AMD Radeon RX 460 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The recorded benchmark data splits cleanly between these two cards, with no overlap in their winning categories. The AMD Radeon RX 460 does not win a single head-to-head comparison in the database. Across the two shared tests, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti takes both victories, and its wins are not marginal.

The RX 460's strengths, such as they are, show up only in its absolute scores relative to other GPUs in its own peer group. Its average benchmark score of 18,373 places it at the 62nd percentile of all GPUs in the database, which is a respectable position for a low-power card from the Arctic Islands generation. Its nearest rivals are the Intel Arc A770M at 18,383 (0.1% ahead), the AMD FirePro D500 at 18,533 (0.9% ahead), the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 at 18,189 (1% behind), and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile at 18,159 (1.2% behind). The RX 460 sits almost exactly in the middle of that cluster, trading blows within a 2% band. That tells a clear story: within its own performance tier, the RX 460 is competitive, but that tier is far below the RTX 3060 Ti.

The RTX 3060 Ti, by contrast, posts an average benchmark score of 16,129, which sits at the 59th percentile. Its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 9060 at 16,014 (0.7% behind), the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M at 16,351 (1.4% ahead), the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT at 16,361 (1.4% ahead), and the AMD Radeon R9 370X at 15,862 (1.7% behind). The interesting wrinkle here is that the RTX 3060 Ti has a lower average score than the RX 460 despite winning every direct comparison. That is because the RTX 3060 Ti's average includes a much wider set of tests, including several low-scoring PassMark API tests, while the RX 460's average comes from only three Geekbench compute tests. The average is not a like-for-like measure across different test suites.

In terms of direct wins, the use-case split is simple: the RTX 3060 Ti wins every shared workload, and the RX 460 wins none. The RX 460's only claim to a "win" is its higher percentile ranking, which reflects its narrower test set rather than any actual performance advantage over the RTX 3060 Ti.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different architectural generations and different foundries. The RX 460 uses the Baffin chip on GCN 4.0 architecture, manufactured on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. The RTX 3060 Ti uses the GA104 chip on Ampere architecture, manufactured on an 8 nm process at Samsung. The process node difference is substantial: 14 nm versus 8 nm.

The transistor counts reflect the scale gap. The RX 460 packs 3,000 million transistors into a 123 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 24.4 million per square millimeter. The RTX 3060 Ti packs 17,400 million transistors into a 392 mm² die, giving a density of 44.4 million per square millimeter. The RTX 3060 Ti has nearly six times the transistor count on a die roughly three times the size, and its density is almost double.

The RX 460 is built around 896 shading units, 56 texture mapping units, and 16 render output units. The RTX 3060 Ti has 4,864 shading units, 152 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. The RTX 3060 Ti also brings hardware that the RX 460 lacks entirely: 38 ray tracing cores and 152 tensor cores. The RX 460 has no ray tracing hardware and no tensor cores at all.

Compute rates follow the same pattern. The RX 460 delivers 2.150 TFLOPS of FP32 and the same 2.150 TFLOPS of FP16, a 1:1 ratio. The RTX 3060 Ti delivers 16.20 TFLOPS of FP32 and 16.20 TFLOPS of FP16, also 1:1. The pixel and texture rates tell a similar story: the RX 460 manages 19.20 GPixel/s and 67.20 GTexel/s, while the RTX 3060 Ti manages 133.2 GPixel/s and 253.1 GTexel/s.

API support also differs. The RX 460 supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. The RTX 3060 Ti supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The DirectX 12_2 feature level on the RTX 3060 Ti is the one that enables hardware ray tracing and mesh shaders, features the RX 460 cannot access.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two shared tests between these cards, and the RTX 3060 Ti wins both by wide margins.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 460 scores 17,855 while the RTX 3060 Ti scores 78,927. That is a delta of -77.4% for the RX 460, meaning the RTX 3060 Ti is roughly 4.4 times faster in raw compute throughput. This is the larger of the two gaps, and it reflects the massive difference in shading units, memory bandwidth, and compute rate.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RX 460 scores 20,198 while the RTX 3060 Ti scores 47,784. The delta is -57.7%, so the RTX 3060 Ti is about 2.4 times faster. The Vulkan gap is smaller than the OpenCL gap, but it is still decisive. The RX 460's Vulkan score is actually higher than its OpenCL score, suggesting it handles the Vulkan API relatively well, but it cannot close the hardware gap.

The RTX 3060 Ti's other benchmark results in the database give additional context. It scores 2,626 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 20,349 in PassMark G3D, 10,006 in PassMark GPU Compute, and 989 in PassMark G2D. Its PassMark API-specific scores are 234 in DirectX 9, 163 in DirectX 11, 132 in DirectX 10, and 78 in DirectX 12. These are not directly comparable to the RX 460 because the RX 460 has no corresponding entries in those tests, but they show the RTX 3060 Ti's breadth across legacy and modern APIs.

