Which one is better out of the Xbox Series X GPU and the Nvidia 3060 Ti? This is a question you might be asking for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you’re thinking of upgrading to a PC with a 3060 Ti from an Xbox Series X.
Let’s get to the bottom of it.
TL;DR: Close match. Further, due to game optimizations, hard to see any difference. In raw power and ray tracing, the 3060 Ti wins. In specs, the XSX might win.
Xbox Series X GPU hard facts
Note that Xbox Series X doesn’t use a conventional “PC-style” GPU. It used AMD RDNA-based APUs that aren’t on the market/are custom-built for consoles. But as both, Xbox Series X AMD APU and a conventional PC-style consumer video card essentially have GPUs (graphics processing units), they can be compared in terms of cores, VRAM, power draw, and so on.
AMD’s Scarlett is a powerful GPU. No doubts there. It’s designed and built by AMD, Nvidia’s competitor. 3328 cores and a 10 GB GDDR6 memory place it right up there with heavy-hitting desktop gaming video cards.
The TDP of both cards is the same (200 W). Both support DirectX 12. Both support the same versions of shaders, OpenGL, and Vulkan (with the RTX 3060 Ti using a higher version of OpenCL).
Head-to-head comparison
- The RTX 3060 Ti has more cores (+1536). These are CUDA cores vs. Scarlett’s render units.
- The Xbox Series X GPU has a higher core clock speed (+415 MHz) and boost clock speed (+60 MHz).
- The Xbox Series X GPU has a higher texture fill rate (+126.5).
- The Xbox Series X GPU has a larger VRAM (+2GB), a higher memory bus speed (+64 Bit), and a higher memory bandwidth (+112 GB/s).
As per this technical comparison, you’d think the Xbox Series X GPU is better.
You’d be wrong. The GPU isn’t the only piece of the puzzle when you’re gaming on a desktop.
The Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti, coupled with a fairly large system RAM and a modern processor will outperform (in terms of FPS) the Xbox Series X. Cooling and overclocking also need to be factored in here. With an RTX 3060 Ti, you can decrease thermals, increase power limits, and boost the speed, combine that with better processors than the Scarlett’s Zen 2 processor and more RAM, and you get much better gaming experience.
Is Xbox Series X better than RTX 3060 Ti?
Well, as I said, nope.
In terms of raw computation, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and DLSS, the RTX 3060 Ti wins hands down. It simply has more raw power. Though the Xbox Series X GPU has more teraflops (floating point performance – 24.29 tflops vs. RTX 3060 Ti’s 16.20 tflops).
So, is the RTX 3060 Ti better than the Xbox Series X GPU?
The Xbox Series X is 5-10% weaker than the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti. In ray tracing, however, it’s nearly ~40% weaker. That’s a bummer.
Add to that the fact that the 3060 Ti has DLSS in certain games, which gives it a further 20-30% performance increase without any visible loss in image quality.
So, what GPU is equivalent to the Xbox Series X GPU? A more comparable model to the Xbox Series X GPU would be the RTX 3060.
The RTX 3060 Ti is more of a 1440p video card. Although both can run pretty much anything at 4k@60FPS, sometimes with a few compromises.
So, is the RTX 3060 Ti better than the Xbox Series X? Well, even that’s a half-truth.
The difference between the two isn’t going to be very visible
Game developers are not nincompoops. They optimize their games for the hardware. Unless a game developer like Ubisoft releases raw specs for a game they released for both platforms and tells us what optimizations did these titles underwent, we cannot know which one is better.
XSX games are optimized for the Xbox Series X GPU. They will run really well on it. The same title, when ported for Windows, is optimized separately to run on a desktop GPU like the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti in this case. And therefore, the difference will be marginal in the overall quality.
Which one is better? It largely depends on the game, how well is it optimized for specific hardware and the development team behind it.
Also read: Xbox vs. PS vs. Switch vs. SNES vs. Luna vs. Atari VCS – which console is good for what?
and let’s not forget the elephant in the room, a $499 price tag vs at bare minimum, a $1499 price tag. XBox is has the best value simply because it costs a fraction of a decent gaming PC for similar quality.
We have both a PC tower with a 3060 Ti and a Xbox Series X. They’re both great. In some games the Xbox runs better, and in other games it’s the opposite. For the money, though the Series X beats any PC hands down. Never been so impressed by any console before. Due to Quick Resume the Xbox loads games much faster than our PC.
I’m a big fan of the Xbox series, but I have to say that the 3060 Ti is definitely a powerful graphics card.