United Kingdom
India
Deutschland
France
Canada
España
Belgium
Netherlands
Poland
Sweden
България
Australia
Singapore
Italia
中国
日本[Comparison] NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (Laptop, 140W) vs GeForce RTX 3070 (Laptop, 140W) – Do not eat all the hype about the 40-series
The laptop landscape is looking Green all the way, and while we’re still waiting for manufacturers to supply the market with AMD laptop graphics, we have plenty of decisions to make, in regards as to whether or not to pick the new modern 40-series GPUs from NVIDIA or to go for the 30-series and save some money, while still getting plenty of performance. Today we have the brand new RTX 4060, a GPU ripe for 1440p gaming or high-FPS esports games at 1080p. On the other end, sits the RTX 3070, a premiere GPU that’s able to push frames as high as 4K in some titles.
You can learn more about both GPUs here: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (140W) / GeForce RTX 3070 (Laptop)
You can check out our Top Laptop Graphics Ranking to see the top-performing GPUs.
Specs table
Looking at the specs of both GPUs, we see that the 40-series leads in terms of clock speeds while employing faster memory, which is always the case with newer products. However, the RTX 3070 does have a lot more cores, a 66% increase to be specific. The memory bandwidth is also higher, which contributes to performance as well.
| RTX 4060 (Laptop, 140W) | RTX 3070 (Laptop, 140W) | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ampere |
| Lithography | 4 nm | 8 nm |
| Base / Max Frequency | 1920MHz / 2250MHz | 1215MHz / 1720MHz |
| Memory Type | GDDR6-20000MHz | GDDR6-17500MHz |
| Memory capacity | 8GB | 8GB |
| Cores | 3072 | 5120 |
| Power Consumption | 140W | 140W |
| Memory bus | 128-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 256 GB/sec | 384 GB/sec |
GPU benchmarks
Looking at the synthetic benchmarks that we use for testing, we see that the RTX 3070 is faster all around, with leads of 6% in 3DMark Time Spy, 14% in 3DMark Fire Strike, 12% in 3DMark Wild Life, and 8% in Unigine Superposition.
Results are from the 3DMark: Time Spy (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the 3DMark: Wild Life benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
In the gaming tests, we see the RTX 4060 pull ahead in lower settings in the three games that we tested. However, the higher the quality gets, the fps gains decrease, and sometimes (very rarely) favor the RTX 3070.
| Metro Exodus | Full HD, Low (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Extreme (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4060 (140W) | 176 fps (+27%) | 93 fps (+4%) | 45 fps |
| GeForce RTX 3070 (140W) | 139 fps | 89 fps | 46 fps (+2%) |
| Borderlands 3 | Full HD, Medium (Check settings) | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Badass (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4060 (140W) | 149 fps (+25%) | 114 fps (+11%) | 88 fps (+2%) |
| GeForce RTX 3070 (140W) | 119 fps | 103 fps | 86 fps |
| Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands | Full HD, High (Check settings) | Full HD, Very High (Check settings) | Full HD, Ultra (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 4060 (140W) | 139 fps (+17%) | 121 fps (+21%) | 77 fps (+4%) |
| GeForce RTX 3070 (140W) | 119 fps | 100 fps | 74 fps |
Conclusion
To conclude, both the RTX 4060 and RTX 3070 are capable graphics cards for 1440p gaming, while allowing very high fps in games at 1080p, which is perfect for esports titles and harnessing the potential of high-refresh-rate displays. Of course, the new 40-series graphics do have plenty of new features for both creators and gamers, however, most of the time you’ll be fine with the 30-series too, which still has the raw power to handle most if not all productivity and gaming tasks you’ll tackle. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge the progress that NVIDIA has made with these new GPUs, which we’ve been waiting for for about 3 years. AMD also needs to wake up, as the 7000 mobile graphics are nowhere to be found, and we’re already halfway into 2023.
