GeForce GTX 1060 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which comes with a clock speed of 1320 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1875 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 8 nm design. It features 3584 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 is 88% faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a lot (about 23%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1060. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27360 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 will be a small bit (about 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce RTX 3060, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.