NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data presents an unusual comparison: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB land on nearly identical average scores within the database, yet their performance profiles are fundamentally different because they were measured with different test suites. The GTX 560M records an average benchmark score of 4,855, while the RTX 3080 12 GB posts an average of 4,791. That is a difference of just 64 points, which translates to the GTX 560M leading by roughly 1.3% in aggregate terms. However, these numbers come from different benchmarks — the GTX 560M was tested with Geekbench OpenCL, whereas the RTX 3080 12 GB was evaluated using 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. Cross-suite comparisons carry significant caveats, but the database treats the scores as comparable for percentile ranking purposes.

The most striking observation from the nearest-rival data is that each GPU's closest competitor is the other. For the GTX 560M, the nearest rival list shows the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB with an average score of 4,901 and a deltaPct of -0.9%, meaning the 560M trails that modern card by 0.9%. The AMD Radeon R6 M255DX sits 0.2% ahead of the 560M at 4,867, while the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX is essentially tied at 4,844, just 0.2% behind. The GTX 560M's position is remarkably tight: its entire rival cluster spans less than a 1.1% performance band. For the RTX 3080 12 GB, the nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon R5 M255 at 4,788 (0.1% behind), the AMD Radeon R5 M335 at 4,752 (0.8% behind), and the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX at 4,844 (1.1% ahead). The GTX 560M appears as the fourth nearest rival to the RTX 3080 12 GB, with a deltaPct of -1.3%, meaning the 3080 trails the 560M by that margin in this particular comparison.

Both GPUs share the same overall percentile ranking of 28 among all GPUs in the database. This percentile value places them in the lower-middle tier of the entire GPU landscape, despite the massive architectural gap between them. The fact that a 2011 mobile GPU and a 2022 desktop flagship share a percentile rank underscores the limitations of comparing scores from different benchmark suites. The GTX 560M's Geekbench OpenCL score of 4,855 and the RTX 3080 12 GB's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 4,791 are not directly substitutable metrics, yet the database's normalization algorithm treats them as equivalent for ranking purposes. This is not a head-to-head matchup in the conventional sense — there are zero entries in the headToHeadBenchmarks array — so the "biggest wins" here are statistical artifacts rather than direct performance comparisons.

Where Each One Wins

The GTX 560M wins on the Geekbench OpenCL front by virtue of being the only one of the two tested under that workload. Its score of 4,855 places it 0.2% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX and 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450, while trailing the AMD Radeon R6 M255DX by 0.2%. The RTX 3080 12 GB, tested under 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, posts a 4,791 score that puts it 0.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon R5 M255 and 0.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon R5 M335, but 1.1% behind the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX and 1.3% behind the GTX 560M. In terms of sheer aggregate score, the GTX 560M holds a 64-point advantage, but that lead is smaller than the margin between the 560M and its own nearest rival, the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, which sits 46 points above the 560M.

For use-case analysis, the GTX 560M's advantage is purely in the OpenCL compute domain as measured by Geekbench, which is a synthetic workload that exercises general-purpose GPU compute rather than gaming-specific features. The RTX 3080 12 GB's score comes from a DirectX 12 rasterization test, which is more representative of modern gaming workloads. The RTX 3080 12 GB also carries features that the GTX 560M lacks entirely — 70 ray tracing cores and 280 tensor cores — which would give it decisive wins in any ray-traced or DLSS-enabled application, though no benchmark scores for those workloads appear in the data. The GTX 560M has no ray tracing or tensor core support, so any workload leveraging those hardware units would be impossible on that GPU. The RTX 3080 12 GB also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, whereas the GTX 560M is limited to DirectX 12 (11_0) and has no Vulkan support listed. For users targeting modern APIs and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, the RTX 3080 12 GB is the only viable option; for legacy OpenCL compute tasks, the GTX 560M's score edges out the newer card.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M has an average benchmark score of 4,855, which is 64 points higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB's average of 4,791. That represents a 1.3% advantage for the GTX 560M in the database's scoring system.

Q: What does the percentile ranking of 28 indicate for both GPUs?

A: Both the GTX 560M and the RTX 3080 12 GB hold a percentile rank of 28 among all GPUs tracked in the database. This means each card performs better than 28% of the GPU population and worse than 72%, placing them in the lower-middle performance tier despite their vastly different architectures and release eras.

Q: How does the GTX 560M compare to its nearest rival, the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB?

A: The GTX 560M scores 4,855 versus the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB's 4,901, a deltaPct of -0.9%. This means the GTX 560M trails the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB by 0.9%, making the modern card the closest competitor to the 2011 mobile GPU in the database.

Q: Is the RTX 3080 12 GB's 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score comparable to the GTX 560M's Geekbench OpenCL score?

