In a surprising move, Nvidia announced its shiny new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti card today– and it's set for release tomorrow, a day after its unveiling. The GPU is Nvidia's latest addition to the impressive RTX 3000 lineup, but it's far more affordable than its predecessors.
This holiday season has been a difficult one for PC gamers, with the plight of scalping at an all time high. Every PC building forum is full of complaints about the lack of stock on every major retailer, the issue of bots buying out everything, and PSAs to wait until the new year to even bother with acquiring new parts. While this announcement is encouraging at the surface level, buyers are sure to be skeptical.
The RTX 3060 Ti will be available tomorrow, December 2nd. It boasts a $399 price point, and is designed to outperform the last-generation RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Super. Nvidia also states that it will perform 40% faster than its predecessor, the RTX 2060 Super. It packs a base clock of 1410Mhz, a boost clock of 1665Mhz, and 8GB of video memory. The card is designed as a dual-slot, complete with Nvidia's new 12-pin power connector. The company recommends a 600w power supply for the RTX 3060 Ti, which can draw up to 200 watts of power.
The unit looks very similar to the RTX 3070, using the typical dual-fan setup and being identical in size– the only difference is its color, using a lighter shade of gray than previous RTX 3000 series cards. The new RTX 3060 Ti will be capable of real-time ray tracing, and includes DLSS support as well as the ability to run Nvidia's suite of RTX apps. The general consensus of reviews is that it performs similarly to the RTX 2080 Super ($700 MSRP,) only with better ray tracing capability.
This release may herald a new era of affordable 4K gaming, but not without a fair share of headache first. Such an announcement would normally set PC building enthusiasts abuzz in a positive way, but most forums are anything but that– instead, pessimism has taken over as a result of bots and scalpers running rampant. Instead of discussing performance, people are predicting how much over the MSRP resellers will be pricing the GPU. One YouTube comment on the announcement video reads "I'm surprised this video wasn't scalped already by someone." While a lucky few will be able to get their hands on the RTX 3060 Ti, it might be another year before it fulfills its potential and shakes up PC gaming.