GeForce GTX 590 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce RTX 3060, which uses a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1320 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a frequency of 1875 MHz on this card. It features 3584 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3060 should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 590 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a lot (about 90%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a little bit (about 9%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 590, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.