NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti represent two distinct eras of NVIDIA's consumer GPU lineup, and the recorded data shows the gap between them is substantial. Both cards are now end-of-life products, but they approach graphics workloads from completely different starting points: one is a Pascal-based, 16 nm part with 3 GB of GDDR5, while the other is an Ampere-based, 8 nm card with dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware. In the head-to-head benchmark suite, the RTX 3060 Ti won every shared test, and it did so by margins that leave little room for interpretation.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the shared benchmarks?

A: The RTX 3060 Ti wins both head-to-head tests. It scored 78927 in Geekbench OpenCL against 27001 for the GTX 1060 3 GB, a 65.8 percent gap, and 47784 versus 17475 in Geekbench Vulkan, a 63.4 percent gap.

Q: How much more raw compute does the RTX 3060 Ti have?

A: Its FP32 throughput is rated at 16.20 TFLOPS, compared with 3.935 TFLOPS on the GTX 1060 3 GB, reflecting the jump from 1152 shading units to 4864.

Q: Do both cards support ray tracing hardware?

A: No. The RTX 3060 Ti has 38 RT cores and 152 tensor cores. The GTX 1060 3 GB has neither, as Pascal predates those units.

Q: How do their memory configurations compare?

A: The GTX 1060 3 GB ships with 3 GB of GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus delivering 192.2 GB/s. The RTX 3060 Ti has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus delivering 448.0 GB/s.

Q: What power delivery does each card need?

A: The GTX 1060 3 GB is a 120 W part using a single 6-pin connector, with a suggested 300 W PSU. The RTX 3060 Ti is a 200 W part using a 12-pin connector, with a suggested 550 W PSU.

Q: How does each card rank against the wider database?

A: The GTX 1060 3 GB sits in the 64th percentile of all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 19334, while the RTX 3060 Ti sits in the 59th percentile with an average score of 16129. The percentile difference reflects the composition of their respective test suites rather than head-to-head performance, where the 3060 Ti dominates.

Architecture Differences

These two cards sit four generations apart in NVIDIA's numbering, and the architectural contrast is stark. The GTX 1060 3 GB is built on the GP106 die using TSMC's 16 nm process, packing 4,400 million transistors into a 200 mm² die for a density of 22.0M transistors per square millimetre. The RTX 3060 Ti uses the GA104 die on Samsung's 8 nm process, with 17,400 million transistors across 392 mm² and a density of 44.4M per square millimetre. That is roughly double the transistor density and about four times the total transistor count, and it shows up everywhere in the spec sheet.

Pascal, the architecture behind the GTX 1060 3 GB, is a purely rasterisation-focused design. It has 1152 shading units, 72 texture mapping units, and 48 render output units, with no RT or tensor silicon to speak of. Ampere, in the RTX 3060 Ti, scales all of that up dramatically and adds the two hardware blocks Pascal lacks: 38 RT cores for ray tracing acceleration and 152 tensor cores for machine learning workloads. The FP16 story is particularly revealing. The GTX 1060 3 GB manages just 61.49 GFLOPS at half precision, a punishing 1:64 ratio against FP32. The RTX 3060 Ti delivers 16.20 TFLOPS of FP16 at a full 1:1 ratio, meaning half-precision compute is no longer a bottleneck but a genuine strength.

The feature set diverges as well. The RTX 3060 Ti supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the GTX 1060 3 GB stops at DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The bus interface also moved forward, from PCIe 3.0 x16 on the Pascal card to PCIe 4.0 x16 on the Ampere one.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head record is a clean sweep: two tests, two wins for the RTX 3060 Ti, zero for the GTX 1060 3 GB.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3060 Ti posted 78927 against 27001, a 65.8 percent lead. Geekbench Vulkan tells nearly the same story: 47784 versus 17475, a 63.4 percent advantage for the newer card. These are not close contests or scenario-dependent results. Across both cross-platform compute APIs, the RTX 3060 Ti delivers roughly triple the performance of its predecessor-by-proxy.

