AnandTech's Journal

NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060 Gets a Release Date: February 25th

NVIDIA this morning has sent over a quick note revealing the release date for their next GeForce desktop video card, the RTX 3060. The mainstream(ish) video card, previously revealed at CES 2021 with a late February release date, has now been locked in for a launch on February 25^th, with prices starting at $329.

As a quick recap, the RTX 3060 is the next card down in NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture consumer video card stack. Using the new GA106 GPU – which is already shipping in RTX 3060 laptops – the RTX 3060 follows the traditional price/performance cadence for video card launches, with NVIDIA releasing a cheaper and lower performing video card for the mainstream-enthusiast video card market. NVIDIA’s 60-tier cards have long been the company’s workhorse parts for 1080p gaming – as well as some of their highest-volume parts in North America – and the RTX 3060 is expected to fill the same role within the Ampere/30-series family.

NVIDIA GeForce Specification Comparison
	RTX 3060	RTX 3060 Ti	RTX 2060	GTX 1060
CUDA Cores	3584	4864	1920	1280
ROPs	64?	80	48	48
Boost Clock	1.78GHz	1.665GHz	1.68GHz	1.709GHz
Memory Clock	14Gbps? GDDR6	14Gbps GDDR6	14Gbps GDDR6	8Gbps GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	192-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit
VRAM	12GB	8GB	6GB	6GB
Single Precision Perf.	12.8 TFLOPS	16.2 TFLOPS	6.5 TFLOPS	4.4 TFLOPS
Tensor Perf. (FP16)	51.2 TFLOPS	64.8 TFLOPS	51.6 TFLOPS	N/A
Tensor Perf. (FP16-Sparse)	102.4 TFLOPS	129.6 TFLOPS	51.6 TFLOPS	N/A
TDP	170W	200W	160W	120W
GPU	GA106	GA104	TU106	GP106
Transistor Count	?B	17.4B	10.8B	4.4B
Architecture	Ampere	Ampere	Turing	Pascal
Manufacturing Process	Samsung 8nm?	Samsung 8nm	TSMC 12nm "FFN"	TSMC 16nm
Launch Date	02/25/2021	12/02/2020	01/15/2019	07/19/2016
Launch Price	MSRP: $329	MSRP: $399	MSRP: $349	MSRP: $249 Founders $299

NVIDIA has already published most of the specifications for the card back in January. Including the fact that it offers 28 SMs (3584 CUDA cores), and 12GB of GDDR6 running on a 192-bit memory bus. As with previous 60-tier cards, the non-power-of-two memory bus means that NVIDIA is shipping with a somewhat odd amount of memory, in this case 12GB, which is actually more than what comes on even the RTX 3080. However with the only other option being an anemic-for-2021 6GB, NVIDIA is opting to make sure that the card isn’t for want of VRAM capacity.

Meanwhile, for better or worse the RTX 3060 is all-but-guaranteed to fly off of shelves quickly. With every video card more powerful than a GTX 1050 Ti seemingly getting shanghaied into mining Ethereum, desperate gamers will be fighting with hungry miners for supplies. Even with the 192-bit memory bus, I would be shocked if the RTX 3060 wasn’t profitable, especially with Ethereum reaching record highs. So for anyone thinking of grabbing the card, best be prepared to camp out at your favorite retailer or e-tailer on that Thursday morning.

On a final note, unlike the other RTX 30 series cards launched to date, NVIDIA will not be producing any Founders Edition cards for the RTX 3060 series. So all of the cards released will be AIB cards with their own respective designs. And, if tradition holds, don't be surprised if we see the AIBs outfit their cards with premium features and raise their prices accordingly.