GTX 1080 is one of the favorite cards used on the market at the moment. Its price is way less than GTX 1660 super but it can perform better than GTX 1660 super. The RTX 3060, which comes in stock is not targeted by the miners as much as an RTX 3060 Ti or an RTX 3070. We believe that both these cards are better choices for gamers even though their prices are quite high. The price of the RTX 3060 is about 419 USD while the GTX 1080 price is 479 USD.
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
The prices of GTX 1080 have gradually decreased after the release of GTX 1080 Ti. NVIDIA’s xx80 cards are well known for their high prices and great performances of the extreme graphics cards. After testing the Pascal graphics cards inside the GTX 1080, we are confident to say that its quality and performance have not been compromised.
Compared to the GTX 980’s 4 gigabytes of video memory, the GTX 1080 has 8 GB of RAM. The gaming performance is great but not quite impressive. Although the GTX 1080 May shows a consistent increase in FPS over the GTX 980 or GTX 980Ti, still it is not worth upgrading.
Let’s take a look at some gaming through various benchmark settings.
At 1080p Full HD
At 1080p Full HD, you can play Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, Need for Speed: Heat, Borderlands 3, and many more at 64 FPS to 85 FPS. The average FPS remains around 75 FPS.
At 1440p Quad HD
At 1440p Quad HD, you can play games like Final Fantasy XV, Need for Speed: Heat, Gears of War 5, Just Cause 4, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 63 FPS to 64 FPS. The average FPS hovers around 63 FPS.
At 2160p 4K
At 2160p 4K, you can play games like Valorant and Forza Horizon 4 at 75 FPS to 155 FPS. The average frame rate hovers around 115 FPS.
The RTX 3060
The RTX 3060 prices have also been significantly reduced due to the release of RTX 3060 Ti. It is available on market at an MSRP of 329 USD which is a reasonable price for a PC budget build. RTX 3060 is one of the best graphics cards you can have for most graphically demanding and high-end gaming. It can even play smoothly at 1440p.
The RTX 3060 is also well-known for its high performance-to-cost ratio. Considering its high-quality gaming performance, especially at 1080p, it is worth spending that price. After testing the Pascal graphics cards inside the RTX 3060, we are confident to say that its quality and performance have not been compromised.
At 1080p Full HD
At 1080p Full HD, you can play Anthem, Metro Exodus, Borderlands 3, Borderlands 3, Marvel’s Avengers, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and many more at 69 FPS to 88 FPS. The average FPS remains around 77 FPS.
At 1440p Quad HD
At 1440p Quad HD, you can play games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Just Cause 4, Need for Speed: Heat, Gears of War 5, and Anthem at 71 FPS to 75 FPS. The average FPS hovers around 73 FPS.
At 2160p 4K
At 2160p 4K, you can play games like Fallout 76, Forza Horizon 4, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Valorant, and Strange Brigade at 62 FPS to 181 FPS. The average frame rate hovers around 89 FPS.
Top 4 Games:
Let’s compare different games at 1080p Ultra settings for both GPUs
The Apex Legends
If you play the Apex Legends at 1080p, you will get 139 average FPS on RTX 3060. Whereas, the GTX 1080 will give you an average FPS of 112. You will also get pretty smooth one percent lows and 0.1 percent lows on both the GTX 1080 and the RTX 3060.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Let’s take a look at Horizon Zero Dawn. This is a fairly easy game to run compared to a lot of the newer graphically demanding titles. This game can stress both these graphics cards if you play it at ultra settings. You will notice that the average FPS of RTX 3060 (96 FPS) is quite higher than the GTX 1080 average FPS (76 FPS).
PUBG (Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds)
In the case of PUBG, you will get 143 average FPS for GTX 1080 and 168 average FPS for RTX 3060. Though the 0.1 lows on this game even years later after it has been launched, it still leaves a little bit to be desired with where it was getting down to the 40s. Even though it’s ok for smooth gameplay, it’s still a bit behind some of those other competitive titles.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Talking about the Shadow of the Tomb Raider, you will notice 119 average FPS on RTX 3060 and 99 FPS on GTX 1080. So there is about a raw 20 increase when it comes to gaming.
RTX 3060 vs GTX 1080: Benchmark Score
According to HardwareDB, the overall score for general gaming and workstation is 70% for both GPUs. The Flux Core frame rate which is a volumetric ray casting test for rendering high-quality scenes suggests a considerably higher Flux Core frame rate for RTX 3060. On the other hand, the electron frame rate which is a randomly generated noise sphere test shows that the Electron frame rate of GTX 1080 is significantly higher than RTX 3060.
Similarly, the Clouds frame rate which is the real-time noise calculation and ray marching test indicates a remarkably higher Clouds frame rate (133 FPS) for GTX 1080 compared to RTX 3060 (97 FPS). However, the City frame rate of RTX 3060 (181 FPS) – a procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering is significantly higher than GTX 1080 (128 FPS).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from our comparison that the Core Clock Speed of GeForce GTX 1080 is slightly higher than RTX 3060. The Core Clock Speed is the frequency at which the graphics core runs. Although it does not indicate the overall performance it is a useful metric for comparing GPUs of the same architecture. Regardless of the slightly low Core Clock Speed, the Boost Clock Speed of RTX 3060 is slightly higher than GTX 1080. It is the frequency that the GPU core can attain even though the temperature is quite low. Thus, it may result in higher performance in some scenarios.
Looking at the specification of both GPUs, the GTX 1080 has considerably less memory (8GiB) compared to the 12 GiB memory of RTX 3060. Thus, if wish to play games at high resolution, you need a lot of memory.
Furthermore, the TDP (Thermal Design Power) of the GeForce RTX 3060 is 170 W which is slightly lower than 180 W in the case of the GeForce GTX 1080. Remember that Thermal Design Power (TDP) measures the total heat output from the chip.