Nvidia RTX 3060 release date, price, specs and performance

The Nvidia RTX 3060 will officially launch on 25 February 2021, with the new graphics card targeting a 60+ FPS performance for Full HD gaming.  

The new graphics card will become the most affordable option in the Nvidia Ampere 30-Series line-up, featuring high-end features such as ray tracing and DLSS 2.0.

Ray tracing is an exciting new rendering technique for compatible video games, helping to create more realistic and dynamic lighting and shadow effects. The likes of CyberPunk 2077 and Fortnite already support the technology, with more expected to be confirmed throughout 2021.

DLSS, meanwhile, uses clever AI technology to give the FPS a performance boost with little to no compromises on the visual quality. This becomes a life saver for games such as CyberPunk that are incredibly taxing on the GPU.

Scroll down for everything you need to know about the Nvidia RTX 3060, including price, specs and performance.

 

Nvidia RTX 3060 release date – When will it launch?

The Nvidia RTX 3060 is confirmed to launch on 25 February 2021. Nvidia has even revealed the exact time the new graphics card will be available to purchase, hitting the storefront at 12pm eastern time in the United States which is 5pm in the UK.

Expect to demand to be very high, as previous RTX 30-Series GPUs have sold out within minutes of becoming available.

Nvidia RTX 3060 price – How much will it cost?

The Nvidia RTX 3060 is confirmed to cost £299/$329 at launch. However, there will be no Founder’s Edition of the card, so expect the price to vary between the various third-party manufacturers.

Nvidia RTX 3060 specs – What are the specs?

Nvidia has confirmed the RTX 3060 will feature 3584 CUDA Cores and a boost clock speed of 1.78GHz, putting it just behind the existing RTX 3060 Ti in terms of performance power.

Interestingly, the RTX 3060 has superior memory to the RTX 3060 Ti, which could indicate that new card won’t be too far behind the performance of its more powerful sibling.

	RTX 3060	RTX 3060 Ti	RTX 2060
Architecture	Ampere	Ampere	Turing
Nvidia CUDA Cores	3584	4864	1920
Boost Clock (GHz)	1.78	1.67	1.68
Memory size	12GB	8GB	6GB
Memory type	GDDR6	GDDR6	GDDR6
Graphics Card Power (W)	170	200	160

The above specs table shows that RTX 3060 is substantially more powerful than its predecessor, the RTX 2060.

Thanks to the dedicated RT Cores, the RTX 3060 reportedly boasts 10x the ray-tracing performance of the GTX 1060, arguably making it the best entry-level ray tracing graphics card on the market. AMD’s cheapest current generation GPU (the Radeon RX 6800) still costs a mighty £529, although AMD is expected to reveal more budget-friendly cards at some point in 2021.

Nvidia RTX 3060 performance – How powerful is it?

Nvidia claims its new GPU will be able to hit over 80 FPS for The Division 2, and beyond 60fps for the likes of Fortnite, CyberPunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion when ray tracing and DLSS are activated.

This seemingly makes this graphics card an ideal option for those happy to stick to a Full HD performance, especially at the affordable £299/$329 price point.

However, we’ve only got Nvidia’s own benchmark results at this stage, so we advise you to retain some scepticism for now. We’ll be looking to test the Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics card once it launches, so keep an eye on Trusted Reviews for our incoming review.

And if you can’t wait that long for the RTX 3060, check out the GTX 1660 Ti offers below, which is one of our current favourite 1080p graphics card, despite missing out on features such as ray tracing and DLSS.