NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 4 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop 6 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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GPU Comparison

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

1419 points

4562 points

221% significantly better overall score

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

29 FPS

112 FPS

83 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

22 FPS

57 FPS

35 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

20 FPS

79 FPS

59 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

18 FPS

44 FPS

26 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

Free GPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

167.72 points

2352.59 points

1302% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

CUDA compute benchmark

17784 points

98709 points

455% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (CUDA) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

21072 points

92420 points

338% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

22380 points

71210 points

218% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

19796 points

84300 points

325% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

20845 points

82804 points

297% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1127 MHz

25% slightly higher core clock speed

900 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

1703 MHz

44% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

5.97 GiB

49% significantly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

128 Bit

192 Bit

49% significantly larger memory bus width

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

112.2 GB/s

336 GB/s

199% significantly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

120 W

80 W

49% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

37.7 Gigapixels/s

68.4 Gigapixels/s

81% significantly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

75.39 Gigatexels/s

171 Gigatexels/s

126% significantly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

2.41 TFLOPS

10.94 TFLOPS

353% significantly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1024

3840

274% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

120

87% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

49% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

244th of 597

110th of 597

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2015 January

2021 January

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

GDDR6

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

4.6

GeForce GTX 960 vs GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop specs and performance

For gaming, the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop graphics card is better than the GeForce GTX 960 in our tests.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 960 has a slightly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. Despite this, the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop has a significantly higher boost clock speed. This is a frequency that can be reached if the GPU is cooled sufficiently and has enough power.

Next up, in terms of GPU memory, the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop has significantly more memory with 5.97 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop has a significantly lower TDP at 80 W when compared to the GeForce GTX 960 at 120 W. TDP (Thermal Design Power) measures total heat output from the chip.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop over the GeForce GTX 960.