GeForce GTX 980 Ti 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 speed of 1875 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 8 nm design. It is made up of 3584 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
GeForce GTX 980 Ti		250 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3060, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980 Ti		336000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32640 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should be just a bit (about 19%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce RTX 3060. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		176000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28160 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti will be quite a bit (about 52%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce RTX 3060, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		96000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 32640 (52%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.