Nvidia is set to retire the venerable RTX 3060 Ti
For well over two years, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti has been a key pillar in Nvidia's graphics card lineup. Its combination of strong performance, quality feature set and good pricing (in non-mining times) made it a model that mainstream gamers were always going to be attracted to. But sunset is drawing near, and it looks like the venerable frame pusher has reached the end of its life.
According to a post on Benchlife, Nvidia has stopped shipping the GA104 chips used by the RTX 3060 Ti. Of course, the logical inference is that Nvidia is gearing up to release RTX 4060 variants, and it wants to clear existing stocks before the new cards launch.
The halting of production of RTX 3060 Ti chips doesn't mean stocks are going to dry up anytime soon though. You're sure to be able to grab hold of one for some time yet, and you might find a good bargain if you're lucky.
Nvidia's xx60 cards are always popular. The aging GTX 1060 still sits near the top of the most popular GPU lists, and the RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti are right up there too. As an Ampere generation card, it offered an awesome leap in performance over RTX 20 series cards and our review at the time of the launch was full of praise. Jacob awarded it no less than 90%. That's not easy to achieve at PC Gamer.
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But the RTX 3060 Ti has had a troubled life as far as availability goes. During the height of the great GPU shortage of 2021, and particularly before low hash rate variants emerged, it was almost impossible to get hold of an RTX 3060 Ti. The few cards that were available suffered from extreme overpricing.
The RTX 4060 Ti 8GB is set to launch later in May, with a 16GB version and the non-Ti RTX 4060 to follow later, probably in July. Barring any new crypto mining boom, it's unlikely the RTX 4060 Ti will suffer from supply issues as the RTX 3060 Ti did . If Nvidia is feeling altruistic and prices the RTX 4060 Ti attractively, it could end up as the most popular card of 2023, if not 2024 as well.
We raise a glass to the RTX 3060 Ti. Farewell, you old dog you.
