GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 255 OEM

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the rankingnot rated81
Place by popularitynot in top-1004
Cost-effectiveness evaluationno data71.36
Power efficiencyno data18.10
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)Ampere (2020−2024)
GPU code nameCape VerdeGA106
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date21 December 2013 (10 years ago)12 January 2021 (3 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)no data$329

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores5123584
Core clock speed900 MHz1320 MHz
Boost clock speed930 MHz1777 MHz
Number of transistors1,500 million12,000 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm8 nm
Power consumption (TDP)65 Watt170 Watt
Texture fill rate29.76199.0
Floating-point processing power0.9523 TFLOPS12.74 TFLOPS
ROPs1648
TMUs32112
Tensor Coresno data112
Ray Tracing Coresno data28

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 4.0 x16
Lengthno data242 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin1x 12-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR6
Maximum RAM amount2 GB12 GB
Memory bus width128 Bit192 Bit
Memory clock speed1150 MHz1875 MHz
Memory bandwidth73.6 GB/s360.0 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display ConnectorsNo outputs1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
HDMI-+

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (11_1)12 Ultimate (12_2)
Shader Model5.16.7
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.23.0
Vulkan1.2.1311.3
CUDA-8.6

Pros & cons summary


Recency 21 December 2013 12 January 2021
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 12 GB
Chip lithography 28 nm 8 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 65 Watt 170 Watt

R9 255 OEM has 161.5% lower power consumption.

RTX 3060, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 7 years, a 500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 250% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon R9 255 OEM and GeForce RTX 3060. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon R9 255 OEM
Radeon R9 255 OEM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
GeForce RTX 3060

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Community ratings

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Questions & comments

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