Radeon RX 6500 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB — Specs & Performance Compared

Verdict: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB is ahead of the Radeon RX 6500 on all 5 shared benchmarks on file, by 20% to 523%, including 77% in 3DMark Time Spy (8,747 vs 4,942). On llama2:7b, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB generates 80.6 tokens/s (per llama.cpp GitHub (Vulkan performance scoreboard)) against 27.8 for the Radeon RX 6500 (per llama.cpp GitHub Discussion #10879), best community run on file for each.

Side-by-side GPU comparison of the Radeon RX 6500 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB. Specs, synthetic benchmarks, AI inference tok/s, and Amazon availability below; each column header links to that part's benchmark page.

AMD · RDNA 2

Radeon RX 6500

4 GB VRAM55W TDP

Full Radeon RX 6500 benchmarks →

NVIDIA · Ampere

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB

12 GB VRAM170W TDP$329 MSRP2021

Full NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB benchmarks →

*Price sourced from Amazon.com. Price and availability subject to change.

Where to buy

A listing for each part; the current price and stock are on the retailer's page.

Specs side-by-side

Spec	Radeon RX 6500	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB
vram gb	4	12
vram type	GDDR6	GDDR6
tdp w	55	170
cuda cores	1024	3584
process nm	6	—

Synthetic benchmarks

Each row says whether a higher or a lower number is better (ranks and times are lower-is-better). Scores come from Notebookcheck, 3DMark, Forbes / Tirias Research, Legit Reviews, Wccftech, Geekbench Browser and PassMark; each row links its sources, and where they differ the cell shows their median. Empty cells mean we don't yet have that benchmark on file for the SKU.

Benchmark	Radeon RX 6500	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB
3DMark Fire Strike (higher is better) Source: Notebookcheck, 3DMark	14,368 points	21,653 points
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (higher is better) Source: Notebookcheck, Forbes / Tirias Research	6,213 points	—
3DMark Port Royal (higher is better) Source: Legit Reviews, 3DMark, Wccftech	—	5,074 points
3DMark Speed Way (higher is better) Source: 3DMark	—	2,192 points
3DMark Steel Nomad (higher is better) Source: 3DMark	317 points	1,976 points
3DMark Time Spy (higher is better) Source: Notebookcheck, 3DMark, Forbes / Tirias Research	4,942 points	8,747 points
3DMark Time Spy (overall score) (higher is better) Source: Legit Reviews	—	9,755 points
3DMark Time Spy Graphics (higher is better) Source: Notebookcheck	4,942 points	—
Geekbench 6 OpenCL (higher is better) Source: Geekbench Browser	—	82,071 points
Geekbench 6 Vulkan (higher is better) Source: Geekbench Browser	—	91,383 points
PassMark G2D Mark (higher is better) Source: PassMark	818 pts	984 pts
PassMark G3D Mark (higher is better) Source: PassMark	7,621 pts	16,969 pts

AI inference (tokens/sec)

Top community-reported tokens-per-second results for popular LLMs whose weights fit the card's memory, each linked to its source. See the per-SKU benchmark page for the full set including quantization and prompt length.

Radeon RX 6500

llama3.2:3b: 39.8 tok/s (geerlingguy/ai-benchmarks (GitHub))
llama2:7b: 27.8 tok/s (llama.cpp GitHub Discussion #10879)
llama2:7b: 27.8 tok/s (llama.cpp GitHub Discussions)

All Radeon RX 6500 AI benchmarks →

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB

llama3.2:1b: 211.9 tok/s (TYO Lab blog)
llama3.2:1b: 211.9 tok/s (TyoLab)
llama3.2:1b: 185.0 tok/s (LocalScore (Mozilla Builders))

All NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB AI benchmarks →

Quick answers

Which is faster, the Radeon RX 6500 or the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB?

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB is ahead of the Radeon RX 6500 on all 5 shared benchmarks on file, by 20% to 523%, including 77% in 3DMark Time Spy (8,747 vs 4,942).

Which is better for running local LLMs?

On llama2:7b, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB generates 80.6 tokens/s (per llama.cpp GitHub (Vulkan performance scoreboard)) against 27.8 for the Radeon RX 6500 (per llama.cpp GitHub Discussion #10879), best community run on file for each.