According to a Tweet by @HKEPC, Nvidia has forced MSI to recall its RTX 3060 Ti G6X Super 3X graphics card model one week after the company launched the product in China. Apparently, the "super" nomenclature was too similar to Nvidia's own Super nomenclature found in its refreshed RTX 20 series GPUs and would make people believe this RTX 3060 Ti is a new RTX 30 series SKU rather than a new AIB partner model.
It is understandable why MSI canceled this card due to its confusing nomenclature. But, strangely, the company waited until after the SKU launched before taking action. If we had to speculate, Nvidia could be making another Super refresh of its RTX 30- or RTX 40-series GPUs, which would interfere with MSI's nomenclature.
(Image credit: MSI)
Given how expensive Nvidia's RTX 40-series GPUs have become, a Super refresh wouldn't be surprising. It would bring down RTX 40-series pricing to more palatable levels for consumers at the expense of some performance. This was how Nvidia's RTX 20-series mid-cycle refresh was constructed, offering new SKUs with a better price-to-performance ratio than the standard versions.
To refresh your memory, the MSI RTX 3060 Ti Super 3X was a new AIB partner model made solely for the Chinese market. The SKU's confusing "Super 3X" nomenclature referred to the graphics card's beefy triple-fan cooling solution, based on MSI's flagship "SUPRIM" cooler designs. MSI probably called this card "super" because it is the biggest RTX 3060 TI MSI has ever created, measuring 335 x 140 x 62mm. On top of this, MSI also added GDDR6X memory to this model for a slight bump in performance over the standard GDDR6 RTX 3060 Ti variant.
We don't know if Nvidia influenced the cancelation of this card due to an upcoming super refresh or if it was an innocent mistake. Still, it is somewhat interesting that MSI's canceled the card right after launch. Nonetheless, we suspect MSI is discussing renaming this 3060 Ti GDDR6X model so the card's development and production costs don't go to waste.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Some of these graphics cards/SKUs have already been supplied to distributors and retailers which will make it hard for MSI to recall every single unit back.
It is likely that some of these graphics cards have also been sold to Chinese/Asian customers, and obviously retailers will not go to the extent to ask customers to give them back the cards which they paid for.
I am usually not one to defend Nvidia but this one time only I shall say they were right in stopping it.
Some people WOULD of been duped.
Actually, it should have been renamed by NVidia to begin with. The new 3060ti is a new refresh that just came out this year. It's now using GDDR6X, before it was GDDR6.
