With the incredibly short-handed launch of GPUs in 2020, gamers are justifiably angry. Nvidia GPUs have been so hard to find due to both increased demand and a horde of scalpers that many are just done with trying to build a computer in early 2021. And now Nvidia is announcing a new GPU that will only run into the exact same problems.
The RTX 3060, a companion and weaker variant of RTX 3060 Ti, has been confirmed. We all knew it was coming. And of course, everyone is expecting to not be able to find one, unless they pay a premium to a scalper. SO that leaves us right back at square one with trying to build a PC with the latest hardware. But let’s say you can get an RTX 3060, what do you get?
The new Nvidia GPU includes 12GB of GDDR6 memory, and Nvidia is promising 10 times more ray-tracing performance with this card. Full RTX suite and DLSS support is also promised. And with that amount of memory, competition is heating up in the GPU space. AMD’s RX 6000-series will now be lagging a bit behind the whole stack as the RX 6800 has a pretty big price gap. Despite the lowest-end AMD offering outpacing the 3060, it’s hard to argue with that $200 price delta between the two.
According to Nvidia RTX 3060 will have a noticeable performance difference over even last-gen RTX 2060:
With these benchmarks handily beating out the $400 card, Nvidia is on a strong footing. The RTX 3060 for $329 is going to be hard to beat, although we will have to see until launch if AMD’s lower-end cards can keep up. Not accounting for price gouging, the current best comparison from red team is the RX 5600 XT, a card roughly equivalent to the 2060 in graphical capability.
Although it remains to be seen how bad stock issues are going to be. There’s a very real chance of another unintended paper launch here. Without a solid pricing option that includes RDNA 2 and Big Navi in the budget range of $300-$400, AMD is on the back foot here.
Nvidia is planning to release the RTX 3060 in late February worldwide, priced at $329.
