Ampere · 2021
Released in 2021, the RTX 3060 desktop card uses NVIDIA's Ampere architecture with 3,584 CUDA cores and, unusually for its tier, 12GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus (360GB/s of bandwidth) - more VRAM than the pricier RTX 3070 above it. That extra memory has helped it age well for 1440p gaming and lighter creative workloads.
At a 170W TDP it's an easy fit for most mid-tower desktop builds. It's best thought of as a 1080p-high/1440p-medium card for modern games, comfortably ahead of anything integrated but well below the 3070 Ti and up in raw shading power.
Smooth 1440p gaming and solid creative app performance.
12 GB GDDR6 memory.
Push performance beyond base clock.
PCIe 4.0 x16
Mainstream desktop power draw with solid headroom for upgrades.
The NVIDIA RTX 3060 is a upper mid-range dedicated GPU with 12GB of GDDR6 memory, suited to mainstream gaming and everyday graphics tasks.