NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data shows a decisive overall victory for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile, which wins both recorded head-to-head tests against the GTX 1060 6 GB. The most striking result appears in the Geekbench OpenCL test, where the RTX 3060 Mobile scores 79,483 against the GTX 1060's 32,322. That is a 59.3% advantage for the newer card, a gap that reflects fundamental architectural changes rather than a minor clock-speed edge. The RTX 3060 Mobile also wins the Geekbench Vulkan test by an even wider margin: 80,344 versus 18,659, a 76.8% difference. In raw terms, the RTX 3060 Mobile more than quadruples the GTX 1060's Vulkan score, which is the single largest performance disparity in the recorded data.

Looking at the broader database averages, the picture becomes more nuanced. The GTX 1060 6 GB holds an average benchmark score of 21,856 across all recorded tests, placing it in the 67th percentile of all GPUs. The RTX 3060 Mobile averages 18,159, which puts it in the 62nd percentile. This is a notable inversion: despite winning both head-to-head tests, the RTX 3060 Mobile has a lower overall average score. The explanation lies in the test sets. The GTX 1060's average is built from three Geekbench tests (Metal, OpenCL, Vulkan), all of which are compute-oriented and favor the desktop card's higher sustained clocks. The RTX 3060 Mobile's average includes a much wider range of tests, including several Passmark entries with low raw scores (for example, 90 in DirectX 10, 58 in DirectX 12, and 146 in DirectX 9), which drag down its arithmetic mean.

When comparing each card to its nearest rivals, both sit in similar competitive territory. The GTX 1060 6 GB is within 1.3% of the AMD Radeon RX 6700S and within 1.4% of the AMD Radeon RX 5700, while being 2.2% ahead of the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile and 1% ahead of the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000. The RTX 3060 Mobile is nearly tied with the AMD Radeon Pro 5700, which scores 18,189 (a 0.2% difference), and sits 0.4% above the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. It trails the AMD Radeon RX 460 by 1.2% and the Intel Arc A770M by 1.2%. These rival comparisons confirm that the GTX 1060's average score is competitive with mid-range desktop GPUs of its era, while the RTX 3060 Mobile's average places it among capable laptop and desktop parts, though the two cards' head-to-head results tell a different story than their percentile rankings.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the Geekbench Vulkan benchmark?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile wins with a score of 80,344, compared to 18,659 for the GTX 1060 6 GB. This is a 76.8% advantage for the RTX 3060 Mobile.

Q: Does the GTX 1060 have any benchmark where it beats the RTX 3060 Mobile?

A: No. In the two recorded head-to-head tests (Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan), the RTX 3060 Mobile wins both. The GTX 1060 records zero wins in the head-to-head comparison.

Q: Why does the GTX 1060 have a higher average benchmark score if it loses both head-to-head tests?

A: The GTX 1060's average of 21,856 comes from three Geekbench tests, all of which are compute-heavy and favorable to its architecture. The RTX 3060 Mobile's average of 18,159 includes additional Passmark tests with low scores (such as 58 in DirectX 12 and 90 in DirectX 10), which lower its overall mean despite its strong Geekbench results.

Q: How does the GTX 1060 compare to the AMD Radeon RX 6700S?

A: The GTX 1060 averages 21,856, while the RX 6700S averages 22,154. The difference is 1.3%, with the AMD card slightly ahead.

Q: What is the percentile ranking of the RTX 3060 Mobile among all GPUs?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile sits in the 62nd percentile of all GPUs, based on its average benchmark score of 18,159.

Q: Which card has a higher memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile has a bandwidth of 336.0 GB/s, while the GTX 1060 has 192.2 GB/s. The RTX 3060 Mobile also uses GDDR6 memory versus GDDR5 on the GTX 1060.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs represent distinct generations of NVIDIA design. The GTX 1060 6 GB uses the GP106 chip built on the Pascal architecture, manufactured on a 16 nm process at TSMC. It contains 4,400 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 22.0 million per mm². The RTX 3060 Mobile uses the GA106 chip on the Ampere architecture, built on an 8 nm process at Samsung. This chip packs 12,000 million transistors into a 276 mm² die, achieving a density of 43.5 million per mm². The transistor count is nearly three times higher, and the density is roughly double, which reflects the more advanced manufacturing node and architectural complexity.

The most significant architectural divergence is the inclusion of dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware on the RTX 3060 Mobile. It features 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores, capabilities entirely absent from the GTX 1060, which has no such units. This explains the DirectX API support: the RTX 3060 Mobile is rated for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the GTX 1060 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1). The shading unit count also differs substantially. The RTX 3060 Mobile has 3,840 shading units, exactly three times the GTX 1060's 1,280. Texture mapping units stand at 120 versus 80, while both cards have 48 ROPs, so the pixel throughput capability is comparable on paper.

The compute characteristics show a stark generational shift. The RTX 3060 Mobile delivers 10.94 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, which is 2.5 times the GTX 1060's 4.375 TFLOPS. The FP16 performance is even more telling: the RTX 3060 Mobile achieves 10.94 TFLOPS at a 1:1 ratio with FP32, while the GTX 1060 manages only 68.36 GFLOPS, a 1:64 ratio. This means the Ampere card can process half-precision workloads at full speed, a major advantage for AI and compute tasks. Texture rate is also higher on the RTX 3060 Mobile at 171.0 GTexel/s versus 136.7 GTexel/s, although the pixel rate is slightly lower (68.40 GPixel/s versus 82.03 GPixel/s), likely due to the laptop card's lower boost clock.

