Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti could be a killer mainstream graphics card — AMD should be worried

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Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti leak reveals a mid-range graphics card that could be just the ticket for affordable gaming PCs

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
(Image credit: VideoCardz)

With AMD Big Navi and the Radeon RX 6000 series having been revealed, Nvidia looks set to punch back at its red rival, and that could come in the form of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. 

The folks over at VideoCardz managed to get their hands on renders of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, further hinting that a mainstream Ampere-based graphics card could be coming sooner than we thought. 

However, a plethora of leaks have suggested it could be coming this year, or at least the powered-up Ti version. 

VideoCardz’s renders show a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti dressed in Gigabyte livery, with a rather neat dual-fan design and some slick-looking copper heat pipes. And there's certainly a whiff of mainstream graphics workhorse about this card; it isn’t as bulky or covered in angular accents as the higher end GeForce cards. 

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti render

(Image credit: VideoCardz)

It’s expected to have 4,865 CUDA cores, 152 Tensor cores for machine learning work, and 38 RT cores for handling ray tracing. It will reportedly come with 8GB of GDDR6 video memory that will run at 14 Gbps. In comparison, the card above it, the GeForce RTX 3070, comes with 5,888 CUDA cores, 184 Tensor cores, 46 RT cores, and also 8GB of GDDR6. 

So the RTX 3060 Ti will effectively be a less powerful RTX 3070. That means it’ll likely be able to run games well at 4K resolution, but likely with a few reduced settings or at lower frame rates with everything cranked up. Given gaming at 1440p resolution is rather popular with PC gamers, we’d expect the RTX 3060 Ti to focus on delivering killer 1440p performance. 

The RTX 3060 Ti is expected to cost around the $400 mark, with would be $100 cheaper than the RTX 3070. What’s notable here is that AMD has not competing RDNA 2 graphics card for under $500 - the Radeon RX 6800 is $549 and looks to chase the GeForce RTX 3080. So Nvidia could have the mainstream graphics market to itself if it gets the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti out soon. 

We’ll just have to sit tight and wait and see what Nvidia does next and how AMD might retort. 

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.