GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce RTX 3060, which has core speeds of 1320 MHz on the GPU, and 1875 MHz on the (Unknown) MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 3584 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3060 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 172032 (88%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be much (about 36%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39408 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8928 (14%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.