You want to get the best GPU for your money. That’s natural, because your graphics card is probably expensive, and you want your money to be well-spent. But how do you know what to look for? What GPU specs should you look at? What do the numbers mean?
In this article, I will explain what certain key GPU specifications mean, and roughly how they translate into actual in-game or program performance.
The RTX 3060 was recently launched. It is an improvement compared to the previous-gen RTX 2060, while (as expected) falling behind its faster RTX 3060 Ti brother. With seemingly promising benchmarks and an MSRP of 330 USD, it seems like a great card.
But the RTX 3060 is not available for its MSRP of 330 USD. In fact, right now it goes for around 1000 USD—if you can find it in-stock, of course. The demand is incredibly high, which results in prices of about three times the MSRP (or, again, the card simply being out-of-stock).
Nonetheless, we are undeterred! We will try and see if you can build a decent rig with it, despite the overpriced and rare status of this new GPU.
In the big wide world of hard drives, SSDs, RAM, VRAM, fancy CPU tech, and more—we felt it was about time to have a bit of a deep dive into data transfer rates.
That way, even if you’re working from an example PC build in our main build chart, you’ll know exactly what kind of speed and overall bandwidth you’re getting for your money!
Some Samsung VRAM
All graphics cards need both a GPU and VRAM to function properly. While the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) does the actual processing of data to output images on your monitor, the data it is processing and providing is stored and accessed from the chips of VRAM (Video Random Access Memory) surrounding it.
Outputting high-resolution graphics at a quick rate requires both a beefy GPU and a large quantity of high-bandwidth VRAM working in tandem. For most of the past decade, VRAM design was fairly stagnant, and focused on using more power to achieve greater VRAM clock speeds.
A few too many times, we’ve heard people say something along the lines of, “If you want more performance, add more RAM!”
This is a myth as old as computers. It’s true, having enough RAM is really important. But having more than enough doesn’t improve your computer’s performance.