Nvidia’s rumored plan for budget GPUs doesn’t involve the RTX 4060
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Nvidia plans to phase out the older and slower variant of its RTX 3060 Ti graphics card and will only sell the newer 3060 Ti with faster video memory, if the rumor mill is right – potentially impacting Team Green’s mid-range GPU strategy and the RTX 4060 (we’ll get to that).
Let’s first look at the rumor itself, which comes from a regular source of speculation in China, My drivers (opens in new tab) (as indicated by video cardz (opens in new tab)). The source claims that third-party graphics card manufacturers are now gradually – but surely – getting rid of the original, slower version of the 3060 Ti.
If you recall, the faster variant that is supposedly being retained is only different in terms of the VRAM – the new 3060 Ti has 19 Gbps of GDDR6X memory, compared to 14 Gbps of GDDR6 for the old card. That provides a big increase in memory bandwidth from 448 GB/s to 608 GB/s (by the way, the 8 GB VRAM load remains the same, as do all the other specifications of these respective graphics cards).
The good news is that buyers will get this higher performing RTX 3060 Ti with no price change. At least that’s what MyDrivers claims will be the case for the Chinese market, and with luck that should extend to the global market. We don’t see why that wouldn’t be the case, but that said, you never quite know what could happen in terms of pricing.
MyDrivers also mentions Nvidia’s new RTX 3060 8GB variant, which drops the VRAM of the existing RTX 3060 from 12GB (and shortens the memory bus from 192-bit to 128-bit), and so is a bit different in terms of a downgrade . However, it’s unknown if the older model will be similarly phased out in this case, though we hope not (and it’s likely sources would have heard this too if it did; or that’s what we presume for now) .
Analysis: ending confusion – but also sending a worrying message?
Obviously, we still have to treat this as a rumor, because that’s exactly what it is. But it’s a piece of theory that makes sense, and we hope that’s the direction Nvidia wants to take with the RTX 3060 Ti.
After all, it is always confusing for consumers when a situation arises where there are models of graphics cards with the same name that have slightly different specifications, even if they are not apart. Reducing it to just one variant of the 3060 Ti clears up any confusion and ensures that less tech-savvy buyers don’t pick up a slightly inferior model of the 3060 Ti without even realizing it is.
That the price remains the same as the supposedly outgoing model is also a positive, although, as noted, we have to hope that this applies outside of China.
However, this isn’t all good news in terms of the signals Nvidia is sending out, which is that the company wants to keep the RTX 3060 Ti as a mid-range workhorse going forward. Or put another way, there probably won’t be an RTX 4060 on the horizon – not even remotely – as the plan seems to be to keep pushing RTX 3000 stock on the wallet-friendly front.
And this unfortunately lines up with the latest rumors we’ve heard elsewhere about cheaper Lovelace GPUs, believing the RTX 4060 is still a long way off and might not arrive until June 2023. Which is also supported by how little we’ve heard about the 4060 in the rumor mill so far as well.
That said, we may see something in the near future for low-end Lovelace GPUs, but for laptops, with a recent sighting of the RTX 4050 mobile version (add plenty of spice, of course). But in short, given the way things seem to be going so far, don’t hold your breath for more affordable RTX 4000 desktop GPUs – Nvidia seems to be relying on the RTX 3000 range to defuse the excitement at that end of the market lighten up for a while.