Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 just leaked — and it's bad news for AMD Big Navi

By Roland Moore-Colyer
last updated

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 could be a killer mid-range graphics card

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000-series
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070 have only just been revealed, but there are now hints that another graphics card is on the horizon. 

Regular hardware leaker kopite7kim on Twitter said that they are aware of a model name GA106-300 that looks like it could refer to a GeForce RTX 3060. That’s going by the patterns of model names for the recently announced GPUs. 

A GeForce RTX 3060 would make a lot of sense and would follow the pattern the GeForce RTX 2000-series established. With the previous-generation Turing graphics cards, Nvidia released the RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070 first, with the RTX 2060 following a little later. So we’d be fairly confident that an RTX 3060 will arrive at some point. 

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That graphics card will likely be aimed at mainstream gaming PCs, likely targeting 1440p resolution gaming at high frame rates. It will sit below the RTX 3070, which chases 1440p and 4K resolution gaming; the former at high frame rates with ray-tracing enabled and the latter likely in the region of 60 frames per second. 

We’d then expect the RTX 3060 to cost somewhere between $300 and $400. That would likely make it a very good graphics card for PCs that sit around the $1,000 mark.  

Kopite7kim also tweeted that a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti//Super is expected, as well as an RTX 3060 Ti/Super. Again, Nvidia has done this with the RTX 2000-series graphics cards, releasing Super variants around a year after it released the vanilla GPUs.  

The leaker noted that both the Super or Ti cards use the same core GPU as the RTX 3070. The RTX 3070 Super/Ti is expected to use 8GB of GDDR6X video memory, which would be a step up on the GDDR6 the RTX 3070 has. And the RTX 3060 Super/Ti is tipped to have 8GB of GDDR6.  

With these boosted variants of the standard cards, we can expect faster clock speeds. And the RTX 3060 Super/Ti will use a more powerful GPU than its predicted plain stablemate. 

All these cards with new numbers and suffixes could get quite confusing for anyone not familiar with Nvidia’s naming conventions. But in short, Nvidia is likely to build out its graphics card range going into 2021. 

That’s good news for PC gamers but poses a challenge for AMD, as the Nvidia rival is predicted to launch a high-end GeForce retort in the form of AMD Big Navi. Tipped to be an Nvidia-killer, Big Navi seems poised to deliver performance on par with the RTX 3080 but potentially at a lower price.

With more graphics cards being added to the RTX 3000-series, Nvidia looks set to have a slew of GPUs targeting different performance and price tiers, thus bringing more competition for AMD to face off against. But more competition means more innovation and better prices for PC gaming fans. And that’s not something we’ll complain about. 

Roland Moore-Colyer
Roland Moore-Colyer

Roland Moore-Colyer a Managing Editor at Tom’s Guide with a focus on news, features and opinion articles. He often writes about gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he’s also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of curiosity on his face. 

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5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sinis60
    You don't even know what Big Navi is yet and you are sentencing it to death. Is Nvidia the sponsor of this article? How about you wait until you see the cards from both sides, run benchmarks, and do a review on the numbers.
    Reply
  • killerhurtalot
    sinis60 said:
    You don't even know what Big Navi is yet and you are sentencing it to death. Is Nvidia the sponsor of this article? How about you wait until you see the cards from both sides, run benchmarks, and do a review on the numbers.

    From the known facts about big Navi, (80 CUs on top end and etc) you're looking at a little above 2080 ti performance at best with high power draw... It'll be on a similar die size as RTX GPUs too...

    AMD most likely got a mid tier GPU once again.
    Reply
  • TripGun
    Nvidia wants to knock them out with a single punch but AMD will wear them out in a 12 round fight. AMD is not going to go for the "top spot" but rather play smartly in to the "value spot" where 95% of all GPU sales with happen. - IMO
    Reply
  • sinis60
    killerhurtalot said:
    From the known facts about big Navi, (80 CUs on top end and etc) you're looking at a little above 2080 ti performance at best with high power draw... It'll be on a similar die size as RTX GPUs too...

    AMD most likely got a mid tier GPU once again.

    Still all speculative answers. Benchmarks for 3000 series were hand picked by Nvidia and we don't even know the parameters of their tests. AMD is leaked information which has been wrong in the past. How about you just wait and see once you have actual numbers and facts instead of marketing numbers and leaks?
    Reply
  • Joseph_138
    sinis60 said:
    You don't even know what Big Navi is yet and you are sentencing it to death. Is Nvidia the sponsor of this article? How about you wait until you see the cards from both sides, run benchmarks, and do a review on the numbers.
    Except that we DO know what Big Navi is because it is what is going to be powering the graphics in XBox Series X and PS5, and we have seen the specs of those versions. It's not hard to extrapolate from those specs what a scaled up version with more cores would perform like, and it's not looking good for AMD. Expected performance in the best case scenario is only in the vicinity of an overclocked RTX 3070, and Big Navi will consume a lot more power. AMD is once again going to be reduced to selling their cards at bargain basement prices just to stay in the game. They are following, rather than leading.
    Reply