Latest Tech News, Product Reviews & Buyer's Guide
  • News
  • Reviews
  • How To
  • Hardware
    • CPUs
    • Computer Cases
    • Motherboards
    • RAM
    • GPU
    • PSU
    • SSD
    • Fans & Cooling
  • Gadgets
  • Laptops
  • Gaming
No Result
View All Result
Latest Tech News Today, Reviews & Guides
No Result
View All Result

Home » News » GPU

Is it finally time to upgrade your GTX 1060? GTX 1060 vs RTX 3060 Comparison

Aashirbad by Aashirbad
March 1, 2021
Is it finally time to upgrade your GTX 1060- GTX 1060 vs RTX 3060 Comparison
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

The RTX 3060 is currently the cheapest graphics card in the Ampere family. The Ampere family introduced the 2nd generation of Ray-Tracing graphics card and impressive rasterization performance. But according to reports, most of the gamers have the older GTX 1060. When the RTX 2000 series card released, not everyone was convinced to jump to the new card. But will the RTX 3060 convince the users to upgrade from the now older GTX 1060?

It is not a healthy talk involving the RTX 3060 and the GTX 1060. After all the RTX 3060 is way ahead of the curve with up-to-date features, better performance, and many more. But after 2 years of avoiding the RTX 2060 graphics card, is it safe to upgrade directly to an RTX 3060? Let’s look at these cards and compare.

RTX 3060 and GTX 1060: Specification

The RTX 3060 is a newly released graphics card from the Ampere architecture. During CES 2021, Nvidia finally unveiled the RTX 3060 graphics card after its long-awaited teaser.

Nvidia RTX 3060

The RTX 3060 comes with a massive 12 GB of DDR6 VRAM sitting on the 192-bit bus. The GA106 packs in 3584 CUDA cores, 112 TMUs, 48 ROPs across 28 SM count. The GPU comes with the latest 112 tensor cores and 28 raytracing acceleration cores. The RTX 3060 is a huge step up considering its newer AI tensor cores and raytracing cores. These new additional architectural cores offer better performance with an impressive fps gain in new titles.

As for the GTX 1060, it comes with 1280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and 10 SM counts. The GP104 GPU uses the older Pascal architecture a hot commodity at the time. It sits on the 192-bit bus width using the older GDDR5 memory type.

Nvidia GTX 1060

The GTX 1060 has a base clock of 1506 MHz and boosts up to 1708 MHz. The GDDR5 memory reaches a maximum clock speed of 2002 MHz with 8Gbps effective speeds. The card uses the PCIe 3.0 interface drawing over 130W at peak.

The RTX 3060 has a base clock of 1320 MHz and boosts up to 1777 Mhz. The superior GDDR6 memory clocks out at 1875 MHz and has a 15 Gbps effective speed. Since it sits on the PCIe Gen 4.0 interface, but it doesn’t fully saturate the interface’s speed. Plus the card draws 170W at the peak, so you may need to upgrade your system’s power supply.

Looking at the specification of the RTX 3060 is the superior card. It has more shader and updated AI features inside it. It comes with Nvidia’s latest NVENC encoder support, NVIDIA reflex, and resizable BAR. So yeah the RTX 3060 is a great choice.

MSRP and Price:

As for the price, the RTX 3060 starts at around $329 with the custom variants peaking at $500. The Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB version comes with a $299 MSRP. If you can get the RTX 3060 for under $500 it is already a great value. It comes with 12 GB of VRAM is a banger upgrade considering the GTX 1060’s 6GB VRAM.

RTX 3060 MSRP

Nvidia has already stopped manufacturing the GTX 1060. There are a handful of new cards in the market, but the gouged prices make it a no-brainer choice. But the RTX 3060 is also facing The cards are already sold out and the second asking price of the RTX 3060 starts from around $1000.

Plus a word of advice if you are upgrading from the RTX 2060 or RTX 2060 Super, please wait as the performance metric has much more to show.

Performance: RTX 3060 vs GTX 1060

As the specification benchmarks showed the RTX 3060 is much superior to the existing GTX 1060 GPU. Currently looking at the specification, the 3GB variant of the GTX 1060 is worthless and the GTX 1060 6GB is leagues behind the newer Ampere card.

