A few days back, Zed_Wang on Twitter claimed that NVIDIA is reportedly planning to launch 3 more models for their Ampere lineup in an attempt to clear out all remaining inventory. The GPUs were the RTX 3060 8GB, RTX 3060 Ti with G6X memory and the RTX 3070 Ti with the GA102 GPU.
Arrival in October
Videocardz has confirmed that the RTX 3060 and the RTX 3060 Ti (refresh) are arriving in October as per some board partners. Sadly, no information has been given regarding the RTX 3070 Ti with the GA102 GPU. Now interestingly, if these GPUs do arrive in October (20 days later), then we may see Lovelace being pushed back to November.
RTX 3060 8GB
The RTX 3060 currently available in the market ships with 12GB of GDDR6 memory. This is quite a lot for a -60 series GPU, furthermore, the VRAM gets lesser as you go higher up in the Ampere spectrum (12GB – 8GB – 10GB). The RTX 3060 12GB can be found at Newegg ranging from $349–$559 (Please don’t purchase the latter), so the 8GB model may cost slightly less (<$349). However, a very important point is that NVIDIA has been reluctant to drop pricing below the $300 territory (As is the case with the RTX 3050). So we expect the 3060 8GB to be priced higher than $300.
RTX 3060 Ti with G6X
The RTX 3060 Ti is the highest end offering from Ampere with GDDR6 memory. The upper echelons offer the faster and more power efficient GDDR6X memory. This allows for increased data transfer bandwidth(s) with reduced power consumption. A 3060 Ti with G6X memory seems rather fishy from NVIDIA because the stock variant already offers ample performance. This GPU can run ‘most’ if not all AAA games at 1440p 60FPS (DLSS must be turned ON in some cases). This indeed is an attempt to attract more consumers and a way for team green to push Lovelace out thus cutting their losses with the excess RTX 3000 stock.
Conclusion
Should you buy these GPUs? If you find them at suitable and reasonable prices, then you should totally go for them. Remember, Lovelace will only include only the higher end models such as the RTX 4090, RTX 4080 & the RTX 4070 on launch. The RTX 4060 and other -Ti refreshes may launch sometime in Q1 2023. However, the ball is in your court.
