The RTX 3060 Laptop Comparison: Performance and Power Consumption

In this article, we will compare the performance and power consumption of two laptops, one with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU and another with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU. We will explore how these GPUs perform in different workloads, including gaming, content creation, and professional applications.

The first laptop, the Legion 5 with a GTX 1660 Ti, was able to handle most modern games at high settings without breaking a sweat. However, when running resource-intensive tasks such as video editing or 3D modeling, the laptop's performance started to suffer. In these cases, the laptop's cooling system had to work harder to keep the GPU temperatures in check, which resulted in increased power consumption.

On the other hand, the RTX 3060 Laptop, with its more powerful and efficient GPU, was able to handle even the most demanding tasks without breaking a sweat. The GPU's ability to draw more power from the wall when under load meant that it could produce more heat, but this was offset by the laptop's improved cooling system. As a result, the RTX 3060 Laptop was able to maintain its performance and efficiency in all tests.

One of the most noticeable differences between the two laptops was their performance in GPU-bound workloads such as 3DMark and Firestrike. The RTX 3060 Laptop scored significantly higher in these tests, with a 48% lead in Firestrike and a massive 239% lead in Port Royal due to the RTX 3060's ray tracing capabilities.

In content creation applications such as DaVinci Resolve and Blender, the RTX 3060 Laptop also showed significant performance gains. In DaVinci Resolve, the RTX 3060 scored 12% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti, while in Blender it completed a longer test 56% faster. These gains were due to the RTX 3060's increased CUDA core count and improved GPU power.

The RTX 3060 Laptop also performed well in professional applications such as SPECviewperf. In all of these tests, the RTX 3060 scored higher than the GTX 1660 Ti, although the differences varied depending on the specific test.

So, how much more money does the RTX 3060 Laptop cost compared to the Legion 5 with a GTX 1660 Ti? The current price of the Legion 5 is around $1230 USD, while the RTX 3060 Laptop is priced at over $1400 USD. However, if you can get it on sale, the RTX 3060 Laptop offers significantly better value due to its improved performance and efficiency.

In terms of cost per frame, the GTX 1660 Ti in the Legion 5 is the worst value, while the RTX 3060 Laptop at regular prices is actually offering better value. However, if you can get it on sale, the RTX 3060 Laptop offers slightly better value than the GTX 1660 Ti. Even at full price, the RTX 3060 Laptop is still about 27% more expensive than the Legion 5 with a GTX 1660 Ti.

Overall, while the GTX 1660 Ti is still a capable GPU, the RTX 3060 Laptop offers significantly better performance and efficiency in most workloads. If you can get it on sale, it's definitely worth considering. Even at full price, the RTX 3060 Laptop is offering significant value due to its improved performance and efficiency.

In conclusion, the RTX 3060 Laptop offers significantly better performance and efficiency than the Legion 5 with a GTX 1660 Ti. While the GTX 1660 Ti is still capable of handling most modern games at high settings, the RTX 3060 Laptop can handle even more demanding tasks without breaking a sweat. With its improved cooling system and increased GPU power, the RTX 3060 Laptop is the better choice for anyone looking for a powerful and efficient laptop.

**3DMark Results**

Here are the 3DMark results for both laptops:

* Firestrike Graphics: The RTX 3060 scored 48% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti.

* Timespy Graphics: The RTX 3060 scored 58% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti.

* Port Royal (Ray Tracing): The RTX 3060 scored a massive 239% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti.

**Content Creation Workloads**

Here are the results for content creation workloads such as DaVinci Resolve and Blender:

* DaVinci Resolve: The RTX 3060 scored 12% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti.

* Blender (CUDA): The RTX 3060 completed a longer test 56% faster than the GTX 1660 Ti.

**Professional Applications**

Here are the results for professional applications such as SPECviewperf:

