**Testing the Nvidia RTX 3060: A GPU Comparison**

The Nvidia RTX 3060 has finally arrived, and with it comes the question of whether it's worth upgrading from the Nvidia RTX 2060. In this article, we'll put the 3060 through its paces to see how it compares to both its predecessor and the older Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

**Performance in Games**

The Nvidia RTX 3060 was tested in various games across different resolutions and settings. The results show that while the 3060 performs better than the 2060, the gains are not as substantial as expected. In most cases, the performance difference between the two GPUs is relatively small, with some games showing only a few percent increase in frame rates.

For example, in the popular game Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the RTX 3060 managed to achieve around 60 FPS at 1080p, while the RTX 2060 achieved 55 FPS. However, when resolution was increased to 1440p or 4K, the difference became more pronounced, with the RTX 3060 pulling away from its predecessor.

**Performance per Watt**

One aspect that stood out during testing was the performance per watt of the RTX 3060 compared to the RTX 2060 and GTX 1060. In most cases, the RTX 3060 performed significantly better than both its predecessors while drawing less power. For instance, in the DaVinci Resolve benchmark, the RTX 3060 achieved a score of around 16% higher than the RTX 2060, but only 68% higher than the GTX 1060.

**Performance in Workloads**

The Nvidia RTX 3060 was also tested in various workloads, including video editing and rendering. In these tests, the GPU performed well, with the RTX 3060 delivering scores that were significantly better than both its predecessors.

In particular, the RTX 3060 excelled in the V-Ray benchmark, achieving a score of around 250% higher than the GTX 1060 in the CUDA test and 46% higher than the RTX 2060. This suggests that the RTX 3060 is well-suited for tasks that involve complex graphics rendering.

**Pricing**

One major issue with the Nvidia RTX 3060 is its pricing, which has been reported to be around $500 or more in some regions, depending on availability and demand. To put this into perspective, the RTX 2060 launched at a similar price point several years ago, but since then, prices for older GPUs have plummeted.

In contrast, the RTX 3060's MSRP of $330 USD seems reasonable, especially considering its performance advantages over both its predecessors. However, given the current shortages and high prices of other GPUs, it's likely that the RTX 3060 will also be scarce and expensive in the market.

**Content Creator Workloads**

The Nvidia RTX 3060 was also tested in various content creator workloads, including video editing and rendering. In these tests, the GPU performed well, with the RTX 3060 delivering scores that were significantly better than both its predecessors.

In particular, the RTX 3060 excelled in the Blender benchmark, achieving a score of around 237% faster than the GTX 1060 in the longer classroom test and 112% faster than the RTX 2060. This suggests that the RTX 3060 is well-suited for tasks that involve complex graphics rendering.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Nvidia RTX 3060 has proven itself to be a capable and powerful GPU, with performance advantages over both its predecessors and the older GTX 1060. However, its pricing and availability are major issues that need to be addressed before it can be considered a viable option for many consumers.

Assuming prices do get back to normal, the RTX 3060 is definitely worth considering for those looking to upgrade from an Nvidia GPU. For content creators and professionals who require high-performance graphics rendering, the RTX 3060 is likely to be a top choice.

