo
  • Solutions
    • Recommended Systems For:
    • Content Creation
      • Photo Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe Lightroom Classic
        • Adobe Photoshop
      • Video Editing
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Adobe After Effects
        • Adobe Premiere Pro
        • DaVinci Resolve
        • Foundry Nuke
      • 3D Design and Animation
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk 3ds Max
        • Autodesk Maya
        • Blender
        • Cinema 4D
        • Houdini
        • ZBrush
      • Real-Time Engines
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Game Development
        • Unity
        • Unreal Engine
        • Virtual Production
      • Rendering
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • OctaneRender
        • Redshift
        • V-Ray
      • Digital Audio
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Ableton Live
        • FL Studio
        • Pro Tools
    • Engineering
      • CAD
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • Autodesk AutoCAD
        • Autodesk Inventor
        • Autodesk Revit
        • SOLIDWORKS
      • Photogrammetry
        • Recommended Systems For:
        • ArcGIS Pro
        • Agisoft Metashape
        • Pix4D
        • RealityCapture
    • Scientific Computing
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Data Science
      • Machine Learning / AI
      • Scientific Computing
    • More
      • Recommended Systems For:
      • Compact Size
      • Live Streaming
      • NVIDIA RTX Studio
      • Quiet Operation
      • Virtual Reality
  • Products
    • Intel Core i7 & i9
      Workstations with 13th Gen Intel Core i7 & i9 processors on Z690 and Z790 chipsets
    • AMD Ryzen 7 & 9
      Workstations with AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors on B650 and X670 chipsets
    • AMD Threadripper PRO
      Workstations with AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 WX processors on the WRX80 chipset
    • Intel Xeon W
      Workstations with Intel Xeon W 3300 processors on the C621E chipset
    • Rackmount & Server
      Servers and workstations in rackmount chassis
    • Custom Computers
      Customize a desktop workstation from scratch
    • Custom Servers
      Customize a rackmount server from scratch
    • QNAP Network Attached Storage
      Check out our external storage options as an authorized reseller for QNAP
    • Recommended Third Party Peripherals
      View our list of recommended peripherals to use with your new PC
  • Publications
    • Articles
    • HPC Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Case Studies
    • Podcasts
    • Press
  • Support
    • Contact Support
    • Support Articles
    • Warranty Details
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Press Kit
    • Testimonials
    • Careers
  • Talk to an Expert
  • My Account
  1. Home
  2. /
  3. Hardware Articles
  4. /
  5. GPU Rendering – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Performance

GPU Rendering – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Performance

Posted on December 31, 2020 by William George
Always look at the date when you read an article. Some of the content in this article is most likely out of date, as it was written on December 31, 2020. For newer information, see our more recent articles.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Test Setup
  • OctaneBench Results
  • Redshift Demo Results
  • V-Ray Benchmark Results
  • Analysis
  • Conclusion

TL;DR: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPU Rendering Performance

The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers solid performance in GPU rendering engines, coming very close to the RTX 3070 for $100 less!

For an entry-level rendering system, then, the RTX 3060 Ti is a great choice. With the Founders Edition cards that NVIDIA sells directly, two of these cards should be doable in many cases – as long as there is some space between the cards and plenty of airflow from chassis fans. For more than two GPUs, though, blower-style cards are really needed… and it seems unlikely that those will be coming any time soon, if the lack of RTX 3080 and 3070 blower models is any indication. Users who want more than two GPUs, NVLink support, or more than 8GB of video memory for scene data will probably want to look at the RTX 3090 24GB or the upcoming A6000 48GB instead.

Introduction

NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 30 Series a few months ago, but new models in this family continue to trickle in. Today we are looking at the RTX 3060 Ti 8GB model and how it performs with regard to GPU-based rendering in OctaneRender, Redshift, and V-Ray.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Performance in GPU Rendering
Image
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Performance in GPU Rendering

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which is the focus of this article, is effectively a cut-down version of the RTX 3070. It uses the same design but with some of the CUDA cores disabled – yet retains the full 8GB of video memory. This should result in slightly lower performance than the 3070, and from NVIDIA's Founders Edition pricing it looks like this comes with ~$100 savings in cost.

Here is a table showing the various specifications of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series cards that have been released so far:

GPU Model VRAM Cores Boost Clock Power MSRP
RTX 3060 Ti 8GB 4,864 1.67 GHz 200W $399
RTX 3070 8GB 5,888 1.70 GHz 220W $499
RTX 3080 10GB 8,704 1.71 GHz 320W $699
RTX 3090 24GB 10,496 1.73 GHz 350W $1,499
CTA Image
Rendering Workstations

Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.

Configure a System!
CTA Image
Labs Consultation Service

Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.

Find Out More!

Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the system we used for this round of testing:

Test Platform
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-U12S
Motherboard Gigabyte X570 AORUS Ultra
RAM 4x DDR4-3200 16GB (64GB total)
Video Card NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB
Hard Drive Samsung 960 Pro 1TB
Software Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
OctaneBench 2020.1.5
Redshift Demo 3.0.28
V-Ray 5 Benchmark 5.00.01
NVIDIA GeForce Driver 460.89

As you can see, we are comparing the RTX 3060 Ti to the rest of the RTX 30 Series as well as the RTX 2080 Ti, which was the most popular video card we sold for rendering in the last generation. To test these five video cards we used three different GPU rendering benchmarks: OctaneBench 2020, Redshift 3, and V-Ray 5. Each benchmark was run twice, and the fastest score was used here.

