Nvidia could again be relying on a previous-gen graphics card in the form of the GeForce RTX 2060 to help mitigate stock issues – except this time around, Team Green might purportedly give the card a boost by doubling up the VRAM.
As you may recall, this isn’t the first time Nvidia has pulled this trick, and indeed at the beginning of 2021, the GPU maker resurrected RTX 2060 graphics cards (only just after they’d been discontinued) to help deal with RTX 3000 stock issues.
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We’ve never really seen a let-up in those supply problems, of course, and if this rumor is correct, we won’t be doing in the foreseeable, because the contention on the grapevine is that Nvidia will be making these GPUs again, except with one big change – the loadout of 6GB of VRAM will be doubled to 12GB (GDDR6).
That’s going by sources who spoke to VideoCardz about a new ‘PG161’ model featuring more RAM but the same TU106-300 GPU. Manufacturing is expected to kick off with a view to realizing these 2060 graphics cards at the end of the year, with a possible on-sale date of January 2022 mentioned.
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With the availability and pricing of the RTX 3060 being so skewed thanks to the ongoing supply issues around this GPU (and other Ampere models), it wouldn’t really be a surprise to see Nvidia take this route (which as mentioned, has been an alternative used before) to ensure some more affordable graphics cards are out there.
Doubling up the memory should help ensure these cards are better equipped to run contemporary games – the RTX 2060 still remains a palatable proposition for 1080p gaming at least, even if you can’t expect to crank details and so forth with more demanding titles.
While all this does make some sense, then, as a rumor, we should obviously be very cautious around the prospect (even if it is something Nvidia is considering right now, the company may change its mind – who knows).
That said, all we’ve been hearing of late is that the global chip shortage will keep its grip on the industry into and throughout 2022, so in that light, it’s not difficult to imagine that continuing stock and pricing problems could well need alleviating in some manner.
