Rumors indicate that the end of Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 production is nigh. According to a Chinese tech forum post, citing supply chain sources, both the GeForce RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super will shortly be discontinued. GPUs for these graphics card models have stopped reaching board partners, says the source, and thus stock arriving at retail will begin to dwindle in due course. Until we officially hear, take the news with a pinch of salt.
The above forum post image was captured by ITHome. A machine translation of the body copy is: "The latest upstream news has learned that a certain chip series of graphics cards may soon stop supplying. The current supply status of all brands is analyzed as follows: NV has stopped supplying the RTX2060\2060S series chips. The graphics card brands have not much supply this month, and they will end after digesting them. They will no longer supply them in the future."
The Nvidia Turing architecture GeForce RTX 2060 has had a decent run, launched as the ray-tracing enabled replacement for the hugely popular Pascal architecture GTX 1060 early in 2019. With the debut of the Ampere architecture GeForce RTX 3060 in January 2021, it would have been natural to retire the RTX 2060 line. However, due to exceptional demand for gaming GPUs, Nvidia granted the GeForce RTX 2060 / RTX 2060 Super a reprieve.
While we are doing a potted history of the RTX 2060, the line got another lease of life at the end of 2021, when a 12GB version started to roll out. Some thought this GPU, which was claimed to give extra options for gamers, was a slightly cynical way for Nvidia and partners to make more money from the cryptomining-crazed market at the time. Remember, Nvidia started putting LHR technology in its Ampere (RTX 30) cards, but left the RTX 2060 12GB unrestricted.
If the rumors about the RTX 2060 / Super's demise are true, there are a few obvious impacts to watch out for. Firstly, the old Turing card's demise is good news for the RTX 3050, a card which wasn't quite good enough to usurp the RTX 2060. Secondly, as it was judged the best value GPU as recently as September this year, the RTX 2060's position is now open to a challenger. Third, this may be the end of the RTX 2060's run to the top of the Steam Hardware Survey. Now it looks like the GeForce RTX 3060 has a clearer run for that top spot.
Our latest charts show that, when stocks of the RTX 2060 are gone, 1080p gamers with $250 to spend might be best served by something like the AMD Radeon RX 6600. If you are interested in the best graphics cards, available at all price ranges, please take a look at our regularly updated best graphics cards for gaming page, as well as our famous GPU benchmarks and hierarchy.
