GeForce GTX 950 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1320 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency 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 Texture Address Units, and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3060 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 262912 (249%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a lot (about 201%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98688 (201%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a lot (more or less 93%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 950, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30592 (93%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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