Nvidia recently released RTX 3050 Ti graphics for laptops, but how does it compare against
the higher tier RTX 3060, and is the 3060 worth paying more for?
I’ve compared both laptops in 15 different games at all setting levels as well as thermals,
battery life, content creator workloads and more to show you what the differences are.
I’m using the Core 17 from XMG to do all of this testing fairly.
I've got the exact same TongFang chassis with the same specs including CPU and memory, same
cooling design, same battery, same everything, the only difference is one has the 3050 Ti
while the other has the 3060.
These are the differences in specs between these two laptop GPUs.
The 3050 Ti has 4 gigs of VRAM while the 3060 has 50% more at 6 gigs, and the 3060 also
has 50% more CUDA cores, so quite a big difference.
Ultimately performance will vary based on power limits though, and the 3060 is able
to go higher there.
Now the 3060 option of this particular chassis does give us the option to disable optimus,
which will give us a speed boost in games, but unfortunately the 3050 Ti model does not,
so in order to keep things fair I’ve decided to run both laptops with optimus enabled for
comparable results.
You could argue that this particular chassis does let us disable it so I should have tested
with that, but I’m sure there will also be laptops that have the 3050 Ti that let
us disable optimus, so yeah just for the sake of an apples to apples comparison I’m testing
both with optimus on here.
I also need to note the power limit differences between these two laptops.
Now it would have been perfect if I had both the 80 watt 3050 Ti and 80 watt 3060, but
unfortunately getting things to do perfect comparisons is just very difficult.
Both of the laptops that I have here are basically at the maximum range of the power limits for
their respective GPU, so basically we’re kind of looking at a best case 3050 Ti compared
against a best case 3060, which means the 3060 does have higher power limits, and higher
power limits does equal better performance, but I think this is still relatively fair
as that’s just part of the Nvidia spec.
A lot of 3060’s will be max power.
Otherwise both laptops were tested with the same version of Windows with the same updates
installed with the same Nvidia drivers, and also with the exact same memory kit.
Like I literally took out the memory from one and used the same memory in the other,
so no memory differences.
So let’s start out by comparing 15 different games at all setting levels, then afterwards
I’ll compare things like thermals, battery life and content creator workloads, and if
you get sick of hearing me talk about game benchmarks then just time travel with those
timestamps below.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested with the exact same run through the game on both laptops.
I’ve got the 3050 Ti results shown by the red bars, and the 3060 results shown by the
purple bars, along with all setting presets the game offers with lowest down the bottom
and highest up top.
This game is quite GPU heavy, so unsurprisingly it saw one of the biggest differences out
of all titles tested.
Ultra settings was reaching 75% higher average FPS on the 3060 and was far more playable.
It’s not all super massive gains with the 3060 though, Microsoft Flight Simulator was
24% faster with the 3060 at the highest ultra setting preset, however the difference gets
smaller at lower setting presets, as these are often less GPU heavy.
Red Dead Redemption 2 on the other hand gives us our first look into the limitations of
the 3050 Ti.
The benchmark can’t even run with 4 gigs of VRAM at max settings, so I’ve got no
result from the 3050 Ti there.
At high settings though the 3050 Ti was still close to 60 FPS, but the 3060 was reaching
40% higher average frame rate.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was another that had problems with the lower VRAM on the 3050
Ti.
The frame rate drops substantially at high settings, and then is basically unusable at
very high and ultra high settings.
The 3060 on the other hand is still able to hit 60 FPS at max settings while the 3050
Ti is struggling below 9 FPS, putting the 3060 600% ahead in terms of average FPS.
Control was tested with and without ray tracing, let’s start with ray tracing off results.
This is a GPU heavy game, so the performance differences between these two GPUs was one
of the biggest out of all 15 games tested.
The 3060 was reaching 79% higher average FPS at high settings, even the 1% low from the
3060 is well above the 3050 Ti’s averages, though the 3050 Ti could still pass 60 FPS
at medium.
Performance drops back with ray tracing enabled, even the 3060 was only just able to scrape
60 FPS with the low setting preset, but that’s where DLSS comes in.
With both DLSS and ray tracing enabled, the results at high settings are still higher
compared to using neither, though the 3060 still had a 72% higher average frame rate.
Call of Duty Warzone had fairly big gains with the 3060 too, reaching 61% higher average
FPS at max settings, while again the 3060s 1% lows were well above even the average FPS
from the 3050 Ti, but that said the 3050 Ti was still definitely playing the game just
fine and was easily above 60 FPS, and you could further boost this with DLSS.
Watch Dogs Legion was another game where the differences at lower setting presets were
much lower compared to higher ones, where we presumably get more GPU heavy.
At low settings for example, the 3060 was just 10% ahead of the 3050 Ti, but then at
max settings it’s got a 64% lead, quite a massive change.
Fortnite was tested after the recent update that made epic settings more GPU heavy, and
the 3060 was around 54% faster in terms of average FPS here, though as this isn’t exactly
a demanding game the 3050 Ti is still offering a good experience even with max settings.
The differences in Death Stranding still look fairly large, however the 3060 was just 40%
ahead of the 3050 Ti.
I mean that’s still quite a big difference, but it’s one of the smallest differences
seen out of all 15 games that I’ve tested here, and again the 3050 Ti is still more
than playable.
Metro Exodus was reaching 56% higher average FPS with the extreme preset, but if we instead
compare with the RTX preset, the 3060 is instead 42% ahead.
The 3050 Ti was actually slightly ahead of the 3060 at low settings, but 3 FPS is margin
of error stuff, plus the 1% lows from the 3060 are still much higher.
From my understanding Battlefield V loves it’s VRAM, which may explain why at max
settings the 3060 was reaching 118% higher average FPS, a massive difference.