A: The database treats them as comparable for ranking purposes, but they come from different benchmark suites. The RTX 3080 12 GB's 4,791 score was achieved in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, while the GTX 560M's 4,855 came from Geekbench OpenCL. No direct head-to-head benchmarks exist between the two cards.

Q: What are the closest rivals to the RTX 3080 12 GB?

A: The RTX 3080 12 GB's nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon R5 M255 (4,788, 0.1% behind), the AMD Radeon R5 M335 (4,752, 0.8% behind), the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX (4,844, 1.1% ahead), and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M (4,855, 1.3% ahead).

Q: Does the GTX 560M support ray tracing?

A: No. The GTX 560M has no ray tracing cores or tensor cores listed in its specifications. By contrast, the RTX 3080 12 GB includes 70 ray tracing cores and 280 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and tensor-based features.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every specification field. The GTX 560M is built on a 40 nm process at TSMC with 1,170 million transistors on a 238 mm² die, while the RTX 3080 12 GB uses an 8 nm Samsung process with 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die. Transistor density jumps from 4.9 million per square millimeter on the GTX 560M to 45.1 million per square millimeter on the RTX 3080 12 GB. Memory capacity differs dramatically: 1,536 MB of GDDR5 on a 192-bit bus with 60.00 GB/s bandwidth for the GTX 560M, versus 12 GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit bus with 912.4 GB/s bandwidth for the RTX 3080 12 GB. Memory clock speeds are 625 MHz (2.5 Gbps effective) for the older card and 1,188 MHz (19 Gbps effective) for the newer one.

Compute resources scale enormously: the GTX 560M has 192 shading units, 32 texture mapping units, and 24 ROPs, while the RTX 3080 12 GB packs 8,960 shading units, 280 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The GTX 560M has no ray tracing or tensor cores; the RTX 3080 12 GB includes 70 and 280, respectively. Pixel rate rises from 6.200 GPixel/s to 164.2 GPixel/s, texture rate from 24.80 GTexel/s to 478.8 GTexel/s, and FP32 compute from 595.2 GFLOPS to 30.64 TFLOPS. The RTX 3080 12 GB also lists FP16 performance at 30.64 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), which the GTX 560M does not specify. Power draw climbs from 75 W to 350 W, and the suggested PSU rating for the RTX 3080 12 GB is 750 W. The GTX 560M uses an MXM Module slot width with no power connectors and an MXM-B (3.0) bus interface, while the RTX 3080 12 GB is a dual-slot card requiring a 1x 12-pin connector and using PCIe 4.0 x16. Display outputs are portable-device-dependent on the GTX 560M, whereas the RTX 3080 12 GB provides 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. Physical dimensions exist only for the RTX 3080 12 GB: 285 mm in length, 112 mm in height, and 40 mm in width.

Architecture Differences

The GTX 560M is based on the GF116 chip using the Fermi 2.0 architecture, part of the GeForce 500M generation, while the RTX 3080 12 GB uses the GA102 chip with the Ampere architecture from the GeForce 30-series. The Fermi 2.0 design dates to the GeForce 400M predecessor and gave way to the GeForce 600M successor. The RTX 3080 12 GB's Ampere architecture succeeded the GeForce 20 series and was followed by the GeForce 40 series. The GTX 560M was released on 2011-05-29, and the RTX 3080 12 GB came nearly eleven years later on 2022-01-10. Both are now end-of-life products.

The GTX 560M supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6, with no Vulkan support listed. The RTX 3080 12 GB supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The DirectX 12 Ultimate designation on the RTX 3080 12 GB implies hardware features like ray tracing and mesh shaders, which are absent from the GTX 560M's feature set. The GTX 560M has no Vulkan API entry in its specifications, making it unsuitable for modern Vulkan-based applications. The RTX 3080 12 GB's 280 tensor cores enable AI-accelerated features such as DLSS, while the GTX 560M's Fermi architecture predates tensor core technology entirely. The manufacturing transition from TSMC's 40 nm node to Samsung's 8 nm node represents a process advancement that enabled the 24-fold increase in transistor count (1,170 million to 28,300 million) and the 9.2-fold increase in transistor density (4.9M to 45.1M per mm²). The RTX 3080 12 GB's FP16 throughput matches its FP32 at 30.64 TFLOPS, indicating a 1:1 ratio, whereas the GTX 560M lists no FP16 capability. The Fermi 2.0 architecture in the GTX 560M was designed for the MXM mobile form factor, as evidenced by its MXM Module slot and portable-device-dependent display outputs, while Ampere targets full desktop expansion slots with dual-slot cooling and standard display connectivity.