When Nvidia introduced the $329 GeForce RTX 3060, the primary mainstream graphics card within the firm’s new RTX 30-series household, it was saddled with an obscure “late February” launch date. At this time, Nvidia dropped PCWorld a notice stating that the cardboard will hit the streets on February 25 at 9 a.m. Pacific time, only a hair below two weeks from now.
The $400 (nicely, theoretically) GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is an nearly good 1440p graphics card however the cheaper RTX 3060 is a really completely different beast. It makes use of a brand new “GA106” graphics chip with 3,584 CUDA cores clocked at a 1.78GHz enhance pace, paired with an ample 12GB of GDDR6 reminiscence over a 192-bit bus.
In contrast, the quicker and dearer RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 solely include 8GB of VRAM. Even the vaunted GeForce RTX 3080 features a smaller 10GB capability, albeit of a lot speedier GDDR6X reminiscence. Appears like AMD’s provide of vastly extra VRAM within the Radeon RX 6000-series had an impact on Staff Inexperienced. The 12GB of reminiscence will in all probability wind up being overkill for the 1080p gaming this card probably excels at, however Nvidia’s solely different possibility with this reminiscence setup is to supply 6GB, and that’s anemic in 2021.
Nvidia says the GeForce RTX 3060 gives twice as a lot conventional rasterization efficiency because the beloved GeForce GTX 1060, and 10X the ray tracing efficiency. (The GTX 1060 doesn’t embrace devoted real-time ray tracing cores like RTX-class GeForce playing cards do). The precise efficiency uplift seems prefer it varies closely relying on the sport, which graphics API your recreation makes use of, and whether or not ray tracing and Nvidia’s DLSS know-how is lively, going off the Nvidia-supplied chart above.
The GeForce RTX 3060 will even be the primary GPU of this era and not using a homebrew Nvidia Founders Version model of the cardboard, regardless of the advertising and marketing picture above exhibiting one. You’ll solely have the ability to get a third-party RTX 3060 from graphics card makers like EVGA, Asus, or MSI. Contemplating how inexpensive the ostensible retail worth is, and the staggering scarcity affecting the GPU market so closely that Nvidia known as within the historical GTX 1050 Ti for backup, plan on slamming that F5 button pronto at your favourite etailer on February 25. The primary wave for this graphics card in all probability gained’t final quite a lot of minutes regardless of how a lot inventory Nvidia has constructed up.
Our information to the very best graphics card explains every part you could know concerning the present GPU market. Contemplating the present lack of availability and sky-high costs, nevertheless, you may need higher luck with Nvidia’s PC-centric (and free!) GeForce Now cloud streaming or perhaps a console.