Nvidia’s next RTX 3060 graphics card still has only an official “end of February” release date at the time of writing, but a new report from WccfTech suggests that Thursday, February 25, will be the day it really will be on sale. It is true that WccfTech does not declare its source for this particular date, so everything can be a lot of bullshit. However, when considered along with other rumors that have been circulating on the internet recently (and the fact that almost all of Nvidia’s previous RTX 30 cards were released on a Thursday as well), there may be only an ounce of truth to this.
In late January, for example, Videocardz reportedly obtained Nvidia’s embargo schedule for the RTX 3060, which stated that the press and influencers would begin receiving review samples on February 19. The schedule did not list when the review embargo would eventually be lifted, nor did it reveal an exact release date for the RTX 3060, but if the sample seed date really proves to be true, then it seems likely that a worldwide release on Thursday Monday, February 25, is probably right. After all, the RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 were launched every Thursday at the end of last year, and it is not uncommon to have just a week of testing before the card goes on sale. The only exception to this rule was the RTX 3060 Ti, which launched on December 2nd – a Wednesday.
As such, there is still the possibility that February 25 may not be the correct release date, after all – even though it’s almost mid-February and I haven’t even heard the hair when analysis samples are coming in, a more general one window somewhere between Monday February 22nd and Friday February 26th seems almost certain. Of course, given how quickly the rest of the Nvidia RTX 30 family was snapped up at launch, we can probably also expect the inventory levels of the RTX 3060 to last 20 seconds before it also disappears in a cloud of smoke in the next several months, but I will, of course, inform you of the appropriate sale date as soon as Nvidia starts announcing it.
The RTX 3060 is set to be the cheapest next-generation RTX 30 card in Nvidia’s Ampere family of lightning-tracking GPUs, starting at £ 299 / $ 329. It will come with 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM (which is actually more than the 8 GB you get on the more powerful RTX 3060 Ti on the RTX 3070), 3584 CUDA cores (below 4864 on the RTX 3060 Ti) and a base clock speed of 1320 MHz (also below 1410 MHz on You). Unlike the rest of Nvidia’s RTX 30 family, however, there will be no Founders Edition of the RTX 3060 available when it comes out – so you’ll have to choose one of the many third-party models that will be on sale if you decide to try to get one.