* SPECviewperf: The RTX 3060 scored higher than the GTX 1660 Ti in all tests, although the differences varied depending on the specific test.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enShould you buy an RTX 3060 laptop, or savesome money and get a cheaper GTX 1660 Ti?I’ve compared both laptops in 15 differentgames to show you all the differences!These are the differences in specs betweenthese two laptop GPUs.The newer RTX 3060 has more than double theCUDA cores, and although both have 6 gigsof GDDR6 memory, the newer 3060’s is faster.The 3060 also has a higher maximum power limitrange, and more power will equal better performance,but also more heat.I’m using the Lenovo Legion 5 to do thiscomparison, as both laptops have a lot ofsimilarities which helps keep things fair.Both laptops have full wattage GPUs, so I’mcomparing the highest powered 1660 Ti againstthe highest powered 3060, unfortunately Idon’t also have an 80 watt 3060.Now the 1660 Ti is only available with lastgeneration processors.I don’t think it’s possible to find onewith either Ryzen 5000 or Intel 11th gen,so some of the differences that we’re goingto see in this comparison will be due to thoseCPU differences, so while that may not beideal from a scientific comparison standpoint,it’s just going to be the way it is in thereal world.An RTX 3060 laptop will have a newer CPU.We can try to mitigate the processor differencesby focusing on higher setting presets in games,as these will generally be more GPU bound.Of course we are expecting the newer RTX 3060to perform better, the question is by howmuch, and is it worth paying money for?Both laptops were tested with the exact samememory kit installed, the same Windows updates,same Nvidia drivers and with optimus disabledfor best results.Let’s start out by comparing both laptopsin 15 different games followed by contentcreator workloads, power draw, price differenceand cost per frame afterwards.Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with thegames benchmark.I’ve got the newer RTX 3060 results shownby the purple bars, older GTX 1660 Ti resultsshown by the red bars, and along the leftare all the available setting presets, withlowest down the bottom and highest up thetop.The 1660 Ti is still giving reasonable resultsand is above 60 FPS at medium settings, howeverat ultra where we’re more GPU bound the3060 was reaching 65% higher average FPS.Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with the exact samerun through the game on both laptops, andit’s showing us the limits of the 1660 Tistraight away, in that it’s not able torun the ray tracing presets with DLSS at thetop.Even the 1% lows from the 3060 were aheadof the average FPS from the 1660 Ti at mostsetting presets, so fairly big gains on offerwith the newer 3060 here.Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on the other handhad a much smaller difference at the highestsetting level, the 3060 was just 9% ahead,or only 4 FPS, nothing major.At lower presets though, the 1% lows fromthe 3060 were again ahead of even the averageFPS from the 1660 Ti, though the differencesbetween the Zen2 and Zen3 CPUs likely startsmaking a larger difference there.Control was tested with and without ray tracing,let’s start with ray tracing off results.This is a GPU heavy game, which is why thedifferences at high settings are some of thebiggest out of any game tested.The 3060 was reaching 66% higher average FPScompared to the 1660 Ti, and even at max settingsthe 1% low of the 3060 is 20 FPS ahead ofthe 1660 Ti’s average.The performance gap is much bigger with raytracing enabled, because only the 3060 hasthe dedicated hardware required for ray tracing.GTX hardware can still run it in some games,but as we can see the results are poor.RTX graphics also have the advantage of DLSS,and enabling this makes ray tracing performmuch better, though we can of course alsorun with DLSS without ray tracing for evenhigher performanceDLSS is an advantage that the GTX 1660 Tidoes not have, though this might be less ofan issue as more and more games start to supportAMD’s FSR.It just depends on the specific game and whetheror not it supports FSR, DLSS, or both.Watch Dogs Legion also had some big differencesbetween the two at higher settings.The 3060 was reaching more than 60% higheraverage FPS at ultra settings, though thegap is lower at 15% with the low setting preset.Fortnite was tested with the same replay onboth laptops, and there were big gains tobe had with the 3060 laptop here too, whichwas reaching 57% higher average FPS at thehighest epic setting preset.The differences at lower settings look likethey’re bigger, but they’re not, the 3060was 37% ahead at low settings.CS:GO is another esports title, however therewere much smaller differences in this oneas the GPU doesn’t seem to make as big ofa difference compared to the CPU.The 3060 laptop was just 17% higher in averageFPS at max settings, but I’m sure much ofthis is due to Zen 2 vs Zen 3 differences.The differences in Microsoft Flight Simulatorwere also smaller compared to most other gamestested, particularly at low, medium and highend settings.Ultra settings had the biggest performancegap, with the 3060 laptop 26% ahead of the1660 Ti laptop in terms of average FPS.Rather than talk through the rest of the 7games individually in depth, I’ll