The memory system reflects the newer card's bandwidth advantage. Both use a 192-bit bus and 6 GB of memory, but the RTX 3060 Mobile uses GDDR6 at 14 Gbps effective, yielding 336.0 GB/s. The GTX 1060 uses GDDR5 at 8 Gbps effective, yielding 192.2 GB/s. That is a 75% bandwidth increase for the RTX 3060 Mobile, which directly benefits texture-heavy and high-resolution workloads.

Specification Differences

The clock speeds differ significantly. The GTX 1060 has a base clock of 1506 MHz and a boost clock of 1709 MHz. The RTX 3060 Mobile has a much lower base of 900 MHz and a boost of 1425 MHz. Despite the lower clocks, the RTX 3060 Mobile achieves higher overall throughput due to its massive shader count. The GTX 1060's higher clocks also explain its superior pixel rate, as noted earlier.

The power profile is a major differentiator. The GTX 1060 is rated at 120 W TDP and requires a single 6-pin power connector, with a suggested PSU of 300 W. The RTX 3060 Mobile is rated at 80 W TDP and has no power connectors, as it is designed for mobile integration. The GTX 1060 is a dual-slot desktop card measuring 250 mm in length and 111 mm in height, while the RTX 3060 Mobile has no listed dimensions, reflecting its laptop-only nature. Display outputs also differ: the GTX 1060 offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the RTX 3060 Mobile's outputs are listed as "Portable Device Dependent."

The bus interface is newer on the RTX 3060 Mobile: PCIe 4.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x16 on the GTX 1060. Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The GTX 1060 was released on 2016-07-18, while the RTX 3060 Mobile came later on 2021-01-11. The GTX 1060 has a launch MSRP of 299 USD, while the RTX 3060 Mobile has no listed launch MSRP. Both are end-of-life in production status.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 1060 6 GB wins in scenarios that favor raw pixel throughput and sustained desktop clocks. Its pixel rate of 82.03 GPixel/s is higher than the RTX 3060 Mobile's 68.40 GPixel/s, which means rasterization-heavy workloads at lower resolutions, where pixel fill is the bottleneck, may perform relatively better on the older card. Its higher base and boost clocks (1506 MHz and 1709 MHz versus 900 MHz and 1425 MHz) also help in lightly threaded or latency-sensitive tasks where clock speed matters more than parallel throughput. The GTX 1060's higher average benchmark score and 67th percentile ranking indicate that in the specific Geekbench tests recorded, it holds its own against modern competition. Its desktop form factor with dedicated display outputs (DVI, HDMI, three DisplayPort) makes it suitable for multi-monitor desktop setups without adapter dependency.

The RTX 3060 Mobile wins in nearly every other measurable category. Its FP32 throughput of 10.94 TFLOPS is 2.5 times higher, making it clearly superior for general compute, physics simulations, and modern game workloads that scale with shader count. Its FP16 performance at a 1:1 ratio unlocks fast half-precision processing, which is valuable for machine learning inference and certain content creation workflows. The 336.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is 75% higher, benefiting texture streaming, high-resolution assets, and bandwidth-bound compute kernels. The presence of 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores gives it hardware acceleration for ray tracing and DLSS-style tensor operations, features the GTX 1060 cannot emulate. The 76.8% Vulkan advantage and 59.3% OpenCL advantage in head-to-head tests confirm that modern APIs, which leverage asynchronous compute and parallel execution, strongly favor the Ampere architecture.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile is the superior performer in every direct comparison recorded. It wins both head-to-head benchmarks by margins of 59.3% and 76.8%, offers more than double the FP32 compute, has three times the shading units, includes dedicated RT and tensor cores, and provides 75% more memory bandwidth. The only areas where the GTX 1060 shows an edge are pixel rate (82.03 GPixel/s versus 68.40 GPixel/s) and its higher average benchmark score, which stems from a narrower and more favorable test set. For anyone choosing between these two based on raw performance, the RTX 3060 Mobile is the clear choice, provided the use case is a laptop or mobile platform, since it has no desktop dimensions or connectors listed.

The GTX 1060 6 GB remains a competent desktop card for its era, with a 67th percentile ranking that puts it above the RTX 3060 Mobile's 62nd percentile in overall database standing. Its higher clocks and dual-slot desktop design make it suitable for budget desktop builds where power draw is a concern (120 W TDP with a 300 W PSU suggestion) and where legacy display outputs like DVI are still needed. However, the benchmark evidence shows that the RTX 3060 Mobile, despite being a mobile part with an 80 W TDP, decisively outperforms it in modern compute and graphics APIs. The choice comes down to platform: desktop users with legacy connectivity needs might still find the GTX 1060 acceptable, but anyone prioritizing compute performance, ray tracing, or memory bandwidth should select the RTX 3060 Mobile. The recorded data supports no other conclusion.