RTX 3060 Ti vs RTX 2060 for Ollama: we benchmarked each card alone

Key takeaway: On qwen2.5:7b, the RTX 2060 delivers 76% of the RTX 3060 Ti’s speed. On llama3.1:8b that drops to 61%, because the model no longer fits in the 2060’s VRAM. Pick the card by model size, not by the spec sheet.

Know exactly where the 2060 stops being “good enough”

The 2060 is fine at 7B and falls apart the moment a model spills out of VRAM. We ran each card alone on our test bench, each in its own Ollama 0.34 instance with nothing else on the GPU. Settings were flash attention on and q8_0 KV cache, with three 512-token runs per row at seed 1 and temperature 0 after a warm-up. Speed is the mean of the 3 runs, draw is the mean of runs 2–3, and temperature is the peak (bench notes).

Model	RTX 3060 Ti (150 W cap)	RTX 2060 (125 W cap)	On GPU (Ti / 2060)
qwen2.5:7b	75.8 tok/s	57.7 tok/s	100% / 100%
llama3.1:8b	73.6 tok/s	44.8 tok/s	100% / 86%
qwen2.5:14b	14.5 tok/s	8.6 tok/s	71% / 48%

The llama3.1:8b row is the one that matters. The default Q4_K_M tag is about 4.7 GB on disk. Runtime VRAM is weights plus KV cache and overhead, so it doesn’t fully fit on the 2060 (Ollama library). With 14% of the model on the CPU, the 2060’s GPU sat at 51–55 W, waiting on the CPU (bench notes).

The specs explain the gap. The 3060 Ti has 8 GB on a 256-bit bus and 4864 CUDA cores (NVIDIA). The standard 2060 has 6 GB on a 192-bit bus and 1920 CUDA cores (NVIDIA).

Cap both cards: stock power buys you almost nothing

Run the 3060 Ti at 150 W and the 2060 at 125 W. You give up about 2–3% of speed.

On qwen2.5:7b, the 3060 Ti went from 75.8 tok/s at 150 W to 77.9 tok/s at 200 W. That’s 97% of stock speed on 144.2 W instead of 191.9 W, and efficiency rose from 0.41 to 0.53 tok/W. The 2060 went from 57.7 tok/s at 125 W to 59.1 tok/s at 170 W. The cap cut its peak temperature from 80 C to 64 C (bench notes).

The software power ranges are 100–220 W on the 3060 Ti and 125–170 W on the 2060, so both caps sit inside what the driver allows (bench notes). On models that spill to the CPU, the cap does nothing. The 2060 ran llama3.1:8b at 44.8 tok/s at 125 W and 45.0 tok/s at 170 W, and both cards ran qwen2.5:14b at the same speed at either cap.

Tip: Set the cap before you shop for a PSU. NVIDIA lists 600 W required system power for a 3060 Ti at its 200 W stock rating (NVIDIA). Our tests ran it at 150 W with a 3% loss on qwen2.5:7b.

Price the premium per token, not per card

The 3060 Ti’s premium pays off for 8B models and barely at all for 7B. Prices below are Amazon listings from September 25–26, 2026 (3060 Ti search, 2060 search):

• Used: 3060 Ti offers started at $313.22 and 2060 offers at $185.99, a $127.23 gap.
• New: $395.00 vs $259.00, a $136 gap.
• Refurbished: A Renewed 3060 Ti listed at $299.99, only $41 more than the cheapest new 2060.

Example (illustrative math from those prices): On qwen2.5:7b at the caps above, a used 3060 Ti works out to 75.8 / $313.22 = 0.24 tok/s per dollar. A used 2060 works out to 57.7 / $185.99 = 0.31, so the 2060 wins on value. On llama3.1:8b the numbers are 0.235 for the Ti vs 0.241 for the 2060, a near tie. The Ti also keeps the whole model on the GPU, so it wins in practice.

Watch out: Don’t buy a new RTX 2060. Listings ran $259–$369.99, and several sit above the $299.99 Renewed 3060 Ti. You’d pay more for a card with less VRAM.

Count idle watts if the box never sleeps

The 2060 is the better idler. With no model loaded, we measured 16.5 W of board power on the 3060 Ti and 6.9 W on the 2060 (bench notes).

That 9.6 W gap adds up to about 230 Wh per day, or roughly 84 kWh per year of 24/7 idling (illustrative arithmetic). Multiply by your own electricity rate. For a box that sits idle most of the day, that recurring cost belongs next to the purchase price.

Use this worksheet to pick your card

1. List the largest model you’ll run every day, not the one you’ll try once.
2. If it’s 7B-class (qwen2.5:7b), the 2060 at 125 W gets you 57.7 tok/s fully on the GPU. Keep the spare card or buy used from $185.99.
3. If it’s llama3.1:8b, only the 3060 Ti kept 100% on the GPU, at 73.6 tok/s. Budget $299.99–$313.22 for a Renewed or used card.
4. If it’s 14B, neither card alone is enough (14.5 and 8.6 tok/s with partial CPU offload). Earlier the same week, qwen2.5:14b split across both cards fully in VRAM ran at about 38 tok/s. That result came from a separate run, not the solo bench above (bench notes).
5. Set the power cap on day one: 150 W for the 3060 Ti, 125 W for the 2060.
6. Add the idle gap (9.6 W) to your running cost if the box stays on 24/7.

What we couldn’t verify: We didn’t bench the 12 GB RTX 2060 variant (2176 CUDA cores), and its extra VRAM could change the 8B result. We didn’t test longer contexts beyond 512-token runs. Used and Renewed card condition and listing prices will vary.