If the latest rumor (via VideoCardz) is to be believed, Nvidia may launch a mid-range GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card as soon as next month, which is a lot earlier than expected. The product might offer ~80% of GeForce RTX 2070’s performance, which would stack up pretty nicely on the GPU hierarchy, yet its price remains to be seen.
With the launch of its GeForce RTX 30-series ‘Ampere’ graphics cards, Nvidia significantly changed its rules of engagement. Firstly, the company decided not to use the ‘Ti’ moniker for its top-of-the-range gaming offering and called it the GeForce RTX 3090 instead. Secondly, the highest-end GeForce now carries a record $1,499 MSRP. Thirdly, it decided not to enable NVLink-powered multi-GPU support on anything else but the top-of-the-line board. Apparently, there are more changes incoming.
Instead of launching a mid-range ‘Ampere’ offering several months after the GeForce RTX 3090/3080/3070 debut in mid-September and October, the company intends to release its GeForce RTX 3060 Ti already in the second half of October, according to an unconfirmed report from VideoCardz.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is said to be based on the GA104-200 GPU featuring 4864 CUDA cores, 152 Tensor cores, and 38 RT cores. The product will retain an 8GB 256-bit GDDR6 memory subsystem running at 14 Gbps and offering 448 GB/s of bandwidth. Actual frequencies of the RTX 3060 Ti chip are yet to be determined, but if it runs at the same clocks as the RTX 3070, it will offer around 82% of the latter’s performance. If the frequencies are higher, the gap between the RTX 3060 Ti and the RTX 3070 may shrink further.
Nvidia yet has to disclose the actual launch date of its GeForce RTX 3070 product, so it is not a good business to speculate on the launch date of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Meanwhile, since AMD is set to unveil its RDNA 2-powered GPUs on October 28, it is more than likely that Nvidia might try to steal the thunder and launch its new product around the same time.
As for price, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti will clearly cost less than $499 as it sits below the RTX 3070, but there are no clear details right now. In fact, it is not clear whether the RTX 3060 Ti product will be accompanied by something called the GeForce RTX 3060 any time soon, or will stay the lowest-priced ‘Ampere’ for a while.
Nvidia traditionally does not comment on rumors and speculations, so it is impossible to get a confirmation or denial from the GPU developer itself. Meanwhile, the news comes from only one source and could not be verified.