Tuesday, October 25th 2022
NVIDIA Partners Quietly Launch GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB (128-bit) Memory
NVIDIA's add-in board partners today began quietly launching the GeForce RTX 3060 8 GB, a variant of the RTX 3060 with a third of its memory size and memory bus-width sawed off. The RTX 3060, NVIDIA's best-selling desktop graphics SKU from the RTX 30-series "Ampere," originally launched with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit wide memory bus, which at its reference speed of 15 Gbps (GDDR6-effective), makes 360 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The new variant comes with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory across a narrower 128-bit memory interface, with the same 15 Gbps data-rate, which works out to 240 GB/s memory bandwidth.
Besides memory size, bus-width, and bandwidth; NVIDIA hasn't tinkered with the core-configuration with the RTX 3060 8 GB. It still comes with 3,584 CUDA cores across 28 SM, which work out to 112 Tensor cores, 28 RT cores, 112 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The GPU's base frequency is set at 1320 MHz, and boost frequency at 1777 MHz—same as the original RTX 3060. Even the typical graphics power is unchanged, at 170 W. The new 8 GB variant doesn't replace the original, but is being positioned a notch below it, possibly to compete against the likes of the Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT), and perhaps even the Arc A750.
Source:
VideoCardz
Besides memory size, bus-width, and bandwidth; NVIDIA hasn't tinkered with the core-configuration with the RTX 3060 8 GB. It still comes with 3,584 CUDA cores across 28 SM, which work out to 112 Tensor cores, 28 RT cores, 112 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The GPU's base frequency is set at 1320 MHz, and boost frequency at 1777 MHz—same as the original RTX 3060. Even the typical graphics power is unchanged, at 170 W. The new 8 GB variant doesn't replace the original, but is being positioned a notch below it, possibly to compete against the likes of the Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT), and perhaps even the Arc A750.
35 Comments on NVIDIA Partners Quietly Launch GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB (128-bit) Memory
Mid-gen card naming has pretty much always been a confusing mess as they try and slot new products between the existing SKUs.
On the topic of BS though:
They’re all gigantic mega-corporations looking to get your money. Give the consumer CPU and GPU markets have been dominated by duopolys for so long the story is often similar - the company with the dominant product sets their own rules, and the underdog usually puts on the image that they’re on the consumer’s side.
One only has to look at AMD’s shift before and after Zen 3 to see how quickly that marketing schtick vanishes into thin air when the tables turn. They did a phenomenal job leveraging that marketing niche with 1st/2nd/3rd gen Ryzen to ramp sales and foster solid brand recognition and perception.
All that is to say: the grass is not greener. Enthusiasts like us invest the time and energy picking the hardware that is best suited to our needs/wants. If/when AMD has a GPU generation that achieves against Nvidia what Zen 3/4 did against Intel, when the capabilities of the product as a whole come out on top instead of falling back on better “value” (rasterization perf/$), you can be absolutely sure they will make that exact same switch.
Man, I want the same stuff their PR staff is smoking.
I doubt this card is going to help, even if it lowers the price of a 3060 by 10% it'll still be overpriced.
Or RX 5500 XT and RX 6500 XT have the same performance, which means that the *500 tier doesn't remain stable between generation transitions.
RX 6500 XT is a rebranded RX 6300 or something.
It just shows that they are free to name them as they wish - even a card called "moneky-donkey" will be accepted and sold en masse :banghead:
but this is a multi-billion company, not humanitarians and this is not a fair world we live in. :)