GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce RTX 3060, which features core speeds of 1320 MHz on the GPU, and 1875 MHz on the (Unknown) MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 3584 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 590 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
	Difference: 40320 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a lot (more or less 90%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70144 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is superior to the GeForce GTX 590, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5088 (9%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.