The differences aren’t quite as big at lower setting presets, the 1% lows at high and medium
are very close together for instance, but then at ultra settings things change dramatically.
The Witcher 3 on the other hand had below average gains with the 3060, but again as
an older title the 3050 Ti is still performing fine even with ultra settings.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is again on the older side these days, and still above 60
FPS with the 3050 Ti even with the highest setting preset, though the 3060 was hitting
49% higher average FPS at max settings, while the difference at low settings was just 10%
I’ve added F1 2020 so that we’ve got data from a racing game, for some reason the 1%
lows on the 3060 at low were consistently lower than medium settings, otherwise at max
the 3060 was reaching 22% higher average FPS, but this was the lowest difference out of
all 15 games tested.
Rainbow Six Siege also had below average differences, the 3060 was just 31% higher than the 3050
Ti at ultra settings, and again the 3060 was showing strange behavior at lower settings
where the 1% lows were down compared to higher presets.
I’m not sure what the deal was, but I’ve seen this in this game with a few laptops
now.
On average over all 15 games tested at 1080p with the highest setting preset, the RTX 3060
was almost 91% faster than the RTX 3050 Ti, but we can see Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
is a massive outlier because the frame rate at max settings on the 3050 Ti was so low
as a result of the 4 gigs of VRAM.
If you recall red dead redemption 2 didn’t even run on it at max settings due to the
VRAM limit, I’ve actually used high settings instead here just so we’d have a data point.
Anyway if we treat Valhalla as an outlier and remove it from this list, the RTX 3060
is still able to offer more than a 50% boost to average FPS on average in these 14 games,
a fairly significant improvement, though as we can see it can vary wildly based on the
specific game.
If we instead compare lowest setting presets, the RTX 3060 was around 24% faster in the
same selection of games, quite a big difference, as lower settings are often less GPU heavy,
so if you’re not planning on using higher settings then there’s less to gain with
the 3060, but that said as we’ve just seen the 3060 can certainly handle modern games
at 1080p higher settings so you might as well enjoy the eye candy.
Now let’s check out thermals and battery life.
The interior of both laptops is the same, same 62Wh battery and the cooling solution
is the same and both have the same i7-11800H CPU, only the GPU is different.
These are the clock speeds that were reported by hardware info by running the Heaven GPU
benchmark at max settings at 1440p for 30 minutes.
Despite the 3060 having a higher boost clock on the specs, my 3050 Ti was clocking higher,
though it does also have fewer CUDA cores to power.
The 3060 was a fair bit warmer compared to the 3050 Ti, again it does have 50% more CUDA
cores as well as higher power limit in this case, so higher temperatures should be expected,
more power equals more heat.
The 3050 Ti system lasted almost 25% longer when running a game on battery power.
Both systems were capped to 30 FPS with Nvidia battery boost, so this seems to indicate that
the lower tier 3050 Ti is more power efficient while both are delivering the same level of
performance.
I’ve also tested out some content creator workloads to see what the differences are
compared to gaming
Adobe Premiere was tested with Puget systems benchmark, and the difference is far smaller
here compared to what we saw in the games, but Premiere generally doesn’t see big gains
with higher GPUs from my experience.
The 3060 was scoring 7% higher than the 3050 Ti.
The differences were much larger in Blender with CUDA.
In the Classroom test the 3060 laptop was completing the task 60% faster with its 50%
more CUDA cores, while the shorter BMW test was 67% faster on the 3060.
The V-Ray test also saw big gains with the 3060, but again this benchmark is CUDA based
and the 3060 does have 50% more CUDA cores, so a 45% higher score on the 3060 isn’t
too unexpected.
Now for price differences, XMG advised me that the 3060 model costs about 170 Euro more
including VAT, so without taxes about $170 USD.
They don’t plan on selling this chassis with 3050 Ti though, they just provided me
with this so I could make the comparison, but you can check out pricing for this laptop
with the link in the description.
Given the 3060 laptop starts at about 1500 Euro, this means we’re looking at a bit
more than 10% more money to get the 3060, but this will of course vary between companies.
Honestly 10% more money for the RTX 3060 for 50% more performance in games seems like a
no brainer to me.
Even if it was 20% more money, sign me up!
I think that extra performance is well worth it.
Unless you’re really tight on money and can’t save more for the 3060, or maybe the
3050 Ti is just a great deal in your country, in my opinion the 3060 just seems worth saving
up for.
Now as mentioned earlier the differences would of course be smaller if you had a 3060 laptop
that had a power limit closer to the 3050 Ti.
Just as a reminder, this comparison is with a best case 3050 Ti and a best case 3060.
Both of these laptops are at the high end of the power limit range.
You can also get either GPU with lower limits, but that said the 3060 still has 50% more
CUDA cores and 50% more VRAM, and that counts for something.
The 3050 Ti does still offer a more than playable experience for the most part in most games
- as long as you don’t go over that 4gb VRAM limit, which in 2021, let’s face it,
is on the lower side for AAA games, especially at higher setting levels even at 1080p, but
if you’re cool with medium settings then the 3050 Ti still does pretty well.
One of my main concerns is that if the 3050 Ti is already showing these sorts of limits
today, then what’s it going to be like 2, 3, or 5 years from now?
The fact is most people don’t buy new gaming laptops every year.
They’re going to keep these machines for a while, so yeah with the future in mind the
3060 is easier to recommend with its 50% more VRAM.
So which of these two GPUs would you pick in your next laptop?
The RTX 3050 Ti or the RTX 3060?
Let me know down in the comments below, and get subscribed for future laptop comparisons
like this one, there are a lot more on the way.
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