NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB vs RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation — Specs & Performance Compared

Verdict: The RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation is ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB on all 6 shared benchmarks on file, by 9% to 41%, including 41% in 3DMark Time Spy (12,297 vs 8,747). On qwen2.5:14b, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB generates 26.6 tokens/s (per LocalScore (Mozilla Builders)) against 24.7 for the RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation (per LocalScore (Mozilla Builders)), best community run on file for each.

Side-by-side GPU comparison of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB and the RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation. Specs, synthetic benchmarks, AI inference tok/s, and Amazon availability below; each column header links to that part's benchmark page.

NVIDIA · Ampere

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB

12 GB VRAM170W TDP$329 MSRP2021

Full NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB benchmarks →

NVIDIA · Ada Lovelace

RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation

20 GB VRAM

Full RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation 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	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB	RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation
vram gb	12	20
vram type	GDDR6	—
tdp w	170	—
cuda cores	3584	—

Synthetic benchmarks

Each row says whether a higher or a lower number is better (ranks and times are lower-is-better). Scores come from Jisaku Hibi, 3DMark, Legit Reviews, Wccftech and technical.city; 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	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB	RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation
3DMark Fire Strike (higher is better) Source: Jisaku Hibi, 3DMark	21,653 points	28,799 points
3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (higher is better) Source: Jisaku Hibi	—	13,376 points
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (higher is better) Source: Jisaku Hibi	—	6,358 points
3DMark Port Royal (higher is better) Source: Legit Reviews, 3DMark, Jisaku Hibi, Wccftech	5,074 points	6,420 points
3DMark Speed Way (higher is better) Source: 3DMark	2,192 points	—
3DMark Steel Nomad (higher is better) Source: 3DMark	1,976 points	2,206 points
3DMark Steel Nomad (DX12 Graphics Score) (higher is better) Source: 3DMark	—	2,206 points
3DMark Time Spy (higher is better) Source: 3DMark, Jisaku Hibi	8,747 points	12,297 points
3DMark Time Spy (overall score) (higher is better) Source: Legit Reviews	9,755 points	—
3DMark Time Spy Extreme (higher is better) Source: Jisaku Hibi	—	4,882 points
Geekbench 5 OpenCL (higher is better) Source: technical.city	—	124,926 points
Geekbench 5 Vulkan (higher is better) Source: technical.city	—	110,912 points

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.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB

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

All NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB AI benchmarks →

RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation

qwen3:30b: 768.0 tok/s (LocalLLaMA)
llama3.2:1b-instruct: 189.0 tok/s (LocalScore (Mozilla Builders))
llama3.2:1b: 189.0 tok/s (LocalScore (Mozilla Builders))

All RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation AI benchmarks →

Quick answers

Which is faster, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB or the RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation?

The RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation is ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB on all 6 shared benchmarks on file, by 9% to 41%, including 41% in 3DMark Time Spy (12,297 vs 8,747).

Which is better for running local LLMs?

On qwen2.5:14b, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB generates 26.6 tokens/s (per LocalScore (Mozilla Builders)) against 24.7 for the RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation (per LocalScore (Mozilla Builders)), best community run on file for each.