GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480, which features a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (13%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be much faster than the Radeon RX 480 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 106496 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be a small bit (more or less 9%) better at AF than the GeForce RTX 3060. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13440 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (77%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.