RTX 3080 vs RTX 4060
The complete head-to-head: full specs, real per-game FPS with 1% lows, ray tracing, a live CPU-bottleneck check, thermals, power and value, with a straight verdict.
GeForce RTX 3080
GeForce RTX 4060
avg, 1080p
The short answer
This is not a close race. The RTX 3080 is a former flagship and it is still about 31% faster on average than the RTX 4060, with more VRAM and well over double the memory bandwidth. If raw 1440p performance is what you want, the 3080 wins clearly, often for similar or less money on the used market. The 4060's entire case rests on efficiency, a 115 W draw versus 320 W, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, and AV1 encoding, not on speed. Buy the 3080 for performance, buy the 4060 only if power draw, heat, or modern features matter more to you than raw fps.
This matchup pairs a former $699 flagship against a current-generation entry-level card, and it is a useful reminder that a new architecture does not automatically beat an old high-end one. The RTX 3080 still has more raw compute, more VRAM, and a much wider memory bus than the RTX 4060, and it shows up directly in the numbers below.
What follows lays out exactly how a 320W former flagship beats a 115W current-gen card by roughly 31% in the ten-game benchmark below, plus the ray tracing and DLSS gap, a live CPU-pairing check, thermals, power draw and price history, so you can decide whether that speed is worth giving up AV1 encoding and Frame Generation for.
At a glance
Seven dimensions, two cards. Bigger area is not automatically better, each card owns different corners.
Strengths radar
Each axis scored 0-100 relative to the pair
Performance vs price
Up and to the left is better value
Grey dots are neighbouring cards for context.
Which should you buy?
Pick your use case, the winner changes with what you actually do.
The 3080's extra VRAM and bandwidth keep it ahead of the 4060 at 1440p by a wide, honest margin.
115 W, cool, and quiet, the 4060 is the easier drop-in for a small or power-limited 1080p system.
10 GB plus far more raw compute beats the 4060's 8 GB and lighter core count in local AI and rendering work.
Ada's hardware AV1 encoder gives cleaner streams at the same bitrate and quicker exports; the 3080 has no AV1 encoder.
At 115 W the 4060 runs happily on a 450 W supply, ideal for small cases and prebuilt upgrades.
The 320-bit bus and 760 GB/s of bandwidth give the 3080 a clear edge in high-resolution emulation.
Already own an RTX 3080? Don't downgrade to a 4060.
Short answer: probably not
A 4060 would cost you roughly 31% of your gaming performance, 2 GB of VRAM, and most of your memory bandwidth, in exchange for lower power draw and DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Unless heat, noise, or a strict power budget is forcing the change, there is no performance reason to make this move.
If you want AV1 encoding or lower power draw without giving up speed, look at an RTX 4070 or 4070 Super instead, both beat the 3080 outright while adding Ada's full feature set. Keep the 3080 if you are simply chasing efficiency on a budget.
Full specification comparison
Every spec side by side. The highlighted figure wins each row.
| Specification | RTX 3080 | RTX 4060 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| GPU / architecture | GA102 · Ampere | AD107 · Ada |
| Process node | Samsung 8 nm | TSMC 4N (5 nm) ▲ |
| Release date | Sep 17, 2020 | Jun 29, 2023 |
| Launch MSRP | $699 | $299 ▲ |
| Compute | ||
| CUDA cores | 8,704 ▲ | 3,072 |
| RT cores | 68 · 2nd gen ▲ | 24 · 3rd gen |
| Tensor cores | 272 · 3rd gen ▲ | 96 · 4th gen |
| Base / boost clock | 1440 / 1710 MHz | 1830 / 2460 MHz ▲ |
| L2 cache | 5 MB | 24 MB ▲ |
| Memory | ||
| VRAM | 10 GB GDDR6X ▲ | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 320-bit ▲ | 128-bit |
| Bandwidth | 760 GB/s ▲ | 272 GB/s |
| Power & form factor | ||
| TDP | 320 W | 115 W ▲ |
| Power connector | 2× 8-pin | 1× 8-pin ▲ |
| Suggested PSU | 750 W | 450 W ▲ |
| PCIe interface | 4.0 ×16 ▲ | 4.0 ×8 |
| Features | ||
| Upscaling | DLSS 2 / Super Res | DLSS 4 + Frame Gen ▲ |
| AV1 encode (NVENC) | No | Yes ▲ |
| Display outputs | 3×DP1.4a · HDMI 2.1 | 3×DP1.4a · HDMI 2.1 |
Average FPS by game
Switch resolution, metric, ray tracing and upscaling, the bars update live. Hover a bar for the avg / 1% / 0.1% breakdown.
Average FPS · 1080p · Rasterization. Representative data, hover a bar for avg / 1% / 0.1%. Note the RTX 4060's 1% lows fall off at 1440p and up from its 8 GB VRAM.
Smoothness & frametimes
Average FPS hides stutter. This is one run plotted as frametime, a flat line is smooth, spikes are hitches. Watch what the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM does in a texture-heavy game.
