RTX 3070 Offers Far Superior Rendering Speeds Over RTX 3060

As a passionate gamer and part-time 3D animation student, I keep a close eye on graphics card tech that can boost gaming visuals as well as accelerate my 3D and video rendering workloads for college projects. With this hands-on experience and deep analysis of expert reviews, I can conclusively say that the RTX 3070 is around 50% faster at rendering compared to the cheaper RTX 3060, despite having less VRAM.

Rendering Cores: 3070 Has 50% More CUDA and RT Cores

The RTX 3070 packs 5888 CUDA cores and 46 RT cores, around 50% more than the 3840 CUDA/+ 28 RT cores on RTX 3060. These additional processing units work together to accelerate offline rendering using both traditional rasterization and advanced ray tracing techniques in 3D applications.

With its superior core configuration, the 3070 is able to render complex scenes much quicker in both final frame output, as well as interactive viewport previews. This difference is quite visible in professional benchmarks:

As you can see, despite the slower boost clock, the abundant RT and CUDA cores make the 3070 between 50% to 100% faster across a range of popular creative applications.

Why the 3070‘s Faster Memory > 3060‘s Extra VRAM

The RTX 3060 touts 12GB of video memory compared to just 8GB on the RTX 3070. But when looking at actual rendering workloads, benchmarks clearly show that the 3060‘s rendering performance does not scale with the extra memory.

This is because memory bandwidth plays a far bigger role, and the 3070 has over 20% higher bandwidth at 448GB/s vs 360GB/s in the 3060. So while having 12GB capacity seems attractive, it does not directly speed up GPU-based effects and enhancements while working with high resolution footage or textures.

As PugetSystems testing shows, having more VRAM only helps when that memory gets fully saturated – an unlikely scenario at 1440p or lower resolutions:

So if your workflow involves 4K or 8K video where larger capacity matters, a professional Quadro card makes more sense than a gaming GPU like RTX 3060.

Advanced Features: RTX 3070 Supports DLSS, Tensor Cores

The GeForce RTX 3070 comes loaded with exclusive features to accelerate rendering like:

• DLSS: Leverages AI to boost frame rates in ray traced content, useful when previewing complex 3D scenes.
• Tensor Cores: Specialized cores that enhance GPU compute performance for certain algorithms.
• NVLink: Allows scaling memory across two linked GPUs for ulta-high resolution textures.

Unfortunately the RTX 3060 lacks support for key technologies like DLSS and NVLink. While not essential, they provide flexibility to crank up fidelity and quality.

Overall the 3070 is the more forward-looking choice as creative software taps more into advanced RTX features to offload work from the CPU onto the GPU silicon.

Upgrading Room: 8GB VRAM Still Sufficient Today

While lack of VRAM future-proofing is a concern brought up against the RTX 3070, benchmarks confirm the 8GB buffer delivers identical rendering performance to the RTX 3080 10GB at common 1440p resolution.

Comparatively, the RTX 3060 hits full utilization and throttles performance at 1440p in recent games:

So there is a good chance 3060‘s current perceived advantage will be short-lived as asset quality and textures balloon in next-gen games and 3D scenes.

Real-World Impact: Up to 2X Faster Rendering = More Productivity

Looking beyond synthetic benchmarks at real-world usage, PugetSystems testing in After Effects and Premiere Pro shows the 3070 delivering up to 2X faster render times:

Similarly, Tom‘s Hardware testing in Blender showed a 42% reduced render time with the RTX 3070.

This directly translates to less waiting, more iterative cycles, quicker previewable results – boosting overall productivity and efficiency for both 3D and video rendering workflows.

Conclusion: RTX 3070 Offers Far Better Value for Rendering

The RTX 3060 12GB does have merit for budget video editing rigs, but the faster RTX 3070 8GB easily beats it in rendering performance today while offering more future-proofing. Given the sub-30% price premium, the 3070 is a no brainer for GPU rendering work, delivering over 50% quicker export times!

For 3D animation and VFX students like myself, this superior rendering power means reduced waiting times and snappier interactions to complete college assignments faster. And that difference is more than worth the small added cost.

So when choosing a GPU primarily for accelerating creative tools, I‘d pick the RTX 3070 any day over entry-level options like the 3060 Ti or 3060, especially if time is just as important as money!