At CES 2021, Nvidia showed off its new RTX 3060, which is the most affordable Ampere architecture card yet. Team Green hopes that people who have been using the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 for the past five years will decide to switch to the Ampere. But does it really make sense to upgrade? Well, it’s complicated as usual.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is still the most popular graphics card among Steam users, according to the most recent Steam Hardware Survey. 9.38% of all Steam users have this old graphics card.
This is a little misleading because it depends on independent Steam users. This means that public PCs in places like LAN cafes are overrepresented, and because it’s optional, it doesn’t show Steam’s entire user base (nor PC gamers in total). But you can’t deny how popular that graphics card is, and there’s a good reason for that.
When the GTX 1060 came out, it could handle pretty much every game on the market at 1080p with high-quality settings and solid frame rates. Five years later, this has started to lose some of its effectiveness, especially since new games are also coming out for the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
RTX 3060 vs GTX 1060 Price
When Nvidia released its RTX 2000 series of graphics cards based on the Turing architecture, it was criticized for raising prices across the board by a large amount. Now that the RTX 3060 is out, it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon.
Starting at $329 (£299, AU$729), the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is the cheapest Nvidia Ampere graphics card so far. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which is a little more expensive at $399 (about £299 or AU$540), is the closest thing to it right now.
Compared to the previous generation, this is about where the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2060 would be. When you look at the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, though, things change in a big way.
Pascal-generation graphics cards were the last time many people could afford graphics cards. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 started at $249 for third-party cards and $299 for Nvidia’s own Founder’s Edition. That means that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 costs almost $100 or 100 GBP more. If you don’t have more money to spend than you did when you bought your GTX 1060 five years ago, the Nvidia RTX 3060’s higher price tag could be a deal breaker.
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RTX 3060 vs GTX 1060 Specs
When you look at the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060’s specs, that $80 increase in the starting price might not seem so bad.
The RTX 3060 has twice as much VRAM as the GTX 1060, with 12GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus. This doesn’t count the 3GB version of the GTX 1060. For comparison, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB also has a 192-bit bus and 6GB of GDDR5 memory. But that isn’t why the RTX 3060 is up to 2.2 times as powerful as the GTX 1060.
The RTX 3060 is a huge jump in raw silicon over the GTX 1060. It has 3,584 CUDA cores, 48 ROPs, and 112 texture mapping units (TMPs). On the other hand, the 2016 graphics card has 1,280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, and 48 ROPs.
On paper, the RTX 3060 is a much more powerful piece of hardware than the RTX 2060. This is because it has a higher Total Graphics Power (TGP) rating of 170W instead of 120W. So, the RTX 3060 is much more expensive than the GTX 1060, but you get a much more powerful graphics card.
RTX 3060 vs GTX 1060 Performance
It might be fun to look at a spec sheet and say, “Hey, look, these numbers are higher than the other numbers,” but it doesn’t mean much if the real-world performance doesn’t match up. And, well, it kind of does here.
For our review of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, we put it up against the GTX 1060 and found that in some games, the new card is up to 220% faster.
In Dirt 5, for example, the new RTX 3060 could get 84 fps on Ultra High settings at 1080p, while the GTX 1060 could only get 38 fps. That game is definitely a title from the next generation, and it’s clear that the GTX 1060 starts to struggle in the most advanced games of today.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, the RTX 3060 gets 53 fps while the GTX 1060 only gets 23 fps at 1080p. Even without ray tracing, the RTX 3060 can get 60 fps in Watch Dogs Legion, while the GTX 1060 can only get 29.
But it’s still falling behind, even in older games where the GTX 1060 probably has the most loyal users. Final Fantasy XIV, an MMO from 2014 that keeps getting more and more popular, is playable with the GTX 1060 at 1080p and maximum settings, with an average frame rate of 96 fps.
That’s a lot, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060’s average of 164 fps in the same game with the same settings makes it ready for high-refresh gaming, which is very helpful in the difficult Extreme Trials and Savage Raids in that game.
Should You Upgrade From a GTX 1060 to An RTX 3060?
The GeForce RTX 3060 is faster than the GTX 1060, but that should have been evident. Whether the RTX 3060 is ideal for you depends on the games you play and how much money you have to invest.
If you’re pleased with Destiny 2, World of Warcraft, or Rainbow Six Siege, you don’t need a new graphics card. If you’re just playing with buddies, 200 fps vs 90 fps won’t affect your experience much.
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If you play games with eye candy switched on, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 makes sense. Whether or not you’re on board with Nvidia’s ray tracing future, games are increasingly difficult to run. On 5-year-old hardware, Cyberpunk 2077 won’t run well.
This can’t be discussed without mentioning availability. Graphics cards are selling out quickly and being sold by third-party retailers and resellers for higher prices than Nvidia anticipated. If you’re getting by with a GTX 1060, it’s not worth buying a new one at inflated costs. Time will end the current stock scenario.
Conclusion
Steam Hardware Survey: 9.38% of all Steam users have the GTX 1060. The new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is the cheapest Ampere graphics card yet. It starts at $329 (£299, AU$729) and goes on sale in September. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 has twice as much VRAM as the GTX 1060. In some games, the new card is up to 220% faster.
The card also has a higher Total Graphics Power (TGP) rating of 170W instead of 120W. The GeForce RTX 3060 is faster than the GTX 1060, but that should have been evident. Even without ray tracing, the RTX can get 60 fps in Watch Dogs Legion. On 5-year-old hardware, Cyberpunk 2077 won’t run well. If you play games with eye candy switched on, the card makes sense.