In the context of the consumer electronics fair CES 2021 Nvidia announced a new offshoot of the RTX – 3000 – family alias Ampere. The GeForce RTX 3060 positions itself with a recommended retail price of 320 Euro below the ( theoretical) 400 Euro expensive GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and should from the end of February 2021 be available.

The new GeForce RTX 3060 sets on a graphics chip with 3584 shader cores, which are nominally up to 1780 MHz Boost should accelerate. The bottom line is , 7 TFlops computing power – 21 Percent less than the Ti -Model.

12 GByte memory Nvidia’s product page confirms the rumored GByte graphics memory for the GeForce RTX 3060, with which you have more RAM available than the RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. Rumors of new editions of the more expensive graphics cards with doubled storage capacity have been circulating for months, but are often contradicting each other.

In order to refer to the 12 GByte to come, Nvidia reduced the GDDR6 interface from 256 on 192 bit. This reduces the transfer rate to the GPU, which has a potentially negative effect on the frame rate. With the same memory clock, it should 336 instead of 448 GByte / s.

Model GeForce RTX 3060 GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GPU Ampere Amps (GA 104) Turing (TU 106) FP 32 – shader cores 3584 4864 2176 Base rate / boost 1320 / 1780 MHz 1410 / 1665 MHz 1470 / 1650 theoretical computing power FP 32 12, 7 TFlops 16, 1 TFlops 7.2 TFlops Memory amount / type 12 GByte GDDR6 8 GB GDDR6 8 GB GDDR6 Interface / transfer rate 192 Bit / vmtl. 336 GByte / s 256 Bit / 448 GByte / s 256 Bit / 448 GByte / s raster output stages unknown 80 64 Raytracing / tensor cores unknown 38 / 152 34 / 272 Total Board Power (TBP) 170 Watt 200 Watt 175 Watt Power connections unknown 1 × 12 – pin (adapter to 1 × 8- Pin) 1 × 8-pin System interface unknown PCIe 4.0 x 16 PCIe 3.0 x 16 Recommended price 320 Euro 400 Euro 420 Euro Founders Edition and partner cards Nvidia puts the power consumption at 170 Watt – 30 Watt less than the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Nvidia shows on a render image a Founders Edition with only one instead of two fans (see p. Lead story). However, it is unclear whether this version will go on sale. The first partner manufacturers are already showing their own versions of the GeForce RTX 3060, including variants as usual with expansive coolers like MSI’s GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X Trio. Other models are coming from Asus, EVGA, Inno3D and Zotac.

At the start of sales at the end of February, however, it remains to be seen how the availability will look. So far all RTX – 3000 – graphics cards are only in stock in small numbers, which drives prices up. The GeForce RTX 3000 Ti currently costs at least 600 Euro – 200 Euro via Nvidia’s recommended retail price.

Our live commentary on the CES – 2021 – Press conferences from AMD and Nvidia.

(mma)