Frametime: Hogwarts Legacy, 1440p Ultra
Lower and flatter is better · 16.7 ms = 60 fps
Counterintuitive but real: the slower RTX 3080 delivers a smoother line here because 12 GB holds the texture pool the 8 GB RTX 4060 keeps evicting, those spikes are VRAM stutter, not raw speed.
Lab scores
Clean apples-to-apples tests, useful, but weaker at predicting real games than the FPS above.
Ray tracing & upscaling
Ray tracing tanks both cards at native resolution. What makes it playable is upscaling, and here the RTX 4060 has a real edge.
Is frame generation "real" performance?
The RTX 3080 predates DLSS 3, Ampere has no Frame Generation hardware, so it renders every frame the traditional way. The RTX 4060 supports DLSS 3 Frame Generation, which inserts an AI-made frame between two real ones, nearly doubling the counter in supported titles and smoothing motion on a high-refresh screen. Those inserted frames do not react to input, so latency ticks up slightly, NVIDIA Reflex claws most of it back.
On the 4060, use Frame Generation for single-player and cinematic games, and skip it for competitive shooters or when your base frame rate falls under about 50 fps. It only works in the roughly 80-plus games that support DLSS 3, and even with it active the 4060 often still trails the 3080's native frame rate in the heaviest titles.
Will your CPU bottleneck these cards?
A faster GPU only helps if your CPU keeps up. Pick your CPU and resolution to see expected FPS and bottleneck for each card.
CPU + GPU pairing check
The willitbottleneck engine, built right into the comparison.
Estimated from a 43-CPU model across 1440p. A weak CPU mostly bites at 1080p; at higher resolutions the GPU becomes the limiter and the bottleneck shrinks.
Thermals & noise
The efficiency gap shows up here: the newer card runs cooler and quieter, day in and day out.
Real draw, efficiency & PSU
TDP is the rated figure; what matters is real gaming draw and how many frames you get per watt.
Both use a single 8-pin connector. If your PSU already ran the RTX 3080, it will run the RTX 4060 easily. Leave about 30% headroom for spikes.
Will it fit, and what to pair it with?
Size to scale
Card length matters for small cases
What monitor to pair
RTX 3080: 1440p at 100 Hz and up, and a genuinely capable card for 4K with DLSS in recent AAA titles. RTX 4060: best suited to 1080p at 165 Hz, or 1440p at 60-90 Hz leaning on DLSS. Treat the 4060 as a 1080p-first card and the 3080 as a 1440p, occasional-4K card.
Running an older PCIe 3.0 board?
The 4060 runs only PCIe 4.0 ×8. On an older PCIe 3.0 motherboard that drops to 3.0 ×8 and costs roughly 2-5% in most games, real but rarely a dealbreaker. The 3080 runs a full ×16 link and is unaffected.
Price history & dollars-per-frame
Raw price is only half the story. Cost per frame is the number that decides it, and it keeps moving as prices fall.
New price over time
Street price of new cards (USD)
The 10 GB vs 8 GB question
RTX 3080 · 10 GB
- 10 GB on a wide 320-bit bus outruns the 4060's 8 GB in nearly every 1440p and texture-heavy scenario.
- 760 GB/s of bandwidth, well over double the 4060's, keeps large textures and RT effects from stuttering.
- For AI and rendering work, 10 GB plus far more raw compute puts real distance between the two cards.
- 10 GB is not huge by 2026 standards, some max-setting 4K texture packs can still exceed it.
RTX 4060 · 8 GB
- 8 GB comfortably covers the large majority of games at 1080p, where the 4060 is actually aimed.
- 24 MB of L2 cache and DLSS reduce effective memory pressure well below the raw 8 GB figure.
- At 1440p, where the 4060's raw speed already trails the 3080, the narrower 128-bit bus makes the gap worse.
- 8 GB is a poor fit for AI, Stable Diffusion and larger rendering jobs, exactly where the 3080 pulls furthest ahead.
Emulation & memory bandwidth
The narrower bus is a real downgrade for emulation
Emulation leans hard on memory bandwidth once you push internal resolution up. The 3080's 760 GB/s over a 320-bit bus dwarfs the 4060's 272 GB/s over a 128-bit bus, and its extra raw compute removes any doubt, high-resolution Switch, PS3, and other demanding emulator cores all favor the 3080 by a wide margin here.
Creator, AI & streaming
The newer card is quicker per task, but the older card's extra VRAM unlocks larger jobs it can't fit at all.
Streaming: the AV1 encoder is the differentiator
The RTX 4060 adds a hardware AV1 encoder that the RTX 3080 does not have, Ampere tops out at H.264 and HEVC. AV1 delivers cleaner quality at the same bitrate on YouTube and Discord, and faster exports in AV1-aware editors, a genuine point in the 4060's favor even though it is the slower card overall.