The wider benchmark data reinforces the picture. The RTX 3060 Ti's recorded results include a PassMark G3D score of 20349, a PassMark GPU compute score of 10006, a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2626, and Geekbench Metal-adjacent results such as 989 in PassMark G2D and 234 in PassMark DirectX 9, alongside 132, 163, and 78 in PassMark DirectX 10, 11, and 12 respectively. The GTX 1060 3 GB's recorded profile is limited to Geekbench Metal at 13527, OpenCL at 27001, and Vulkan at 17475, and none of those numbers approach the Ampere card's output.

Context from the rivals list adds useful framing. The RTX 3060 Ti's average score of 16129 places it within touching distance of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 (16014, a 0.7 percent gap), slightly ahead of the Radeon Pro 5600M (16351, -1.4 percent) and the RX 5700 XT (16361, -1.4 percent), and clearly ahead of the Radeon R9 370X (15862, 1.7 percent). The GTX 1060 3 GB's average of 19334 lands it in a cluster with the Radeon RX 7900 XTX (19410, -0.4 percent), the TITAN Xp (19177, 0.8 percent), the GTX 780 (19164, 0.9 percent), and the Tesla K20m (19089, 1.3 percent). The apparent paradox of the older card holding a higher average score while losing every direct test is explained by the differing test suites each card accumulated in the database, and the direct head-to-head results remain the authoritative comparison.

Specification Differences

The spec sheet differences run deep. On clocks, the GTX 1060 3 GB actually runs higher: a 1506 MHz base and 1708 MHz boost, versus 1410 MHz and 1665 MHz on the RTX 3060 Ti. The newer card compensates with far more hardware per clock, so its lower frequencies are irrelevant to the outcome. Memory clocks follow a similar pattern in reverse: 2002 MHz (8 Gbps effective) GDDR5 for the Pascal card against 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) GDDR6 for the Ampere card, which combines with the wider bus for 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth versus 192.2 GB/s.

The throughput figures quantify the generational leap. Pixel rate is 81.98 GPixel/s versus 133.2 GPixel/s, texture rate is 123.0 GTexel/s versus 253.1 GTexel/s, and FP32 compute is 3.935 TFLOPS versus 16.20 TFLOPS. Shading units quadruple from 1152 to 4864, TMUs more than double from 72 to 152, and ROPs rise from 48 to 80.

Memory capacity is 3 GB versus 8 GB, a difference that matters for modern game asset loads. Power draw rises from a 120 W TDP to 200 W, the connector changes from 1x 6-pin to 1x 12-pin, and the suggested PSU moves from 300 W to 550 W. Both cards are dual-slot designs, though the RTX 3060 Ti is actually slightly shorter at 242 mm (9.5 inches) versus 250 mm (9.8 inches), with a recorded height of 112 mm (4.4 inches).

Display outputs differ modestly: the GTX 1060 3 GB offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the RTX 3060 Ti drops DVI in favour of 1x HDMI 2.1 plus 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. Release timing spans the two launches, 2016 for the Pascal card and 2020 for the Ampere card, with launch MSRPs of 199 USD and 399 USD respectively. Both are marked end-of-life in the database.

The Verdict

The data supports one conclusion without ambiguity. In every shared benchmark, the RTX 3060 Ti beats the GTX 1060 3 GB by well over 60 percent, wins the head-to-head two-nil, and pairs that performance with 8 GB of faster memory, more than double the bandwidth, ray tracing hardware, tensor cores, full-rate FP16, and the more complete DirectX 12 Ultimate feature level. For any workload captured in this database, gaming or compute, the RTX 3060 Ti is the stronger card.

The GTX 1060 3 GB's case rests entirely on secondary considerations visible in the data: a lower 120 W TDP, a single 6-pin connector, a 300 W suggested PSU, and a shorter historical launch MSRP of 199 USD. Those attributes suit it to modest systems with limited power headroom, and its percentile ranking of 64 across the database shows it was never a weak card in absolute terms.

But for anyone choosing between the two on performance grounds, the decision is settled. The RTX 3060 Ti is the faster GPU by every direct measurement recorded here, and by a wide margin.