GeForce GTX 1060 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which makes use of a 8 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1320 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1875 MHz on this particular model. It features 3584 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a lot (more or less 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%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce RTX 3060, and should be capable of handling 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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.