Overclocking & undervolting
The 4060 has little headroom, it already runs efficient and close to its limit. The 3080 has real undervolting upside, 30-40 W can come off with almost no performance loss, well worth doing given its 320 W stock draw.
Pros & cons
RTX 3080
- About 31% faster on average, with more VRAM and far more bandwidth
- Strong 1440p and light-4K performance, well past the 4060's actual target resolution
- Often available at a similar or lower used price than a new 4060
- 320 W draw needs a real PSU and runs hotter and louder under load
- No DLSS 3 Frame Generation, no DLSS 4, and no AV1 encoder
RTX 4060
- Extremely efficient at 115 W, cool, quiet, runs on a 450 W PSU
- DLSS 3 Frame Generation and DLSS 4 upscaling
- AV1 hardware encoder for streaming and quicker exports
- Meaningfully slower, about 31% behind on average, and it shows most at 1440p
- 8 GB on a narrow 128-bit bus limits AI, creator work, and future headroom
Buying pitfalls
Which RTX 3080 are you buying?
There is a common 10 GB (320-bit) version and a rarer 12 GB (384-bit, slightly higher CUDA count) version. Everything on this page refers to the 10 GB card. Check the box or spec sheet, the 12 GB version is a little faster and worth more.
The 3080 needs a real power supply
At 320 W across two 8-pin connectors, the 3080 needs a genuinely solid 750 W unit, especially paired with a power-hungry CPU. This is not the plug-and-play upgrade the 115 W 4060 is, check your PSU's actual rail capacity, not just its label wattage.
RTX 3080 vs RTX 4060: your questions answered
For raw speed, clearly, it is about 31% faster on average with more VRAM and far more memory bandwidth. The 4060 fights back with a 115 W power draw versus the 3080's 320 W, plus DLSS 3 Frame Generation and an AV1 encoder, but none of that closes the performance gap.
Pick the 3080, used, if raw 1440p performance per dollar is the goal in this matchup. Pick the 4060 if you need a small, low-power build, or you specifically want AV1 encoding and Frame Generation more than you want the fastest possible frame rate.
Yes, easily. It is still a strong 1440p card and a competent 4K performer once DLSS is on, and it outruns plenty of newer, lower-tier cards, the 4060 included. Its age has not caught up with its raw compute yet.
Not for performance, no. You would hand back about 31% of your frame rate, 2 GB of VRAM, and most of your memory bandwidth. The only good reason to make that trade is if power draw, heat, or noise from the 3080's 320 W is a constraint the 4060's 115 W actually solves for you.
The RTX 3080, and it is not close. Its 10 GB of VRAM and much larger core counts beat the 4060's 8 GB and lighter compute in local AI, Stable Diffusion, and rendering, despite being the older architecture.
Yes, in this one area, thanks to the hardware AV1 encoder the 3080 simply does not have. AV1 produces cleaner streams at the same bitrate and speeds up exports in AV1-aware software, a genuine win for the 4060 even though the 3080 is faster everywhere else.
Only the RTX 4060 does, it gets DLSS 4's upscaling plus DLSS 3 single Frame Generation. The RTX 3080 launched before DLSS 3 existed and supports upscaling only, with no way to generate extra frames on it at all.
Both have dedicated RT cores, and the 3080's much larger count gives it a genuine ray tracing lead over the 4060, even though the 4060's per-core design is newer and more efficient. Either one needs DLSS switched on to stay playable in demanding RT titles.
The 3080, since it is the faster card, is the one at real risk of being held back at 1080p. Use the pairing checker on this page, a Ryzen 7 5700X or Core i5-12600K class CPU and up keeps the 3080 fed at 1440p; the 4060 is easy to feed at almost any resolution.
The 4060, decisively, its 115 W draw against the 3080's 320 W translates into much lower load temperatures and noticeably less fan noise. Both go completely silent at idle thanks to fan-stop.
Budget a genuinely solid 750 W unit for the 3080, and 450 W covers the 4060. If your power supply is older or a budget model, check its real rail capacity before pairing it with the 320 W 3080.
Most 3080 cards run around 285 mm while 4060 cards are closer to 200 mm, so check your case's maximum length either way. The 4060's PCIe 4.0 ×8 interface loses about 2-5% on an older PCIe 3.0 board; the 3080's full ×16 link is unaffected.
No. The laptop RTX 4060 is a distinct, weaker chip running a lower power budget, and it does not match the desktop 4060's numbers here. Do not line up laptop specs against this page, check the mobile version of this comparison instead.
The 3080 handles 4K reasonably well with DLSS turned on in most current games. The 4060 is built around 1080p to 1440p, 4K is possible in lighter or older titles but is not what the card is aimed at.
The RTX 3080 exists only on the used market at this point and is the stronger value of the two here. A new RTX 4060 makes sense if you want a warranty plus the lowest power draw possible in a small-form-factor build.
Both should be good for years yet, Ampere and Ada are both current enough to keep getting full Game Ready driver support well into the future. Neither the 3080 nor the 4060 is an end-of-life concern for a 2026 purchase.