NVIDIA's RTX 3060 hits store shelves later this month

By Sean Endicott
published

The most budget-friendly RTX 30-series card will go on sale later this month.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (Image credit: NVIDIA)

What you need to know

  • The NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU will be available starting February 25, 2021.
  • The GPU will cost $329, making it $170 less than the RTX 3070.
  • The RTX 3060 delivers double the rasterization performance of the GTX 1060.

NVIDIA's most budget-friendly RTX 30-series GPU, the RTX 3060, will be available for purchase starting February 25, 2021. The GPU will cost $329, which makes it a much more budget-friendly option than other RTX 30-series graphics cards. The current cheapest RTX 30-series GPU is the RTX 3070, which retails for $500.

NVIDIA already announced the RTX 3060 and its price, but we didn't know its release date until today. The Verge reports that retailers will open orders for the RTX 3060 at 12 PM ET on February 25. Notably, NVIDIA will not have a Founder's Edition of the RTX 3060, according to The Verge.

The RTX 3060 has 12GB of GDDR6 memory and supports DLSS. You should be able to play titles like Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077 with RTX enabled at up to 60fps.

NVIDIA positions the RTX 3060 as an ideal upgrade for people on a GTX 1060 or other older cards. Compared to the GTX 1060, the RTX 3060 gets double the performance in terms of rasterization and 10 times the performance in ray-tracing scenarios.

It's difficult to purchase any RTX card right now. Most of them sell out on launch day within minutes of retailers making them available for purchase. If you're on the hunt for the RTX 3060 after February 25 or searching for any other RTX 30-series GPU, make sure to check out our guide on where to buy the RTX 30-series cards.

Sean Endicott
Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com (opens in new tab).

8 Comments
  • shouldn't the word available be in quotes?
  • Available just like their other releases. So if you are a bot/scalper I guess this release is good?
  • The bots are waiting to buy all the stock that Nvidia haven't already sold to miners, regular consumers will get nothing again
  • "The current cheapest RTX 30-series GPU is the RTX 3070, which retails for $500." No. It is the 3060 Ti.
  • Nvidia, making gamers non-gamers each GPU generation.
  • lol why? it's just another paper launch of a card that can't be purchased.
    i'm still looking for a 3080 with no hope of getting one in 2021
  • Haha until I see it on the shelf I won't believe it
    Do any of these cards exist or are they wish list items
  • At this point you'd be better off trying to stuff a print out of a gpu into a pc.
    Due to the pandemic, a legal enforcement preventing scalping of PC components is the only method to prevent instant out of stock by scalpers (similar to laws preventing event ticket scalping). Otherwise this debacle will continue as long the current pandemic continues.