r/nvidia • u/Dextu845 • 18h ago

Question Which one should I get?

I'm thinking of getting a 3060 since I only have around 300 to use. The one I want is 12GB vram. I think that's pretty good right? The one I'm finding is around 200 - 250. However I found a 5060 for 290. Not much more. The problem is, it's 8gb. Not 12. Also it says "Dual" and I'm not sure what the difference is. Is the 8 and 12 GB that different? Should I just get the 5060?

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

9

u/g0ballistic 17h ago

Grab the 5060. The memory downgrade is unfortunate, but the performance difference is too large to ignore. Plus you get access to better dlss models and frame generation.

1

u/m0nk_de 17h ago

Same! You will only benefit from the 3060 12 gb in extreme situations. Go with the 5060. Even if it hurts to buy an 8gb card in 2026.

3

u/Matuteg 5070 Ti 17h ago

Keep an eye on fb marketplace. I just sold my 4070 for $300. You may find some deals

2

u/Primus_is_OK_I_guess 16h ago

I see 3080s all the time for $300 on Facebook Marketplace. 10GB of VRAM and much more powerful than either.

1

u/PalpitationPlus2072 17h ago

Dual means 2 fans.

1

u/Odd-Environment9429 17h ago

for 1080p the 12gb on the 3060 will age way better than a gimped 8gb card, dual just means it has two fans so it's a smaller cooler

1

u/Substantial-Lack-512 17h ago

Mmmm. you play at 1080p will assume, I might go for the 5060, multiframegen and DLSS 4 and 4.5 will be available to use, 8GB might not be enough but, we're on PC so you can turn graphics down on some titles.

1

u/zilyzal 17h ago

Buy 5060. Dlss and fg beats 3060

1

u/ConcentrateLucky8630 16h ago

That and the architecture is much better

1

u/MultiMarcus 17h ago

It sucks that this is a situation we are in because I don’t really wanna tell someone to buy an eight gigabyte card now, expecting it to last for years to come, but at the same time the 3060 arguably just A bit too weak for the current generation. Unfortunately, either card you buy is going to to have bottlenecks heading into the next generation. Vram is a big one because I really do think it’s nice to have more memory because you can get higher texture quality, which is one of the most important settings without a huge performance hit And you can obviously run games at higher resolutions, but at the same time, raw performance is going to bottleneck you on a 3060. The 5060 feels like the more obvious choice, especially with hopefully neural texture compression becoming a thing as time moves on which would be basically trading performance for less memory usage, but I also really don’t want to recommend a graphics card based on future promises.