NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
Side-by-side benchmark comparison, specs, pricing, and value analysis.
Benchmark Comparison
Gaming figures are average frames per second, measured by Tom's Hardware GPU hierarchy. Geometric mean of 15 games, ultra settings, no upscaling. Ray tracing figures are DXR-enabled at 1440p. A dash means the card was not tested at that resolution. Productivity and Steel Nomad are synthetic scores on their own scales and are not comparable to the fps columns.
Specifications
| Spec | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3060 |
|---|---|---|
| VRAM | 11GB GDDR5X | 12GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bandwidth | 484 GB/s | 360 GB/s |
| Shaders | 3584 | 3584 |
| Boost Clock | 1582 MHz | 1777 MHz |
| TDP | 250W | 170W |
| Architecture | Pascal | Ampere |
| 3DMark Steel Nomad | 2,231 | 1,965 |
| Best Price | $699 | $250 |
| Value Score | 14/100 | 54/100 |
Verdict
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is the clear winner — it offers both better performance and better value.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060: Which Should You Buy?
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is 8% faster at 1440p ultra (54 fps against 50.2 fps). That is roughly one settings notch — enough to matter if you are chasing a specific refresh rate, not enough to rescue a bad price.
Pricing settles it: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is both faster and 180% cheaper at $250 versus $699. There is no scenario in this pairing where the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is the better buy at these prices.
Two things beyond raw speed: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 draws 80W less (170W versus 250W), which can mean a smaller PSU and a quieter case; and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 is 4 years newer (2021 versus 2017), so it gets longer driver support and newer upscaling and frame generation features.