Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti has flexed its muscles in another leak which shows that apparently this is a more affordable Ampere GPU – at least in relative terms to the rest of the range – with seriously promising performance levels.
Naturally, bear in mind that this graphics card is still just rumored – albeit very heavily rumoured – and we need to take benchmark leaks with a sizeable helping of condiments, but the 3DMark results which have been spilled are certainly eye-opening.
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As spotted by VideoCardz, the 3060 Ti achieved a score of 30,706 in 3DMark Fire Strike, and a result of 12,175 in Time Spy. That’s remarkably close to the RTX 3070 which managed around 11% and 13% better respectively, and as the tech site points out, custom variants of the 3060 Ti which are pepped up a bit could close the gap even more.
Given that the RTX 3060 Ti is expected to retail at under $400 when it launches at the beginning of December according to the rumor mill, that could make it quite the value proposition if you remember that the RTX 3070 is priced at $499 (so it’s 25% more expensive – possibly even more than that depending on how Nvidia ends up pitching the pricing for the purported new arrival).
Nvidia’s own supposed internal benchmarks have already shown the incoming RTX 3060 Ti outdoing the last-gen RTX 2080 Super, and these 3DMark scores reinforce that, with the latter being around 5% slower in these benchmarks. And we have to remember that the RTX 2080 Super demanded $699 from your wallet when it launched (the RTX 2080 which it replaced cost even more at first, at $799).
Making a case
While it might seem a little odd to be talking about affordable GPUs at the $400 level, well, that’s where the GPU market has got these days. In terms of price/performance for a modern graphics card, it seems that the RTX 3060 Ti could really make a serious case for itself.
And this Nvidia GPU has good reasons to attempt to do just that given that AMD’s Big Navi graphics cards have just been launched, looking seriously competitive in many respects (just don’t talk about ray tracing).
That said, you can’t actually buy any of the new Nvidia or AMD cards still due to persisting stock issues, and of course that’s the other question about the RTX 3060 Ti launch if it is indeed happening on December 2 as predicted: is it going to be another stock washout?
Nvidia has already said that its inventory problems will continue until 2021 at least, and it might not be until February before any kind of easing of supply issues happens. So the stock prospects for the supposedly imminent Ampere model aren’t great, shall we say.
