What are the exact differences between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070...in layman's terms? :)

[NGamer]

Just wondering what the exact differences were between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 - in layman's terms...

 

And when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

the 3070 is a faster gpu, so it can calculate more in a given time than the 3060. This means the 3070 will have more fps in almost all games

 

4 minutes ago, NGamer said:

And when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

If a program/game needs more than 8gb of vram. Then it will either crash or get much slower as it has to use system memory. I don't see this to likely be a big issue in games.

[Middcore]

7 minutes ago, NGamer said:

Just wondering what the exact differences were between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 - in layman's terms...

The 3070 is much faster.

 

7 minutes ago, NGamer said:

And when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

When pigs fly. 

[RONOTHAN##]

13 minutes ago, NGamer said:

when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

3D compute where you need 12GB of VRAM to render a scene. For a budget blender card the 3060 makes sense. 

 

For gaming, never. 

[NGamer]

So if you were to work more with videos/photos, etc... more than gaming - the 3060 would be the better card for you...?

[RONOTHAN##]

45 minutes ago, NGamer said:

So if you were to work more with videos/photos, etc... more than gaming - the 3060 would be the better card for you...?

More animation than just photo or video editing. Photo editing to my knowledge won't get anywhere close to 12GB of VRAM without doing something that would be better suited to 64GB of RAM. Video editing under certain conditions would benefit from 12GB of RAM compared to 8GB, but it's also in the weird location where there aren't many situations where 12GB of RAM will be enough and 8GB isn't, for the most part either you need 8GB or you need 20GB. Animation does scale a bit more linearly, hence why I specified blender specifically. 

[xAcid9]

1 hour ago, NGamer said:

Just wondering what the exact differences were between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 - in layman's terms...

40%-45% faster @1440p compare to 3060

1 hour ago, NGamer said:

And when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

Very rare cases, like maxing out Doom/Dying Light 2@4k with RT. 

 

46 minutes ago, NGamer said:

So if you were to work more with videos/photos, etc... more than gaming - the 3060 would be the better card for you...?

Depend on your video editing workload. Most of the time 3070 is the better option. 
Photo editing won't saturate that 8GB VRAM imo.

[mike_seps]

7 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

Very rare cases, like maxing out Doom/Dying Light 2@4k with RT. 

I was just playing Doom Eternal last night and was a bit surprised that it was using up almost 11gb or vram according to Afterburner OSD. 1440p, no fps cap, HDR, RT, Ultra Nightmare settings, to be fair.

[Sir Beregond]

10 hours ago, NGamer said:

Just wondering what the exact differences were between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 - in layman's terms...

 

And when, if ever, the 3060 with its 12 GB of memory would be better than the 3070 with its 8 GB.

 

Thanks!

 

 

The RTX 3060 is entirely a tier lower in performance than the 3070 as it uses a lower end chip (GA106 for the 3060 vs GA104 for the 3070 and 3060 Ti)

 

So strictly talking gaming as I don't have any experience with the non-gaming related workloads, people get too caught up in VRAM. There is never a time a 3060 will outperform a 3070. I'd suspect the 3060 doesn't even have the performance to properly even use 12GB. You'll hit other bottlenecks first.

[ewitte]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

If a program/game needs more than 8gb of vram. Then it will either crash or get much slower as it has to use system memory. I don't see this to likely be a big issue in games.

I had one particular time when I really pushed settings on my 3080 it was 2.9fps without DLSS and over 60 with it on due to memory!

[xAcid9]

17 hours ago, mike_seps said:

I was just playing Doom Eternal last night and was a bit surprised that it was using up almost 11gb or vram according to Afterburner OSD. 1440p, no fps cap, HDR, RT, Ultra Nightmare settings, to be fair.

I'm not sure if MSI Afterburner show allocated VRAM usage or real VRAM usage by default nowadays. The last time I still use it, you need to enable it manually.