After almost two and a half years of service and three different variants, Nvidia may finally be ready to move on from the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Fresh rumors out of China claim that the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which used to be one of the best graphics cards, has reportedly reached the decline stage of its product life cycle.
The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti debuted in 2020 with a launch price of $399. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti offers excellent bang for gamers' buck, which is how the Ampere-based graphics card has remained relevant over the last couple of years. Although the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti never topped the Steam Hardware Survey or best-selling graphics card charts, the graphics card always maintained a strong position (usually in the top ten) among even the latest offerings.
The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti didn't enjoy the same success as Nvidia's seven-year-old GeForce GTX 1060. Nonetheless, it was still a pretty important SKU for Nvidia. So important that the chipmaker would later refresh the graphics card twice in 2020. The first refresh was a simple die swap from the original GA104 silicon to the GA103 silicon. As a result, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GA103 was born. Meanwhile, the second refresh came shortly after Nvidia upgraded the GeForce RTX 3060's GDDR6 memory to faster GDDR6X chips. In any event, neither the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GA103 nor the GeForce RTX 3060 GDDR6X brought any perceptible performance uplifts.
Word of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's discontinuation originated from China's Board Channels forum, a place where retailers and distributors share industry news. Although not all the rumors are fake, some do materialize. Either way, we recommend you approach the information cautiously.
The rumor is that Nvidia will stop producing the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. However, the thread starter didn't throw out any specific dates. Nvidia will allegedly notify its partners to clear the leftover GeForce RTX 3060 Ti stock. However, the user assessed that retailers would likely require several months to deplete their inventories.
We can see some credence in the rumors since the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is supposedly around the corner. The leaked specifications for the Ada Lovelace graphics card didn't look very impressive, but it should bring a nice generational upgrade over the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, rumored to come in both 8GB and 16GB variants, allegedly launches along the GeForce RTX 4060 before the end of this month. If the rumors are accurate, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB should arrive on the retail market on May 24, while the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is purportedly for a second-half launch in July.
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and GeForce RTX 4060 will contend with AMD's imminent Radeon RX 7600. In addition, we've already seen some early retailer listings of the RDNA 3 graphics card, rumored to launch on May 25. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards have been criticized for their high pricing. Let's hope that Nvidia keeps GeForce RTX 4060 Ti's MSRP at a reasonable level.