just blastthrough them so we can get into the fun stuff,feel free to pause the video if you want acloser look at these additional games.More games is important to help get a betterrounded average.On average over all 15 games tested at 1080pwith the highest setting preset, the RTX 3060was around 50% faster than the older GTX 1660Ti.This is quite a big difference, though somegames had much smaller differences like Assassin’sCreed Valhalla, while some of the GPU heavygames like Control were above 60% faster onthe newer 3060.Now let’s check out thermals and batterylife.The internals of both laptops is quite similar,yeah there are some differences but the heatpipes appear to be the same and both can evenhave the same 80Wh battery.These are the clock speeds that were reportedby hardware info by running the Heaven GPUbenchmark at max settings at 1080p for 30minutes.The 3060 was reaching higher speeds, justlike it says on the spec sheet.The 3060 was also running with a higher powerlimit.The 1660 Ti maxes out at 80 watts, and althoughthe 3060 runs at 115 watts when the processoris under load, like in most games, in thisGPU only workload newer graphics like the3060 can take advantage of dynamic boost,which in this case allows it to peak at 130watts.Higher power limit means that the laptop asa whole is drawing more power from the wallwhen under load, and more power is generallygoing to equal more heat, especially giventhe similarities in the cooling solution,so no surprise that the 3060 laptop was runningwarmer in this GPU workload, but the tradeoff, as we’ve seen, is much higher performance.Both laptops were lasting for comparable amountswhen running an actual game on battery.In this case the 1660 Ti was lasting 3% longer,or just 4 minutes more while playing the Witcher3, granted both laptops are limited to 30FPS with Nvidia’s battery boost here.People always ask for 3DMark, so here arethe results.The 3060, shown by the purple bars, is aheadin all of these tests.It’s scoring 48% higher than the 1660 Tiin the Firestrike graphics score, 58% higherin the Timespy graphics score, then a massive239% higher in Port Royal because the 3060actually has ray tracing hardware, and thisis a ray tracing test.I’ve also tested some content creator workloads,because believe it or not some people do morethan just gaming.Crazy I know!I’ve tested DaVinci Resolve with the Pugetsystems benchmark.This test mostly depends on GPU power, andthe RTX 3060 was scoring 12% higher than theGTX 1660 Ti in this one.The differences were much larger in Blenderwith CUDA, probably due to the CUDA core countdifferences.The 3060 completed the longer Classroom rendertest 56% faster than the older 1660 Ti.The V-Ray test also uses the GPU to rendera scene, and the 3060 had big gains in thisone as well as it’s another CUDA test, scoring44% higher than the 1660 Ti.SPECviewperf tests out various professional3D workloads, and the 3060, shown by the purplebars, was ahead in all of these tests, thoughthe amount it’s ahead by could vary significantlydepending on the specific test.Great, so the 3060 is better as expected,but how much more money does it cost and isit worth it?Prices will of course change over time, sorefer to those links down below for updates.The Legion 5 with 1660 Ti that I’ve testedhere currently goes for $1230 USD, thoughit was $1000 for quite some time last year,so presumably it’s increased to meet supplyand demand.That said there’s still the 6 core Intel10th gen model for $1000, and honestly inmost games at max settings the performanceshould be relatively similar, granted youmight want to upgrade the RAM from 8 gigs.The 3060 Legion 5 on the other hand is morethan $300 more, though it looks like it wason sale for under $1400 USD recently but nowthat’s out of stock, again check the linksin the description for stock updates.As far as cost per frame goes, the 1660 Tiin the currently priced Legion 5 is the worstvalue, and while the 1660 Ti at $1000 is offeringbetter value, the 3060 Legion 5 on sale wasstill slightly better value.When considering both at regular prices withno sales though, the 3060 model actually appearsto be worth paying for.Yeah it costs more money, but the uplift inperformance results in a lower cost per framevalue, so you’re getting what you’re payingfor, though it does of course depend on yourbudget and what you can afford.Honestly if you can get it on sale, I thinkthe newer RTX 3060 is well worth it.On sale at $1400 USD it’s about 14% moremoney compared to the Legion 5 with 1660 Ti,and as we’ve seen it’s also offering amuch better performance boost, at least onethat I would be comfortable paying 14% moremoney for.Even at full price the 3060 model is stillabout 27% more than the Legion 5 with 1660Ti, which for 60% gains in some gains I thinkis still pretty well worth it.That said, the 1660 Ti is by no means dead,as we’ve seen it can still do quite wellin a number of modern games, you just mighthave to turn the settings down in some ofthem a couple of levels.Check out these videos next if you want toget a better idea of how well both the 3060and 1660 Ti compare against other laptop GPUs.Make sure you’re subscribed to the channelfor future laptop comparisons like this one,and come and join me in Discord and get behindthe scenes videos by supporting the channelon Patreon.\n"