However, for general gamers or those on a budget, it's not clear whether the RTX 3060 is worth the cost. While its performance advantages are significant, they may not be enough to justify the higher price point compared to the RTX 2060.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enNvidia’s new RTX 3060 graphics card is here,but how does it compare against the RTX 2060from last generation, or going back even furtherto the popular GTX 1060?I’ve compared all 3 in 12 games at 1080p,1440p and 4K resolutions to show you whatthe differences are.The 1060 and 2060 both have 6 gigs of memory,though the 2060’s is faster.The 3060 has double the memory capacity at12 gig while also having faster memory thanthe 2060.The 3060 has more CUDA cores than the others,but interestingly less RT cores than the older2060, though the 3060s are 2nd gen so we’llsee if this matters when testing some gameswith ray tracing.The 1060 launched almost 5 years ago now,but they’re also easier to pick up secondhand and of course cheaper than the MSRP listedhere.This is the system that I’m using to testall three GPUs in, so overclocked 10900K and32 gigs of memory are the key specs.It’s also worth noting the BIOS on my Z490board was updated so the 3060 was runningwith resizable BAR enabled, this is not currentlysupported by the 10 or 20 series cards.Alright so with all of that in mind, let’sfirst have a look at how these 3 graphicscards compare in 12 different games at 3 resolutions.We’ll also take a look at power draw, contentcreator workloads, pricing and availabilityor lack thereof afterwards.Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using thegames benchmark.I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom,1440p results in the middle, and 4K up thetop.We can quickly see that both the 2060 and3060 are offering nice gains when comparedto the older 1060, however the gap betweenthe 2060 and 3060 is smaller comparatively.At 1080p high settings the 3060 was reaching24% higher average FPS compared to the 2060,while the 3060 had a massive 133% lead overthe 1060, the biggest out of all 12 gamesat this resolution.Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little Chinawith the street kid life path.These results are with ray tracing off, we’lllook at ray tracing and DLSS in the next graph.This time the differences between the 2060and 3060 were even smaller.The 3060 was 13% faster than the 2060 at 1080pand 1440p, then 19% ahead at 4K, granted withthese frame rates you’d want to lower thesettings.Here’s how things look with the RT Mediumpreset in use with DLSS set to quality.I don’t have results from the GTX 1060 here,as it doesn’t have ray tracing hardwareit’s not able to run.The differences between the 2060 and 3060were now much larger, the 3060 was 39% aheadat 1080p and 65% at 1440p, the biggest gapbetween these two GPUs out of the 12 gamestested.So it looks like there might be some nicegains in terms of ray tracing with the 3060over the 2060.Let’s check out another title with ray tracingsupport and see if that’s the case.Like Cyberpunk, Control was tested with andwithout ray tracing, and we’ll start withray tracing off results.I’ve found this game to be heavy on theGPU, and that’s especially the case givenI’m testing with max settings here.Both the 2060 and 3060 were far ahead of the1060 here.At 1080p the 3060 was 129% higher than the1060 in average FPS, but it only had a 19%lead when compared to the 2060.Based on this it would appear that the 2060was an awesome upgrade over the 1060, butthe 3060, not so much of an upgrade comparedto the 2060 before it, and I’m not evenconsidering the 2060 Super which would sitin between them.Here’s how things change by enabling bothray tracing and DLSS.Again no results for the 1060 as it doesn’thave ray tracing support.The 3060 is actually performing better atall three resolutions with ray tracing andDLSS compared to just running at stock whichis kind of impressive stuff.The results from the 2060 are more mixed,some resolutions saw gains while others loweredback a bit, ultimately resulting in the 3060being 22% ahead of the 2060 at 1080p and 1440p,so a slightly larger gap compared to the 19%difference we saw just before with ray tracingoff.It’s worth noting that the differences betweenthese two GPUs at 4K was the largest seenout of all 12 titles.It’s hard to say if this is the new raytracing hardware helping, or it could justbe the fact that the 3060 has double the VRAMcapacity.Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in theSydney landing challenge.The 3060 at 1080p was the only option thatcould deliver more than 60 FPS, granted youcould of course run with lower settings shouldyou want to prefer a smoother experience.Higher settings are generally more GPU dependentwhich is important for a comparison like this.The 3060 was reaching more than twice theaverage FPS of the 1060 at 1440p, a big improvement,while the 3060 was only 22% ahead of the 2060in this same test.Even the 1% lows of the 2060 were beatingthe averages of the 1060.Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was tested withthe game's benchmark.Again the 1% lows from the 2060 were aheadof even the average FPS of the 1060.The new 3060 was only able to do this to the2060 at 4K, where average FPS was 48% higher.The difference was smaller at lower resolutionsthough, with the 3060 23% ahead of the 2060at 1440p and 18% ahead at 1080p.Watch Dogs Legion was also tested with thegames benchmark.1080p on the 3060 was the only configurationthat could surpass 60 average FPS with thehighest ultra setting preset.This time the 1% lows from the 3060 were allahead of the average FPS of the 2060 at allresolutions, there’s an above average differencewhen compared to the other 11 games testedhere with the 3060 offering a nice boost comparedto the 2060.Let’s see if there are any big differencesfor esports titles.Fortnite was tested using the replay featurewith the exact same replay used for all threegraphics cards.This was another where the 1% lows from the3060 could surpass even the average FPS ofthe 2060.The 3060 was able to offer more than two timeshigher average frame rate when compared tothe 1060 at all three resolutions.While that sounds nice, and it is, as you’llsee later though this was actually the casewith most games.CS:GO was tested with the ulletical FPS benchmark,and typically depends more on CPU performancethan GPU.The 1% low difference between the 2060 and3060 was minor at all three resolutions.The difference to average FPS was also smalltoo, this game saw the smallest improvementswhen comparing all 12 titles that I’ve tested.Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the gamesbenchmark using Vulkan.This was another where the 3060 was able toproduce more than two times the frames whencompared to the older 1060.There’s a fair difference between the 3060and 2060 too, it’s just not as much of aboost, the 3060 was around 22% faster at allresolutions.Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode.At 1080p the 3060 was reaching 21% higheraverage FPS when compared to the 2060, butthis increases to a 33% lead at 1440p, thena much larger 52% increase at 4K, outliningthat the difference increases as the resolutionrises.Second last game before the big comparison.Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested withthe game's benchmark.This one had an above average improvementwith the 3060 when compared to the 2060, meanwhilethe 3060 was reaching more than twice theaverage FPS that the 1060 was capable of.The Witcher 3 is a game I’ve been testingthe same way for about 5 years now, so it’sa good one to throw in if you want to seehow results compare to any of my older videos.Anyway there was a much smaller differencebetween the 2060 and 3060 here, hardly worthan upgrade at all, though this is an oldergame and both were much better when comparedto the 1060.These are the differences in all 12 titlestested between the RTX 3060 and GTX 1060 at1080p.The 3060 was almost 100% faster, or aroundtwice the average FPS on average, so a prettydecent boost.Most people with a 1060 are probably runningaround 1080p, so yeah in the games I’vetested here on average you can expect a 2xboost with the 3060.This increases to a 109% improvement goingfrom 1060 to 3060 with the higher 1440p resolution.The 1060 is capable of 1440p in some games,it of course depends on the setting levelsused, but again the point remains that onaverage more than a 2x boost can be possiblewith an upgrade.4K isn’t really where the 1060 was aimedat, so I suppose this one is more of a “forscience” result as this resolution is loadingup the GPUs nicely, leading to an average133% boost with the 3060.Now let’s look at how the 2060 and 3060compare.At 1080p the 3060 was 22% ahead on average,so a much smaller difference compared to theolder 1060.It of course varies by game, but for the mostpart I think this is a pretty small difference.Things increase at 1440p with the 3060 nowon average around 27% faster than the 2060in these selection of games.It depends on the title, but some like Cyberpunksaw small differences - that is with ray tracingoff.With ray tracing enabled the 3060 seems tohave a nice lead over the 2060, at least inthis game, as the control result with raytracing on was more in line with the restof the games.This changes at 4K though, the top two resultsare ray tracing tests, but as outlined earlierit’s hard to say how much of this improvementis solely due to ray tracing hardware upgradeswith the 30 series and how much may be dueto the 3060 having double the VRAM, as that’sgoing to be pretty important at this higherresolution.I’ve got a dedicated RTX test soon thoughso stay tuned.Despite performing better in Control at 4K,the RTX 3060 was actually using slightly lesspower than the 2060, though the two were close.The 1060 is using less power, but the 3060was also reaching 236% higher average FPSin this test.Basically the 3060 is winning here in termsof performance per watt, as it was capableof hitting higher FPS while drawing a littleless power in the same system.I haven’t tested thermals here as all ofmy graphics cards have different cooling designs,so temperatures will vary due to this, itjust wouldn’t be a fair comparison.Now let’s check out the differences in contentcreator workloads followed by pricing afterwards.I’ve tested DaVinci Resolve with the PugetSystems benchmark.This software seems to be fairly GPU heavy,though the differences were far smaller whencompared to the games just covered.The 3060 was reaching a 16% higher score comparedto the 2060, but a 68% higher score comparedto the older 1060.Adobe Premiere was also tested with the pugetsystems benchmark, however the GPU seems tobe less of a factor here.The 2060 and 3060 were scoring very closetogether, and the 3060 was scoring around25% higher than the 1060.It was a different story in the V-Ray benchmarkthough, the 3060 was reaching a score 250%higher compared to the 1060 in the CUDA test,or 46% higher compared to the 2060.Vray also offers a ray tracing test, and the3060 was around 60% higher in this one shownby the darker purple bars.Blender was tested with the Open Data Benchmarkwith the BMW and Classroom tests using CUDA.The 3060 was 237% faster than the 1060 inthe longer classroom test, or 112% ahead ofthe 2060, more than two times faster, so therecan be some bigger differences between the2060 and 3060 outside of gaming.Now let’s discuss price.According to Nvidia, the RTX 3060 is launchingwith an MSRP of $330 USD.Good luck with that.Based on the shortages and high prices ofother GPUs at the moment that just seems prettyunlikely.Coreteks has reported prices closer to $500prior to launch, unfortunately I’m makingthis video prior to launch so I haven’tbeen able to confirm, but you can check outupdated prices with the links down in thedescription, of course assuming there’sactually stock.The 2060 had a more expensive $350 MSRP backwhen it launched in 2019, but checking Neweggand sorting from lowest, well, let’s justsay things aren’t looking good there either.Even second hand 1060s are currently on eBayfor around $200, so yeah definitely not goodtimes out there.Due to these crazy prices differences I justdon’t feel comfortable making my usual performanceper dollar graph.Sure, I could use the MSRP but that’s notparticularly useful as you can’t buy themat those prices.That said, hopefully things do get under controlin the future, so with that in mind I havemade the graph, but again it’s not reallygoing to be particularly useful unless thingscome back to normal.I only decided to add it into the video atthe last minute just in case it helps someonemonths from now when prices might be morenormal.Basically assuming MSRP prices the 3060 wins.It performs better for the money, regardlessof resolution.In a normal world the 1060 and 2060 wouldbe available for less second hand, but that’snot the case currently.I guess you could argue why make this videoat all if you can’t buy any of these, andlook I get where you’re coming from, butfact is some people will actually be ableto get their hands on these, so why not havethat data out there to make an informed decision.Plus I do believe the content will be usefullater on, whether that’s one month, threemonths, six months, a year - I have no idea.It really does suck, but that’s just theway it is at the moment.Assuming prices do actually get to their MSRP,basically to summarize, the 3060 is cheaperthan the 2060 but also performs better.If you already have a 2060, it’s not reallyworth upgrading to the 3060.In most cases the performance gains just weren’tthat big, but if you’re still on a 1060then upgrading to a 3060 would be a prettybig improvement.So that’s pretty much it, if you’re newto the channel get subscribed for more upcomingGPU comparisons and tech videos like thisone, and I guess let me know in the commentsif you would get a 3060 if it was actuallyreasonably priced and in stock.\n"