On February 25th, Nvidia launched the RTX3060 despite the still widespread graphics card shortage. The RTX3060 promises 60 fps gaming at 1080p and 1440p at an MSRP of $329, a little more than the last generation RTX2060. Surprisingly, this GPU sports 12GB of VRAM, more than the much higher end and much more expensive RTX3080. This seems to indicate the pressure AMD has put onto Nvidia with their Radeon lineup having 16GB of Vram.
Performance
Below is the gaming performance of the RTX 3060 from Nvidia. It compares the RTX 3060Ti, last gen RTX 2060, and last last gen GTX 1060 in ray tracing and non ray tracing games. The RTX3060 seems to show an incremental jump in performance compared to the RTX 2060 with about a 20% increase in FPS. Compared to the last last gen GTX 1060, it is almost double in non ray tracing games and much more in ray tracing games.
For $329, the RTX3060 does not seem to be a bad deal, especially when coming from the GTX 1060
Availability
The most important question is availability. Pretty much every GPU, whether AMD or Nvidia is out of stock worldwide. Some of this is blamed on crypto mining, and some blamed on scalping. While Nvidia has not done much more to stop scalpers, Nvidia claims to have something that can stop miners. The RTX3060 comes with firmware that detects whether someone is mining Ethereum, a cryptocurrency, and intentionally throttles performance. However, it does not address any other cryptocurrencies. In addition to that, a recent beta driver released by Nvidia is able to bypass this system, leaving little resistance against dedicated cryptominers. As of late March, the RTX3060, like every other graphics card, is sold out to consumers, and can only be found on Ebay for exorbitant prices.
The Roar 