If you haven’t heard of the GeForce RTX 3060M, we won’t blame you. This is not the official graphics card Nvidia and is not on the list of the best graphics cards.
The GeForce RTX 3060M came about when Nvidia cracked down on cryptocurrency miners. Chipmakers have heavily applied the Light Hash Rate (LHR) Ethereum Anti-Mining Limiter to their GeForce RTX 30 Series (Ampere) graphics cards to combat miners. As a workaround, Chinese OEMs reuse Ampere silicon from their laptops to their desktop graphics cards. Nvidia struggled to incorporate LHR silicon into desktop products, but the mobile version didn’t get the same treatment. Nvidia’s blindness leads to the ultimate presence of the so-called GeForce RTX 3060M and GeForce RTX 3070M.
In terms of silicon, the GeForce RTX 3060M uses the same GA106 (ampere) silicon as the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile. Therefore, 3,840 CUDA cores and 6GB of 14Gbps GDDR6 will remain intact. However, the GeForce RTX 3060M has a desktop cooling solution that allows you to play sports at clock speeds up to 300MHz higher than the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile. Also, compared to GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile 105W, TDP is as low as 80W.
The GeForce RTX 3060M is not far behind the desktop GeForce RTX 3060.According to South Korea’s TechTuber 뻘짓 연구소 (Opens in a new tab)In 3DMark testing, the GeForce RTX 3060 was only 2% faster on the Fire Strike and 4% faster on the Time Spy than the GeForce RTX 3060M. The GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile has 256 more CUDA cores than its desktop counterpart (3,584 CUDA cores), so there is a small gap between the two models. However, synthetic benchmarks don’t always tell you everything, and the GeForce RTX 3060’s more powerful memory system can give you more important leads in real-world games.
GeForce RTX3060M Benchmark
| GeForce RTX 3060M (80W) | GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (105W) | GeForce RTX 3060 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3DMark Fire Strike | 21,763 | 21,245 | 22,095 |
| 3DMark Time Spy | 8,363 | 8,075 | 8,695 |
| Forza Horizon 5 | 100 FPS | 97 FPS | Not applicable |
| PUBG: Battlefield | 143 FPS | 122 FPS | Not applicable |
| Overwatch | 225 FPS | 197 FPS | Not applicable |
YouTuber did not share graphic settings for game testing. I only found that he ran the benchmark at a resolution of 1920×1080. The GeForce RTX 3060M was nothing better than the GeForce RTX 3060, but faster than the vanilla GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (105W).
The GeForce RTX 3060M delivers a 3% higher average frame rate. Forza Horizon 5 Than GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile. but, PUBG: Battlefield, The former was up to 17% faster.How about OverwatchThe GeForce RTX 3060M leads the GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile with a 14% performance margin.
Cryptocurrency miners are beginning to unload graphics cards in the second-hand market as the Ethereum merger approaches. In addition, Chinese merchants dispose of their inventories on popular e-commerce platforms such as JD and Taobao. The GeForce RTX 3060M was previously priced from $ 545 to $ 570. You can now buy it for as low as $ 280. The GeForce RTX 3060M may sound attractive, but its biggest problem is the lack of official driver support. The graphics card is already a few versions behind, as it only works with the modified GeForce Game Ready 512.15 driver. If you buy one, you will stick to the drivers mentioned above and lose future performance, feature, and security updates. It’s not a big deal in the long run.