The RTX 3060 destroys the GTX 1060 in all turfs. In the gaming performance, the RTX 3060 beats the GTX 1060 in 1080p gaming. To sum it up easily, there is a performance difference of 60% (not in all games) between the Ampere and Pascal cards. On newer titles like Red Dead Redemption, WatchDogs Legion, the RTX 3060 pulls of better performance with a lead of 75%. Even in the older title the RTX 3060 still beats it by 72%.

Comparing the GTX 1060 with the RTX 3060, there is finally a huge gap. But we have to consider the RTX 2060 as well. The RTX 2060 is quite a dealbreaker for the RTX 3060. The 2060 and 2060S come with 6 GB and 8 GB VRAM respectively. It performs on par with the RTX 3060 with only a 6 to 9% difference in average FPS.

Considering a generational leap we expect the performance to be greater around 12 – 18%, but we are not seeing much of a difference. The RTX 3060 is quite similar to the RTX 2060 Super difference being the extra 4GB VRAM. So if you already own an RTX 2060 GPU, you don’t have to upgrade to an RTX 3060.

So is it the right time to upgrade?

Yes and No. We currently have a mixed reaction to the RTX 3060. Yes, it is a fantastic card with 12 GB of VRAM and performs on par with the RTX 2060 Super but for cheaper. But the global pandemic has already crippled the production of the GPUs. Adding the problem of cryptocurrency miners and scalpers, the RTX 3060 is impossible to get as of right now.

GTX 1060 slide

According to the Steam Hardware survey, most gamers utilize the GeForce RTX 1060. Steam records 9.38% of steam users using the GTX 1060 but the consensus does include LAN cafes as well. Newer titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk uses higher textures that are bigger to render. The GTX 1060 suffers in the latest titles. So If you are upgrading from the GTX 1060, then the RTX 3060 is a clear choice.

But hold your horses, the GTX 1060 does perform well in esports titles like CSGO, DOTA 2, R6S, and many more. Plus currently, the RTX 3060 has limited stock and the second-hand market shows inflated prices. So keep the GTX 1060 for 4-5 months and wait for the prices to settle down. We don’t want your system to be deprived of a graphics card as you wait to find a suitable RTX 3060. So keep a constant eye on the graphics card market so that you can get your hands on the RTX 3060.

 

 

Tags: GPUGTX 1060NvidiaRTX 3060

Related Posts

Gigabyte releases its first CMP 30HX Miner Card with Three-month Warranty
News

Gigabyte releases its first CMP 30HX Miner Card with Three-month Warranty

April 15, 2021
Nvidia re-introducing the GTX 1080 Ti during the massive Silicon shortage
News

Nvidia re-introducing the GTX 1080 Ti during the massive Silicon shortage

April 8, 2021
Asus unveils it smallest SFF RTX 3060 Phoenix graphics card
News

Asus unveils it smallest SFF RTX 3060 Phoenix graphics card

March 30, 2021
Nvidia speculated to release two variants of RTX 3070 Ti with 8 and 16 GB DDR6X VRAM
News

Nvidia speculated to release two variants of RTX 3070 Ti with 8 and 16 GB DDR6X VRAM

March 28, 2021
NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti might be real and rumored to launch in May
News

NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti might be real and is rumored to launch in May

March 26, 2021
AMD teases its custom Radeon RX 6700XT graphics card ahead of launch
Uncategorized

AMD teases its custom Radeon RX 6700XT graphics card ahead of launch

March 15, 2021
Next Post
AIBs scrap the RTX 3090 blower style design - Are we getting affected by miners

AIBs scrap the RTX 3090 blower style design - Are we getting affected by miners?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Affiliate Disclosure

© 2019 Tech News Today - Latest Tech News, Product Reviews & Buyer's Guide

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Reviews
  • How To
  • Hardware
    • CPUs
    • Computer Cases
    • Motherboards
    • RAM
    • GPU
    • PSU
    • SSD
    • Fans & Cooling
  • Gadgets
  • Laptops
  • Gaming

© 2019 Tech News Today - Latest Tech News, Product Reviews & Buyer's Guide