The End of the Line for the RTX 3060
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 has quietly been one of the longest living mainstream graphics cards in recent years, but its time on store shelves is finally coming to an end. According to reports from Board Channels, relayed by Videocardz, the very last batches of brand new RTX 3060 cards are working their way through the retail channel and should be gone by December.
That marks almost five years since the RTX 3060 launched back in February 2021. In GPU years, that is ancient. Most consumer graphics cards see meaningful replacement within two to three years, but the 3060 managed to hang around through multiple generations.
The reason is simple but important for gamers and PC builders: VRAM capacity.
Why the RTX 3060 Stayed Relevant So Long
Nvidia stopped producing the GA106 GPU die that powers the RTX 3060 sometime in 2024. Even so, there is always a delay between production ending and cards actually disappearing from stores. Board partners like Colorful, Galax and various Taiwanese vendors reportedly cleared their remaining 3060 inventory around September and October. Zotac was apparently the last big brand sitting on a large stockpile, and that was finally sold through in November.
With those final units gone, the RTX 3060 is effectively exiting the market. But unlike many outgoing cards, this one still has something modern buyers actually want: plenty of VRAM for the price.
When it launched, the RTX 3060 came with 12 GB of VRAM. That was a pretty big deal for an affordable card at the time, since the standard for entry level and mid range GPUs was 6 to 8 GB. A cut down 8 GB version of the 3060 did arrive later in 2021, but the original 12 GB model is the one that stuck in people’s minds.
The surprising part is what Nvidia did later. Both the RTX 4060 and RTX 5060 that followed in later generations dropped back down to 8 GB of VRAM, even as games kept demanding more memory and higher resolution textures. That left the RTX 3060 12 GB in a strange but favorable position: an older budget card that still offered more VRAM than its newer replacements.
In an era where modern games and creator workloads can easily chew through 8 GB, that extra memory made the 3060 attractive far longer than usual, especially while memory prices and availability have been bouncing around due to an ongoing supply crunch.
How the RTX 3060 Stacks Up Against Newer Cards
On paper, the RTX 3060 still looks surprisingly solid next to newer models like the RTX 5060 and even the RTX 5070 in some basic areas.
The RTX 3060 launched with:
- 3,584 CUDA cores
- 112 texture units
- 48 render outputs
- 12 GB of VRAM on a 192 bit memory bus
- Boost clock around 1,777 MHz
Compare that to the RTX 5070, which has 3,840 CUDA cores, 120 texture units and the same 48 render outputs. Purely in terms of core counts, the 3060 is not that far behind.
The RTX 5060 highlights the odd direction of Nvidia’s lower tier lineup even more. It only comes with 8 GB of VRAM and uses a narrower 128 bit memory bus, which is actually a regression from the 3060’s 192 bit bus. The main thing that clearly pushes the 5060 ahead is clock speed: roughly 2,497 MHz for the 5060 versus about 1,777 MHz for the 3060.
Of course, raw specs do not tell the whole story. Newer architectures bring better efficiency, stronger ray tracing performance and new features. The RTX 40 and 50 series cards have much improved ray tracing units compared to the Ampere architecture inside the 3060. They also benefit from multiple generations of DLSS advancements, including frame generation and newer multi frame techniques that can dramatically increase frame rates in supported games.
However, the RTX 3060 is not completely left out here. It supports many modern DLSS features, including Nvidia’s newer ray reconstruction tech that improves ray traced image quality. You do miss out on the very latest frame generation tricks, but the fact that a five year old budget card can still tap into current software features is a big reason why it has aged better than most.
Who Was Still Buying the RTX 3060 and What Comes Next
With such a long lifespan, a natural question is who was still picking up new RTX 3060 cards in 2024. Some Reddit users speculate that a chunk of late demand came from coding students and hobbyists looking for a cheap but capable GPU to run small language models and AI experiments. The 12 GB of VRAM makes the card noticeably more flexible for that kind of work than an 8 GB alternative.
Gamers on a budget also had good reasons to keep an eye on leftover 3060 stock. With modern titles pushing texture sizes higher and using more complex assets, that 12 GB buffer offers a bit more future proofing for 1080p and even some 1440p gaming compared to newer 8 GB cards in the same price bracket.
Given the ongoing memory and SSD supply crisis, anyone who grabbed a 12 GB RTX 3060 recently probably feels like they made a smart move. It is rare for a budget level GPU to remain so relevant across three generations while newer models actually cut back on memory capacity.
Looking ahead, it is hard not to wonder if this story will repeat. The article jokingly suggests a possible RTX 6060 in 2027 that might still ship with just 8 GB, meaning it would have less VRAM than the RTX 3060 that launched six years earlier. If that happens, it will only make the 3060’s long run look even more impressive.
For now though, the end of new RTX 3060 stock signals the close of a small but important chapter in Nvidia’s GPU history. It was never the flashiest card in the lineup, but for a lot of gamers, students and budget builders, the RTX 3060 12 GB quietly did exactly what it needed to do and kept doing it long after many expected it to fade away.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/kiss-goodbye-to-cheap-vram-reports-say-supplies-of-nvidias-rtx-3060-graphics-cards-are-finally-running-out/
