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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 3840SP

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 3840SP: A Guide to the Updated Classic of 2025

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 3840SP, introduced in 2025, is an evolution of the legendary model from 2021. By increasing the number of shader processors to 3840 and optimizing the architecture, NVIDIA has maintained a balance between price and performance. In this article, we will discuss who this card is suitable for, how it performs in gaming and professional tasks, and what to pay attention to when purchasing.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Ampere with Ada Lovelace Elements

The RTX 3060 3840SP is based on a hybrid architecture that combines elements of Ampere and Ada Lovelace. This has allowed for improved energy efficiency and the addition of support for new features. The manufacturing process has been reduced to 5 nm (compared to 8 nm for the original RTX 3060), which has lowered heat generation.

RTX, DLSS 3.5, and FidelityFX Super Resolution

The card supports all the key NVIDIA technologies:

- RTX (Ray Tracing): Hardware acceleration for realistic lighting and shadows.

- DLSS 3.5: Artificial intelligence increases FPS in 4K by 50-70% without loss of quality.

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3: Compatibility with AMD's open-source alternative to DLSS expands the list of optimized games.

2. Memory: Speed and Capacity

12 GB GDDR6X

The 3840SP version features updated GDDR6X memory (previously GDDR6) with a bandwidth of 624 GB/s (compared to 360 GB/s for its predecessor). This has improved performance in 4K and when working with high-resolution textures.

192-bit Bus: Compromise or Advantage?

The 192-bit bus may seem like a bottleneck, but the optimization of the memory controller and increased frequency (19.5 GHz) compensates for this. In 1440p tests, the card shows up to a 15% performance increase compared to the original RTX 3060.

3. Gaming Performance

FPS in Popular Titles (2025)

- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

- 1080p (Ultra, RTX On, DLSS 3.5 Quality): 78 FPS.

- 1440p (Ultra, RTX On, DLSS 3.5 Balanced): 58 FPS.

- Starfield: Colonies Expansion:

- 1440p (Ultra, FSR 3 Quality): 94 FPS.

- Call of Duty: Black Ops VI:

- 4K (High, DLSS 3.5 Performance): 65 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Should You Enable It?

When enabling RTX in 1440p, FPS drops by 30-40%, but DLSS 3.5 restores smoothness. For comfortable gameplay with ray tracing, it's better to choose the DLSS Balanced or Performance mode.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

- Adobe Premiere Pro: H.265 rendering acceleration of 40% thanks to NVENC 8th Gen.

- Blender Cycles: 3840 CUDA cores reduce the rendering time for the BMW scene to 14 minutes (compared to 22 minutes for the RTX 2060).

Scientific Computation

Support for CUDA 8.8 and OpenCL 3.0 makes the card suitable for machine learning (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and simulations. However, for complex tasks, it's better to choose the RTX 4070 with more memory.

5. Power Consumption and Cooling

TDP and Recommendations

- TDP: 180W (+10W compared to the original version).

- Power Supply: Minimum 550W (recommended 650W for systems with Intel Core i7/Ryzen 7 processors).

Cooling Systems

- Reference Model: Dual-fan design, temperature under load — up to 72°C.

- Case Tips: Ensure you have 2-3 intake fans and at least 1 exhaust fan. Avoid compact cases as the card occupies 2.5 slots.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT

- Pros of AMD: 16 GB GDDR6, support for FSR 3.5, price $329.

- Cons: Weaker in ray tracing (20-25% loss in Cyberpunk 2077).

NVIDIA RTX 4060

- Pros of RTX 4060: DLSS 3.5, TDP 115W.

- Cons: 8 GB GDDR6 — insufficient for 4K.

Conclusion: The RTX 3060 3840SP outperforms the RX 7600 XT in games with RTX, but lags behind in RAW performance without DLSS.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: Choose models with 80+ Bronze certification or higher. Avoid cheap noname brands.

- Compatibility: The card requires PCIe 4.0 x16. For older platforms (PCIe 3.0), performance losses will be around 3-5%.

- Drivers: Regularly update GeForce Experience — NVIDIA actively optimizes support for new games.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Ideal for 1440p and DLSS-dependent 4K.

- Support for professional applications.

- Price $349 (15% cheaper than RTX 4060).

Cons:

- The 192-bit bus limits potential in 4K.

- Competitors offer more memory for the same price.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the RTX 3060 3840SP?

This graphics card is a choice for:

- Gamers who want to play in 1440p with maximum settings and RTX.

- Content creators who need a balance between price and performance in rendering.

- Owners of older PCs updating their system without needing to replace the power supply.

If you are not ready to overpay for top-tier models but want current technologies, the RTX 3060 3840SP will be a reliable companion for the next 3-4 years.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2021

Model Name

GeForce RTX 3060 3840SP

Generation

GeForce 30

Base Clock

1627MHz

Boost Clock

1852MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x16

Transistors

12,000 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

120

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

120

Foundry

Samsung

Process Size

8 nm

Architecture

Ampere

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

6GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

192bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

336.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

88.90 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

222.2 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

14.22 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

222.2 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

14.504 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

3840

L1 Cache

128 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

3MB

TDP

185W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

8.6

Power Connectors

1x 12-pin

Shader Model

6.7

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

14.504 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X

15.876 +9.5%

GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile

15.308 +5.5%

GeForce RTX 3060 3840SP

14.504

Tesla PG500 216

13.847 -4.5%

Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooling

13.465 -7.2%