The RX 460 has no results in 3DMark, PassMark, or any DirectX-specific test. Its entire benchmark footprint is limited to Geekbench Metal, OpenCL, and Vulkan, with scores of 17,065, 17,855, and 20,198 respectively. That means any comparison between these two cards outside of OpenCL and Vulkan is impossible with the recorded data. The database simply does not have overlapping results for other workloads.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ on nearly every specification field in the database. The RX 460 belongs to the Arctic Islands (RX 400) generation and uses GCN 4.0, while the RTX 3060 Ti belongs to the GeForce 30 series and uses Ampere. The RX 460 is built on 14 nm at GlobalFoundries; the RTX 3060 Ti is built on 8 nm at Samsung.

Memory is a major differentiator. The RX 460 has 2 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 112.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 3060 Ti has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 448.0 GB/s. That is four times the capacity and exactly four times the bandwidth. The memory clock is listed as 1750 MHz for both, but the effective data rate differs: 7 Gbps for the RX 460 versus 14 Gbps for the RTX 3060 Ti.

Clock speeds are also different. The RX 460 runs at 1090 MHz base and 1200 MHz boost. The RTX 3060 Ti runs at 1410 MHz base and 1665 MHz boost. The RTX 3060 Ti's boost clock is 465 MHz higher than the RX 460's.

Power and cooling requirements diverge sharply. The RX 460 has a 75 W TDP, no power connectors, and a suggested 250 W power supply. The RTX 3060 Ti has a 200 W TDP, a single 12-pin power connector, and a suggested 550 W power supply. Both are dual-slot cards, but the RTX 3060 Ti is longer at 242 mm (9.5 inches) versus 170 mm (6.7 inches), and it also has a listed height of 112 mm (4.4 inches) while the RX 460 has no height listed.

The bus interface differs: the RX 460 uses PCIe 3.0 x8, while the RTX 3060 Ti uses PCIe 4.0 x16. Display outputs also differ: the RX 460 has 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0b, and 1x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the RTX 3060 Ti has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a.

The release dates are separated by more than four years: the RX 460 launched on 2016-08-07, and the RTX 3060 Ti launched on 2020-11-30. The RX 460's predecessor is Pirate Islands and its successor is Polaris; the RTX 3060 Ti's predecessor is GeForce 20 and its successor is GeForce 40. The RTX 3060 Ti has a launch MSRP of 399 USD; the RX 460 has no launch MSRP recorded in the database.

FAQ

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 3060 Ti. It delivers 448.0 GB/s over a 256-bit bus with GDDR6 memory, while the RX 460 delivers 112.0 GB/s over a 128-bit bus with GDDR5.

Q: Does the RX 460 support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The RX 460 has no ray tracing cores and supports DirectX 12 (12_0). The RTX 3060 Ti has 38 ray tracing cores and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2).

Q: How big is the gap in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX 3060 Ti scores 78,927 versus the RX 460's 17,855, a delta of -77.4% for the RX 460. The RTX 3060 Ti is roughly 4.4 times faster in that test.

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The RX 460 has a higher average at 18,373, but this reflects its narrow test set of three Geekbench compute tests. The RTX 3060 Ti's average of 16,129 includes a much wider range of tests, including several low-scoring PassMark API tests.

Q: What is the TDP difference?

A: The RX 460 has a 75 W TDP with no power connectors and a suggested 250 W power supply. The RTX 3060 Ti has a 200 W TDP with a single 12-pin connector and a suggested 550 W power supply.

Q: Which card has more shading units?

A: The RTX 3060 Ti has 4,864 shading units. The RX 460 has 896, which is roughly one-fifth of that count.

The Verdict

The data points to a one-sided comparison. The RTX 3060 Ti wins both shared benchmarks, and it wins them by margins of 77.4% and 57.7% in OpenCL and Vulkan respectively. It has more memory, more bandwidth, more shading units, more texture units, more ROPs, ray tracing hardware, tensor cores, a newer architecture, a smaller process node, and a higher boost clock. There is no recorded workload in which the RX 460 is faster.

The RX 460's higher average benchmark score and higher percentile ranking are artifacts of its limited test coverage. It only runs three Geekbench compute tests, all of which are compute-oriented and none of which stress the API-specific legacy paths that drag down the RTX 3060 Ti's average. Within its own peer group, the RX 460 is a solid performer: it sits within 1.2% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile and within 1% of the AMD Radeon Pro 5700. But its peer group is simply not the RTX 3060 Ti's peer group.

Who should pick the RTX 3060 Ti? Anyone whose workload involves modern DirectX 12 Ultimate features, ray tracing, high-resolution textures, or any of the compute-heavy tasks that the OpenCL and Vulkan results represent. The 8 GB GDDR6 memory and 448.0 GB/s bandwidth give it room to handle data sets that would exhaust the RX 460's 2 GB frame buffer immediately. The 200 W TDP and 550 W suggested power supply are the cost of that capability, but the specification sheet justifies it.

Who should pick the RX 460? Someone building a low-power system with a 75 W slot budget and no auxiliary power connectors. The card's 170 mm length, dual-slot cooler, and PCIe 3.0 x8 interface make it a fit for compact or legacy systems. Its 2 GB memory and 112.0 GB/s bandwidth are sufficient for older or lighter workloads, and its Vulkan support at version 1.3 is respectable. But the benchmark data does not support choosing it over the RTX 3060 Ti on any performance basis. The choice is entirely about power, size, and system compatibility, not about speed.