All of these charts show results in order of performance, from top to bottom, and the new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is highlighted in green.

OctaneBench Results

Image

Redshift Demo Results

Image

V-Ray Benchmark Results

For V-Ray we have two sets of results, from running the benchmark in both CUDA and RTX modes, in the gallery below:

Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next
System Image
Gallery Image
Gallery Image
Previous Next

Analysis

Across these three benchmarks, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti comes in only 6 to 14% behind the RTX 3070. That is quite a good showing, considering that the MSRP is 20% lower than that card. The exact performance difference does vary from one rendering engine to another, though, with Redshift seeming to have the smallest difference (~6%) while V-Ray 5's CUDA mode has the largest (~14%). This level of performance also means that the 3060 Ti matches or beats the RTX 2080 Ti, which was our most popular GPU for rendering workstations during its heyday and cost three times as much money!

We didn't test dual 3060 Ti cards in this roundup, but based on recent multi-GPU scaling results for other 30 Series cards a pair of these should do very nicely as well – roughly doubling render performance. Just be aware of the cooling issues surrounding multiple cards! With the Founders Edition models from NVIDIA, we have found that two cards can be used in tandem without much trouble – as long as there is plenty of airflow from the chassis fans. The bulkier, triple-fan cards that many other manufacturers are fond of producing are more difficult, both because of their sheer size and the fact that those designs tend to vent all their heat back into the case.

It is also worth noting the other big limitation that the RTX 3060 Ti shares with the 3070 when it comes to rendering: VRAM. Since the RTX 3060 Ti and 3070 have only 8GB of onboard memory, compared to the RTX 3080's 10GB and the 3090's 24GB, they will be much more limited in terms of scene complexity and texture resolution. Some rendering engines can use system memory for portions of that data, known as "out of core memory", but doing so will usually have a negative impact on performance.

Conclusion

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers solid performance in GPU rendering engines, coming very close to the RTX 3070 for $100 less!

For an entry-level rendering system, then, the RTX 3060 Ti is a great choice. With the Founders Edition cards that NVIDIA sells directly, two of these cards should be doable in many cases – as long as there is some space between the cards and plenty of airflow from chassis fans. For more than two GPUs, though, blower-style cards are really needed… and it seems unlikely that those will be coming any time soon, if the lack of RTX 3080 and 3070 blower models is any indication. Users who want more than two GPUs, NVLink support, or more than 8GB of video memory for scene data will probably want to look at the RTX 3090 24GB or the upcoming A6000 48GB instead.

CTA Image
GPU Rendering Workstations

Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.

Configure a System!
CTA Image
Labs Consultation Service

Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.

Find Out More!

Related Content

  • Intel Xeon W-3400 Content Creation Preview
  • NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada vs RTX A6000 for Content Creation
  • GPU Rendering: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
  • Unreal Engine: NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Performance
View All Related Content

Latest Content

  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
  • Case Study with Lost Boys Interactive
  • Samsung 990 Pro Critical Firmware Update
View All
Tags: Chaos, GPU, GPU Acceleration, GPU Scaling, Group, Hardware Acceleration, Maxon, NVIDIA, Octane, OctaneBench, OTOY, Redshift, Render, Rendering, RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, RTX 3080, RTX 3090, Video Card

Who is Puget Systems?

Puget Systems builds custom PCs tailored for your workflow

Extensive in-house testing
making you more productive and giving you more performance for your dollar

Reliable workstations
with fewer crashes and blue screens means more time working, less time waiting on your computer

Support that understands
your complex workflows and can get you back up and running ASAP

Proven track record
check out our customer testimonials and Reseller Ratings

Get Started

Browse Our Workstations

Fractal Design Define 7 Chassis with Puget Systems Logo

Select your workflow:

Content Creation
Engineering
Scientific Computing
More

Latest Articles

  • Basic Guide to Identify and Remove Malware
  • Should I Upgrade My Gpu
  • Case Study with Lost Boys Interactive
  • Samsung 990 Pro Critical Firmware Update
  • How To Use Linux Kernel Boot Options
View All

Post navigation

 DaVinci Resolve Studio – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti PerformanceNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Review Roundup 
Puget Systems Logo
Build Your Own PC Site Map FAQ
facebook instagram linkedin rss twitter youtube

Optimized Solutions

  • Adobe Premiere
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Solidworks
  • Autodesk AutoCAD
  • Machine Learning

Workstations

  • Content Creation
  • Engineering
  • Scientific PCs
  • More

Support

  • Online Guides
  • Request Support
  • Remote Help

Publications

  • All News
  • Puget Blog
  • HPC Blog
  • Hardware Articles
  • Case Studies

Policies

  • Warranty & Return
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Delivery Times
  • Accessibility

About Us

  • Testimonials
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

© Copyright 2023 - Puget Systems, All Rights Reserved.