GeForce RTX 3060 vs Apple M5 GPU (8-Core)
VS
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060
GA106
Apple M5 GPU (8-Core)
Custom
We performed a head-to-head comparison of the GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB with 28 pipelines and 3584 shaders against the 5 years and 2 months newer Apple M5 GPU (8-Core) that utilizes 128 pipelines and 1024 shaders. Here you will find complete details about specs, efficiency, performance tests, and more.
Please note that the tests on the Apple M5 GPU (8-Core) are done on an engineering sample provided by our insiders. The data will be more accurate after the final version of this GPU is available.
Key differences
Reasons to consider the GeForce RTX 3060
- Performs significantly better (up to 2x) in 3DMark Steel Nomad Lite
- 3.8x higher maximum theoretical performance (12.7 vs 3.3 TFLOPS)
- Includes 12 GB of dedicated GDDR6 memory
- Has 2.4x higher memory bandwidth: 360 vs 153 GB/s
- Supports Nvidia DLSS 2 technology
- Has 3.5x more shading units (3584 vs 1024)
Reasons to consider the Apple M5 GPU (8-Core)
- Manufactured using a more efficient 3 nm process technology
Gaming Performance
Frame rate comparison across popular AAA titles at different resolutionsGames
| Forza Horizon 5 | 112 68 60 39 |
- |
| The Witcher 3 | 122 100 74 39 |
- |
| Counter-Strike 2 | 181 137 99 48 |
- |
| Far Cry 6 | 95 85 67 37 |
- |
| Hogwarts Legacy | 65 57 40 18 |
- |
| CoD: Modern Warfare III | 80 74 53 31 |
- |
| Ghost of Tsushima | 62 50 37 20 |
- |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 68 64 38 16 |
- |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 109 98 70 36 |
- |
| 1080p High | 99 | - |
| 1080p Ultra | 81 | - |
| 1440p Ultra | 60 | - |
| 4K Ultra | 32 | - |
| Margin of Error | Low | Low |
Benchmarks
Graphics cards’ performance in recent benchmarking apps3D Mark
Steel Nomad Lite Score
| Time Spy | 8754 | - |
| Solar Bay | 41158 | 19617 |
| Port Royal | 5145 | - |
| Fire Strike | 22304 | - |
| Wild Life Extreme | 17728 | 9804 |
| Night Raid | 97159 | - |
GeekBench 6 GPU Compute
GB6 Compute Score
| Background Blur | 149.6 img/sec | - |
| Face Detection | 91 img/sec | - |
| Horizon Detection | 4.07 Gpixels/sec | - |
| Edge Detection | 5.58 Gpixels/sec | - |
| Gaussian Blur | 3.92 Gpixels/sec | - |
| Feature Matching | 1.01 Gpixels/sec | - |
| Stereo Matching | 372.9 Gpixels/sec | - |
| Particle Physics | 12226.3 FPS | - |
| API | OpenCL | - |
Cinebench 2024 GPU
Cinebench 2024 GPU
Passmark Graphics
G3D Mark Score
| G2D Mark | 965 | - |
| DirectX 11 | 127 FPS | - |
| DirectX 12 | 68 FPS | - |
| GPU Compute | 8231 Ops/s | - |
Blender
Blender GPU
Recent User Tests
GeForce RTX 3060
| Date | Benchmark | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 📘 2025-12-07 (tach) | Cinebench 2024 | 7952 |
Apple M5 GPU (8-Core)
| Date | Benchmark | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 📘 2026-06-08 (h) | GeekBench | 40417 |
Artificial Intelligence Tests
Performance in machine learning and artificial intelligence tasksGeekBench 6 ML
GB6 ML Single Precision
GB6 ML Half Precision
GB6 ML Quantized
| Image Classification (SP) | 6645 | - |
| Image Segmentation (HP) | 15338 | - |
| Image Super Resolution (Q) | 14283 | - |
| Face Detection (HP) | 28862 | - |
| Pose Estimation (Q) | 61313 | - |
| Text Classification (SP) | 2463 | - |
| Machine Translation (HP) | 3793 | - |
| Object Detection (SP) | 7712 | - |
| Depth Estimation (Q) | 25461 | - |
| Style Transfer (SP) | 123233 | - |
| Framework | ONNX | - |
| Backend | DirectML | - |
Specifications
Technical specifications of GeForce RTX 3060 and Apple M5 GPU (8-Core)General
| Vendor | Nvidia | Apple |
| Build | Discrete | Integrated |
| Released | January 12, 2021 | March 3, 2026 |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $329 | - |
| Case | Desktop | Laptop |
| Purpose | Gaming | Professional |
| Segment | Mid-range | Mid-range |
| Architecture | Ampere | Apple M GPU |
| GPU Codename | GA106 | Custom |
| Rival Equivalent | - Radeon RX 6700 XT | - |
| Successor | - GeForce RTX 5060 | - |
| Recommended CPU | - Intel Core i5 12600K or above | - Apple M5 (8-сore GPU) or above |
| Used in CPUs | - | - Apple M5 (8-сore GPU) |
Desktop GPU rating (#57th place)
Graphics Processing Unit
| Base Clock | 1320 MHz | - |
| Boost Clock | 1777 MHz | 1620 MHz |
| Shading Units | 3584 | 1024 |
| Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) | 112 | 64 |
| Render Output Units (ROPs) | 48 | 32 |
| Compute Units (Pipelines) | 28 | 128 |
| Tensor Cores | 112 | - |
| Ray-tracing Cores | 28 | - |
| L1 Cache | 128KB per cluster | - |
| L2 Cache | 3MB shared | - |
| Instructions Per Cycle | 2 IPC | 2 IPC |
Raw Performance
| Pixel Fill Rate | 85 GPixel/s | 52 GPixel/s |
| Texture Fill Rate | 199 GTexel/s | 104 GTexel/s |
FLOPS (FP32)
Physical
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x16 | Custom |
| TGP | 170 W | - |
| Manufacturing | Samsung | TSMC |
| Fabrication Process | 8 nm | 3 nm |
| Die Size | 276 mm² | - |
| Transistor Count | 12 billion | 28 billion |
| Transistor Density | 43.48 MTr/mm² | - |
| Max. Temperature | - | 100°C |
Memory
| Memory Type | GDDR6 | System Shared |
| Memory Size | 12 GB | - |
| Memory Clock | 1875 MHz | 9600 MHz |
| Effective Memory Speed | 15000 Mbps | - |
| Bus | 192-bit | 128-bit |
| ECC | No | No |
Memory Bandwidth
API
| DirectX | 12 | - |
| Vulkan | 1.3 | - |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | - |
| OpenCL | 3.0 | - |
| CUDA | 8.6 | - |
| Ray Tracing | Yes | Yes |
| DLSS | DLSS 2 | No |
| DisplayPort | 1.4a | - |
Cast your vote
Total votes: 4