Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Price, Release Date, and Specs - Everything We Know

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Price, Release Date, and Specs - Everything We Know
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 is the immediate successor to the RTX 3060 Ti as the latest in the Nvidia Ampere line of graphics cards. And, while the cards that already exist are incredibly powerful GPUs, capable of 4K60 fps with ray tracing, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 aims to deliver the best 1080p experience at a price low enough that anyone can get in, at least before the price increase. However, with this graphics card launching in the midst of one of the biggest hardware shortages in years, the RTX 3060 has a lot to prove. We haven't seen the graphics card yet either, so there's still a lot we don't know, namely how it works, but there are a ton of leaks and rumours. So we've gathered all the information about the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 price, release date, and specifications in one place. Be sure to bookmark this page and we'll keep it updated with the latest information as it emerges.

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Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia RTX 3060 release date

Nvidia announced the RTX 3060 at CES 2021, along with the latest RTX 3000 laptop processors. Nvidia said the RTX 3060 will launch in February 2021, but hasn't announced an official street date, but now we know when it will actually be out. . Nvidia has officially announced that the RTX 3060 will launch on February 25, 2021 at 9am. M. PST / 12 p.m. M. EST / 17 PM M.GMT. These graphics cards are likely to sell out in a matter of minutes, so if you want to get your hands on them, be prepared to smash the upgrade button.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia RTX 3060 Price

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, unlike other Ampere graphics cards released so far, will not have a Founders Edition card released directly by Nvidia. Instead, the RTX 3060 will be found exclusively through third-party partners like MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte. This makes it difficult to determine the exact price at which you will be able to find this graphics card, especially since we have seen a lot of volatility in terms of GPU prices recently, as this PCMag report illustrates. Now, Nvidia has said that it will cripple the hash rate of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 cryptocurrency at the driver level, which should deter some miners from retiring the card. Third-party drivers for the graphics card may come out to work around this restriction, but since it's not as powerful as other cards in the lineup, we're not sure this is much of a problem. Nvidia announces that the RTX 3060 will start at $329 (around $230, AU$430), and we're sure there will be some graphics cards available at that price from various manufacturers. However, like all other Ampere graphics cards, we may see prices rise to around $399 (about $290, AU$520) or higher for more premium versions of the graphics card. Once the GPUs are actually released and retailers start listing them, we should have a better idea of ​​how much the Nvidia RTX 3060 will sell for.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia RTX 3060 Specifications

Probably the most striking specification of the Nvidia RTX 3060 is the 6 GB GDDR12 VRAM, more than any other graphics card in the Ampere line. Nvidia's reasoning for including 12GB of memory here stems from the design of the graphics card: Because it was designed with a 192-bit memory interface, Nvidia could only choose between 6GB and 12GB of memory. VRAM, and Team Green chose to go with the higher specs. For the most part, that's probably overkill for this graphics card, given that all other specs point to a GPU designed for 1080p gaming only. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 packs 3.584 CUDA cores spread across 28 compute units, which is significantly lower than the RTX 4.864 Ti's 38 CUDA cores and 3060 UCs. It might not sound like a big deal, but because of the way an Ampere GPU is presented, it's a big difference, especially if you're concerned about ray tracing. Each Nvidia Ampere Compute Unit (CU) has 128 CUDA cores, 1 RT core, and 4 Tensor cores, which means that DLSS and ray tracing performance is directly affected by the number of CPUs present in the GPU. That puts the totals at 28 RT cores and 112 Tensor cores, compared to 38 RT cores and 152 Tensor cores on the RTX 3060 Ti. A bit of background on this: The RT Core is a dedicated core where the CPU offloads ray tracing computations when detected. Tensor Core is what powers Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, which uses AI to scale an image, giving you much better performance without having to drastically reduce visual quality. Until we get it internally for a full review, we won't know exactly how the Nvidia RTX 3060 will perform. Based on the specs, we think we'll see 15-25% of the difference between them. gaming and the RTX 3060 Ti, which would make sense given the 21% price difference. It's just a hunch, so take it with a grain of salt. The actual launch of the Nvidia RTX 3060 is likely to be in a few weeks, so we won't have to wait too long to see what the graphics card is capable of.