NVIDIA this morning sent a quick note revealing the release date for its next GeForce desktop video card, the RTX 3060. The mainstream video card (ish), previously unveiled at CES 2021 with a release date in late February, has now been blocked for a February 25 launchº, starting at $ 329.
To recap quickly, the RTX 3060 is the next card in the stack of consumer video cards with NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture. Using the new GA106 GPU – which is already being sold on RTX 3060 laptops – the RTX 3060 follows the traditional price / performance cadence for video card launches, with NVIDIA launching a cheaper, lower-performance video card for the video card market enthusiasts. NVIDIA’s 60-tier cards have long been the company’s most important parts for 1080p games – as well as some of their highest volume parts in North America – and the RTX 3060 is expected to perform the same role in the Ampere family / series 30.
| Comparison of NVIDIA GeForce specifications | ||||||
| RTX 3060 | RTX 3060 Ti | RTX 2060 | GTX 1060 | |||
| CUDA Cores | 3584 | 4864 | 1920 | 1280 | ||
| ROPs | 64? | 80 | 48 | 48 | ||
| Boost Clock | 1.78 GHz | 1.665 GHz | 1.68 GHz | 1.709 GHz | ||
| Memory clock | 14 Gbps? GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 14 Gbps GDDR6 | 8 Gbps GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 192 bits | 256 bits | 192 bits | 192 bits | ||
| VRAM | 12 GB | 8GB | 6 GB | 6 GB | ||
| Single Precision Perf. | 12.8 TFLOPS | 16.2 TFLOPS | 6.5 TFLOPS | 4.4 TFLOPS | ||
| Tensor Perf. (FP16) | 51.2 TFLOPS | 64.8 TFLOPS | 51.6 TFLOPS | N / D | ||
| Tensor Perf. (FP16-Sparse) | 102.4 TFLOPS | 129.6 TFLOPS | 51.6 TFLOPS | N / D | ||
| TDP | 170W | 200W | 160W | 120W | ||
| GPU | GA106 | GA104 | TU106 | GP106 | ||
| Counting transistors | ? B | 17.4 billion | 10.8 billion | 4.4 billion | ||
| Architecture | Ampere | Ampere | Turing | Paschal | ||
| Manufacturing process | Samsung 8nm? | Samsung 8nm | TSMC 12nm “FFN” | TSMC 16nm | ||
| Release date of | 2/25/2021 | 12/02/2020 | 1/15/2019 | 7/19/2016 | ||
| Launch price | MSRP: $ 329 | MSRP: $ 399 | MSRP: $ 349 | MSRP: $ 249 Founders $ 299 |
||
NVIDIA already published most of the card’s specifications in January. Including the fact that it offers 28 SMs (3584 CUDA cores) and 12 GB of GDDR6 running on a 192-bit memory bus. As with the previous 60-layer cards, the two-powerless memory bus means that NVIDIA is being marketed with a rather strange amount of memory, in this case 12 GB, which is actually more than even enough on the RTX 3080. However with the only other option being an anemic for 2021 6GB, NVIDIA is choosing to make sure the card is not for lack of VRAM capacity.
Meanwhile, for better or worse, the RTX 3060 is almost guaranteed to fly off the shelves quickly. With all video cards more powerful than a GTX 1050 Ti apparently crawling into Ethereum mining, desperate players will be struggling with supply-hungry miners. Even with the 192-bit memory bus, I would be shocked if the RTX 3060 was not profitable, especially with Ethereum reaching record levels. Therefore, for those who are thinking about taking the card, it is better to be prepared to camp at your favorite store or online store on Thursday morning.
On a final note, unlike the other RTX 30 series cards released to date, NVIDIA will not produce any Founders Edition cards for the RTX 3060 series. Therefore, all cards launched will be AIB cards with their respective designs. And, if the tradition continues, don’t be surprised if we see AIBs equipping their cards with premium features and increasing their prices accordingly.
