The RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti were released several years ago now, but still haven’t been forgotten by Nvidia. New, faster models are expected to hit the market soon for mid-range PCs.
While Nvidia has just launched its new RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, the previous generation graphics cards could well receive an interesting update with faster memory. Indeed, UK-based retailer SCAN has already listed NVIDIA’s upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card, which will feature GDDR6X memory. This therefore confirms previous reports that already reported such a reference with an updated memory.
Only a few hours later, a Slovak retailer listed in turn a “Lenovo RTX 3060 12 GB GRRD6X on its site, which seems to indicate that the new RTX 3060 Ti will not arrive alone. This new RTX 3060 would therefore benefit from the faster GDDR6X memory, and still 12 GB of VRAM. There is no question yet of the supposed RTX 3060 with only 8 GB of VRAM, which would be cheaper.
What changes with GDDR6X memory?
A memory upgrade to the GDDR6X standard would likely mean three things: higher memory speed and bandwidth, but also higher TDP. This is because GDDR6X consumes less power per bit transferred than GDDR6, but the total power consumption is higher on GDDR6X because it operates at a faster frequency.
However, these increases do not appear to be visible on the listings. At the Slovak retailer, the graphics card frequency is similar, at 1.78 GHz, and the maximum power consumption seems to be the same, at 170W. It is therefore 3 MHz more than the classic GeForce RTX 3060, which represents an increase of less than 1%. Such an increase in clock speed would increase FP32 performance from 12.7 TFLOPS to 12.8 TFLOPS, it would be absolutely negligible and imperceptible to a player.
Whatever, it remains to be seen at what price these new graphics cards will be displayed and whether the difference will be justified by a noticeable performance gain. Nvidia should soon lower prices given the arrival on the market of Intel’s Arc A770 cards, which are less expensive while being more powerful. However, these need specific technology to operate at full power.