GeForce GTX 970 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which has GPU clock speed of 1320 MHz, and (Unknown) MB of GDDR6 memory running at 1875 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 3584 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 48 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144640 (65%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a lot (more or less 35%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38640 (35%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce RTX 3060, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (6%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.