Today, we're going to tackle the topic of how the RTX 4060 vs RTX 3060 12GB compare — both GPUs that have been on our list of the best graphics cards at one time or another. The Nvidia RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace GPUs have been a bit of a mixed bag, particularly on the lower end of the price and performance ladder. The RTX 4060 was widely criticized for cutting back on the VRAM relative to its RTX 3060 12GB predecessor, resulting in a relatively minor increase in performance — or sometimes even a performance regression. Or at least that's the common wisdom you'll see floating around online these days. But how bad is it really?
This GPU faceoff aims to answer that question, and since it's Nvidia versus Nvidia we have something of a war of the (green) roses. We've seen people suggest that the RTX 3060 12GB, today, is a better buy than the RTX 4060. Of course, finding a brand-new 3060 12GB for sale is getting to be a bit difficult, but we'll look at used card prices (for both GPUs) as well, as we draw the battle lines and pit the two cards against each other.
The RTX 4060 represents the lowest entry point (on desktops at least) for the 40-series cards. The RTX 3060 on the other hand is a step above the base model RTX 3050 8GB. Nvidia also muddied the waters later in the product cycle with the RTX 3060 8GB card (which we haven't reviewed), plus the more recent RTX 3050 6GB (also not reviewed here) that came out after the RTX 4060 launched. Needless to say, the 4060 looks quite a bit better when compared with the lower class 3060 8GB card.
But our focus is on the two primary cards, so let's dig into the details, looking at performance, price, efficiency, and other features — in rough order of importance.
