NVIDIA Ampere-based GPUs are finally releasing the popular GeForce RTX 3060 for $329. The NVIDIA 60-series graphics cards have many features that users will love, and are probably the most sold series of GeForce generations.
However, graphics cards are already experiencing an absolute shortage of supply due to complex causes such as increased demand for several months, logistics delay due to pandemic, cryptocurrency craze, and shortage of some major parts. Nvidia also announced that it will reproduce the last generation GTX 1050 Ti again to overcome the situation.
The GeForce RTX 3060, released this week, will be a great opportunity to replace your graphics card at a reasonable price, assuming you can win against professional resellers or macrobots. Here are five features of the RTX 3060.
1. Sales time
Sales start at 9 a.m. Pacific time and noon US EST. To buy it right away, you would have had to wait and hit the refresh button.
2. The list price is $329, but maybe
You shouldn't expect enough luck to be able to purchase the RTX 3060 at full price on the release date. Since the Founders Edition has not been released, this product will be released as a custom product from partners such as EVGA, Asus, and MSI. At the time of the release of other products of the same generation, the RTX 3060 will probably be very small at the consumer list price, and most of the products will be sold a little more expensive with some adjustments and feature additions.
It's no surprise that retailers raise prices themselves. Graphics cards are currently the most interesting and expensive products. It is common for used products that have been released several years ago to be sold more than the regular price at the time of release.
3. Not for mining
The main reason for the decline in the possibility of purchasing a graphics card is the mining craze, and fortunately, the RTX 3060 is less useful for mining purposes. As the price of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin, soared, the profitability of general purpose graphics cards was highlighted. Even with the latest graphics cards, you can make a lot of money, but that's not common. The RTX 3060 isn't as profitable as the other RTX 30 series. NVIDIA released a separate CMP product, a graphics card dedicated to mining, by adjusting the hardware, firmware, and driver of the RTX 3060 to reduce the hashing performance when used for cryptocurrency mining by less than half. It's a good deal.
However, the possibility of being used for coins other than Ethereum still remains.
4. Enough memory
The previous RTX 30 series was criticized for its low memory allocation. The GDDR6 memory capacity of the RTX 3060 Ti or 3070 was 8GB, while the GDDR6X capacity of the GeForce RTX 3080 was only 10GB. Even at 1440p resolution, this is insufficient considering that there are already games that use 8GB or more of memory. AMD has increased the memory capacity of the Radeon RX 6800 series graphics card to 16GB. And now, with the RTX 3060, the 192-bit bus memory has suddenly increased to 12GB, which is more than enough for playing games in a 1080p resolution or 1440p mid-range environment, the main target of the RTX 3060. If it hadn't been before AMD started the memory war, it would have been released at only 6GB.
The RTX 3060 is the first NVIDIA graphics card to support the PCIe resizable BAR function. Resizable BAR is similar to the Smart Access Memory of the Radeon RX 6000 series, but it is a function that improves performance slightly by the CPU fully accessing the GPU memory, and the result varies slightly depending on the resolution or the level of visual effect selected by the user.
5. The range of performance upgrades will not be large
The GeForce RTX 3060 review is likely to be a bit delayed due to product delivery delays, but other reviewers who received the product for review say the performance difference is not consistently significant. Tom's Hardware and Gamers Nexus evaluated that the RTX 3060 had a slightly lower list price than the previous generation RTX 2060 Super ($400), but the performance was similar. The difference in gameplay between the two products was that ray tracing support or Nvidia DLSS technology was upgraded a little more when it came to the RTX 3060, and Jared Walton of Tom's Hardware said, "It's a bit less expensive than the RTX 2060 Super, and the performance is slightly improved."
Gamers Nexus also commented that the performance of the RTX 3060 is similar to the GTX 1080Ti, which was the flagship of the previous generation, so the overall performance is not bad, and it will be a great choice when playing at 1080p. In other words, Nvidia's new product is in a similar weight to the GTX 1060 two generations ago. Considering that the GTX 1060 was sold for $250 in 2016, it is unlikely that it will get an enthusiastic response because the retail price has increased by $80. Longer than that, the GTX 960 was only sold at $200. The price of a graphics card is rising over generations, regardless of whether or not there is enough stock.
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