Shortly after Nvidia announced the GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 3090, and RTX 3070, rumors about possible configurations of the RTX 3060 began to surface. The most interesting of these came from @kopite7kimi, who had fairly accurate information about the specifications of other Ampere cards. As such, this one may deserve a bit more attention than the others.

According to this tweet, the RTX 3060 uses GA106 silicon and boasts 4,864 CUDA cores, since in Ampere's case each streaming multiprocessor (SM) has 128 CUDA cores, 1 RT core, and 4 Tensor cores, 38 SMs, 38 RT cores, and 152 Tensor cores, which means that there are 38 SMs, 38 RT cores, and 152 Tensor cores on board. This shows how the 3060 might compare to the 3080 and 3070.

There is still a lot we don't know at this stage about the RTX 3060's speed, number of ROPs, and memory bus speed, but the only thing we can be sure of is that it will probably use 8GB of GDDR6 and a 256-bit memory bus. Logically, the RTX 3060 will use slower memory than the RTX 3070, but there are still too many unknowns to formulate further rumors, as we are still waiting for details on the RTX 3070, which will not be available until October.

But even without full specs, this remains a healthy improvement over its predecessor, the RTX 2060, which had 1,920 CUDA cores. If these numbers are correct, the RTX 3060 has 2.5 times as many CUDA cores as the RTX 2060. However, the increase in RT cores is less pronounced, going from 30 to 38. However, since these new cores are more powerful, expect to see a jump in ray tracing performance, as promised by other Ampere cards.

What does the RTX 3060 mean for gaming Given that Nvidia is touting the RTX 3070 as the best companion for 1440p gaming, the RTX 3080 for 4K, and the RTX 3090 for 8K, it It makes sense that the RTX 3060 is intended to maximize 1080p gaming. when real-time ray tracing is enabled.

So when will the RTX 3060 arrive? Turning to the previous generation for inspiration, the RTX 2060 was released in January 2019, which followed the original 2080 and 2080 Ti released in September 2018. Assuming a similar timeframe, this means that RTX 3060 could be released in the new year. [because the RTX 2060 came in a variety of SKUs, with the original priced at $349, while the updated RTX 2060 TU104 version was $300. If we had to guess at this point, and given the specs, the $349 price point is probably the most likely.

However, depending on what AMD actually announces on October 28, they may release the card at a lower price point accordingly.