GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce RTX 3060, which makes use of a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1320 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 1875 MHz on this particular model. It features 3584 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce RTX 3060 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 590 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
	Difference: 40320 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is quite a bit (about 90%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70144 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (9%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.