NVIDIA just announced the latest addition to its GeForce RTX 30 series graphics card lineup, the GeForce RTX 3060. The full specifications are still unavailable at the time this article is being prepared but the most notable feature as of now is probably the 12GB worth of VRAM. While many of us are familiar with how NVIDIA positions its graphics cards, NVIDIA is somewhat offering more VRAM on the RTX 3060 this time, more than the RTX 3060 Ti that is positioned right above it.
During the announcement, NVIDIA claims that the RTX 3060 can deliver 13 TFLOPs in single-precision compute performance, 36 TFLOPs in ray-tracing operations, and 101 Tensor-TFLOPs in AI-related operation. As for the RTX 3060 Ti, it can deliver 16.2 TFLOPs in single-precision compute performance, 31.6 TFLOPS in ray-tracing operations, and 129.6 Tensor-TFLOPS in AI-related operation, which is still higher than the RTX 3060.
While the RTX 3060 will certainly not be killing the RTD 3060 with its 12GB worth of VRAM alone, we’re curious to know what will NVIDIA do next – will there be a refresh on the existing RTX 30 series graphics cards just like what we’ve seen on the RTX 20 series?
Specifications
| GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | GeForce RTX 3060 | |
| GPU | GA104-200 | GA106-300 |
| GPU Clock | Base: 1.41 GHz Boost: 1.67 GHz | Base: 1.32 GHz Boost: 1.78 GHz |
| CUDA Cores | 4864 | 3584 |
| RT Cores | 38 | 28 |
| TMUs | 152 | 112 |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps | 16 Gbps |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| TGP | 200W | 170W |
| MSRP | $399 USD | $329 USD |
| Launch Date | 02/12/2020 | Late February 2021 |
Now if we compare the specifications for both the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060, we can see that the 12GB worth of VRAM and faster memory clock at 16 Gbps is probably the only advantage the RTX 3060 has right out of the box. Unlike the RTX 3060 Ti, the RTX 3060 features a GA106 GPU with lower CUDA cores count at 3584, RT cores count at 28. It has a higher boost clock of 1.78GHz but it only has a 192-bit memory bus instead of the 256-bit memory bus seen on the RTX 3060 Ti.
It will have a lower TGP at 170W however, which is pretty ideal for the bigger crowd who still game on 1080P and not to mention that Resizable BAR will be supported on the GeForce RTX 30 Series starting with the RTX 3060. When combined with a compatible motherboard, this advanced PCI Express technology enables all of the GPU memory to be accessed by the CPU at once, providing a performance boost in many games.
In case if you’re not familiar with the term Resizable BAR, it’s basically the Smart Access Memory (SAM) feature available on the new Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors when paired with an AMD 500 series motherboards and Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. During our quick briefing last month with NVIDIA, they’re already been working on this with Intel and the other board partners so that this feature will be available to the gamers with fewer limitations and restrictions as compared to what AMD has to offer during that time.
The RTX 3060 will soon be available in late February 2021 at a starting price of $329. As NVIDIA never mentioned anything about a Founders Edition model for the RTX 3060 during the launch, we assume that the RTX 3060 will only be available from the NVIDIA board partners with their respective designs.
