NVIDIA has officially announced its GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB graphics card based on the Ampere GPU architecture for a price of $329 US. The GeForce RTX 3060 is the most affordable GeForce RTX graphics card within the Ampere family and the second graphics card within the GeForce RTX 3060 series lineup with the RTX 3060 Ti being the first one.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB & GA106 GPU Powered Graphics Card Now Official, Starting at $329 US
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card aims to be the mainstream Ampere GPU option with a price of sub $500 US. The graphics card will feature a reference MSRP of $329 US which makes the RTX 3060 the most affordable 12 GB graphics card ever made. The card is $70 US cheaper than the RTX 3060 Ti which is faster but offers 8 GB GDDR6 memory. The graphics card will also feature a brand new Ampere SKU known as the GA106 which aims to be a balanced design and not consume as much power as the high-end GA104 GPU.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Card Specifications - GA106 GPU & 12 GB GDDR6 Memory
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card lies the GA106 GPU. The GA106 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA106 GPU is the third gaming GPU that NVIDIA has produced.
The new shader core on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture is 2.7x faster, the new RT cores are 1.7x faster while the new Tensor cores are up to 2.7x faster than the previous generation Turing GPUs. The 2nd Generation RT core delivers dedicated hardware-accelerated ray-tracing performance & features twice the ray/triangles intersection with concurrent RT graphics and compute operations.
For the GeForce RTX 3060, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 28 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 3584 CUDA cores, 112 TMUs. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units. The graphics card has a TDP of 170W.
In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3060 comes packed with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory runs across a 192-bit bus wide interface and features an effective clock speed of 17.00 Gbps which delivers a cumulative bandwidth of 408 GB/s which is about 100 GB/s higher bandwidth than the RTX 2060 6 GB model & you end up with twice the memory while Ampere's brand new compression architecture makes sure that the GPU isn't bandwidth starved.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications:
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | Ampere GA106-300 | Ampere GA104-200 | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-300 |
| Process Node | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm |
| Die Size | TBC | 395.2mm2 | 395.2mm2 | 628.4mm2 | 628.4mm2 |
| Transistors | TBC | 17.4 Billion | 17.4 Billion | 28 Billion | 28 Billion |
| CUDA Cores | 3584 | 4864 | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
| TMUs / ROPs | 112 / 64 | 152 / 80 | 184 / 96 | 272 / 96 | 328 / 112 |
| Tensor / RT Cores | 112 / 28 | 152 / 38 | 184 / 46 | 272 / 68 | 328 / 82 |
| Base Clock | 1320 MHz | 1410 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1440 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1780 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
| FP32 Compute | 13 TFLOPs | 16 TFLOPs | 20 TFLOPs | 30 TFLOPs | 36 TFLOPs |
| RT TFLOPs | 25 TFLOPs | 32 TFLOPs | 40 TFLOPs | 58 TFLOPs | 69 TFLOPs |
| Tensor-TOPs | 101 TOPs | 192 TOPs | 163 TOPs | 238 TOPs | 285 TOPs |
| Memory Capacity | 12 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 10 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Speed | 16 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 384 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 760 Gbps | 936 Gbps |
| TGP | 170W | 175W | 220W | 320W | 350W |
| Price (MSRP / FE) | $329 US | $399 US | $499 US | $699 US | $1499 US |
| Launch (Availability) | 25th February 2021 | 2nd December 2020 | 29th October 2020 | 17th September 2020 | 24th September 2020 |
