GeForce GTX 970M vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which comes with a core clock speed of 1320 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1875 MHz. It also makes use of a 192-bit memory bus, and uses a 8 nm design. It is made up of 3584 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (127%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 3060 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 970M in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 272640 (284%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be much (approximately 100%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73920 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be much (approximately 43%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 970M, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19008 (43%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.