Here is another story that will not help to improve the image of Nvidia at the moment. Not long ago, without much ado, Nvidia decided to release an 8GB RTX 3060… The little sister of the 3060 12GB which has been on the market for a while now. Without needing to do a thorough analysis, it is easy to understand that this card came out of the drawers to counter the arrival of Intel in this sector but also AMD to a lesser extent. However, in this exercise, it is once again the end customer who is “confused”. Even if this new version (normally less expensive) keeps the same graphics chip with 3,584 CUDA cores as its big sister, other changes have a significant impact on the performance of the card. The reduction of memory by 4GB, but also its memory interface reduced from 192 to 128 bits make the performance of this card more like an RTX 3050 than a 3060. This means that when this card is integrated into machines sold by mainstream brands, the targeted customer will not really be aware that he is being “cheated” overall.
RTX 3060 8GB: one more “muddle” for the end customer
The other concern is that this RTX 3060 8GB is released on the tip of the toes. Surprisingly no media picked up on this story because Nvidia did not make an “official” launch.
But Hardware Unboxed did. Testing this card with 12 games in 1080p, the 3060 8GB offers an average performance of 94 FPS, against 110 FPS achieved by the 12GB model. For reference, the GeForce RTX 3050 offers 80 FPS.
In 1440p, in the same set of tests, the 3060 8GB gets an average of 67 FPS, while the 12GB version reaches 79 FPS. The RTX 3050 achieves a performance of 56 FPS. In essence, we are talking about a performance difference of about 17% between the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB and the 8GB.
In some games, the differences can go up up to 26% performance loss compared to the 8GB version
Once again, if the customer who buys his components is globally attentive and “educated”, it is to all those who buy manufacturer machines within the large distribution in particular. A way to have a more profitable card for manufacturers and the brand image of the “3060”.
