The rumor comes from leaker Zed Wang (via VideoCardz), better known as MEGAsizedGPU. Assuming it’s accurate, it appears that Nvidia is making a final push to clear existing Ampere stock before the RTX 4000 series gets here—something it has been trying to do via the constant price reductions. Given that these three refreshed RTX 3000 cards are allegedly arriving in October, it could also suggest that the first Lovelace wave won’t land until later than expected, or perhaps previous claims that only the RTX 4090 is arriving this year will prove accurate. The upcoming Ampere additions are comprised of an RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, and an RTX 3070. The refreshed RTX 3060 is said to feature 8GB of VRAM instead of the standard version’s 12GB. Wang believes the memory bus will also be reduced, from 192-bit to 128-bit. Most people aren’t going to be excited by the prospect of an updated card that’s less powerful than the current model, but a low price would make the RTX 3060 8GB more compelling. The cheapest RTX 3060 on Newegg right now is $349, so we might see this downgraded version come in at under $300.
A quick look at the latest Steam survey shows the RTX 3060 has been finding its way into participants’ PCs faster than any other card; it’s currently the sixth most popular GPU among users. Releasing a cheaper albeit slightly less powerful version during the economic downturn could be a shrewd move by Nvidia. Next on the list is a refreshed RTX 3060 Ti that uses GDDR6X memory instead of the standard’s GDDR6 and has the same 19 Gbps memory as RTX 3070 Ti, which would push its bandwidth up around 36% to 608 GB/s. Finally, there’s the RTX 3070 Ti featuring the GA102 GPU found in the 3080 and 3090 cards, as opposed to the vanilla version’s GA104. Lovelace cards, especially the first models, are expected to be both powerful and pricey, so more mid-to-higher-range Ampere options with attractive prices could help clear the excess stock that has been causing Nvidia a headache. Nvidia’s GeForce Twitter account announced ProjectBeyond last week. We don’t know any details yet, though it seems almost certainly related to an RTX 4000 announcement coming at GTC on September 20.
