It’s no doubt that NVIDIA has been owning the GPU race so far for this generation. While AMD’s 6000-series graphics cards are great and offer plenty of power, NVIDIA has swept the scene with the RTX 3060 Ti for $399, and now, the 3060 at $329. Designed to go after gamers who still use the GTX 1060, the RTX 3060 sports 12GB of GDDR6 memory and plenty of power to game at 1080p or 1440p. Plus, NVIDIA will be releasing its brand-new 30-series graphics cards to laptops soon, giving mobile gamers even more power. Keep reading to find out more.
NVIDIA’s 3060 sports 12GB vRAM, ray-tracing, much more at just $329
NVIDIA is doing its best to entice gamers to upgrade, and it’s doing a great job. The GTX 1060 is the most popular graphics card on Steam right now, which shows just how content gamers have been with sticking to their previous-generation cards for so long. This could, in part, be due to the fact that the RTX 2060 launched at $349 but didn’t offer a ton of improvements over the previous generation. Well, that all changes with the RTX 3060.
NVIDIA claims that, while the GTX 1060 ran Watch Dogs 2 at high settings 60FPS, the same graphics card only ran Watch Dogs: Legion at 24FPS. Alongside that same claim, NVIDIA states that the RTX 3060 offers 10x the ray-tracing and twice the raster performance of the 1060, which is quite the upgrade for the price.
The provided graph from NVIDIA shows that most of the latest games run at 60FPS or above with ray-tracing at 1080p graphics. You’ll find Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs: Legion hit 60FPS when using ray-tracing and DLSS, while Fortnite and Shadow of the Tomb Raider hit around 70FPS and The Devision 2 reaches above 80FPS. This is a killer upgrade for those who haven’t picked up a new graphics card recently, and is on my radar for an upgrade in the near future.
NVIDIA’s 30-series graphics cards heading to laptops
Since the release of NVIDIA’s latest graphics cards, gamers have been waiting for a mobile release. Well, it’s finally here. Starting later this month, NVIDIA’s 2nd generation RTX graphics cards will be making their way to the mobile space.
Starting with the RTX 3080 and 3070 graphics cards, starting January 26, companies will begin shipping over 70 different models. Plus, RTX 3060 will be available for mobile machines as soon as February 2, for more budget-focused but still high-quality graphics.
9to5Toys’ Take
I’m super stoked for the release of the RTX 3060 and 30-series on mobile. While I have a fairly new gaming system, it’s still rocking an older AMD Vega 64 graphics card, which is getting a bit old these days. At some point soon, I’ll pull the trigger on a new GPU, and the RTX 3060 is absolutely in the running to be my next buy.
What about you? Are you going to jump on the RTX train in February with the 3060? I’d love to know, so sound off in the comments below or over on Twitter @pcamp96.
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