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Nvidia followed Intel and AMD as the third major chipmaker to host a CES 2021 press conference, announcing a new desktop graphics card and a trio of RTX 30 GPUs for laptops. Let’s start with the big news: the new RTX 3060 consumer graphics card.
The RTX 3060 Ti is rumored to have a little brother: the simple RTX 3060. The new graphics card should look identical from the outside – although it is somehow pictured with a single fan in the sockets. Nvidia’s press – but it uses Nvidia’s weak -end GPU GA106 rather than the mid-range GA104 we saw in the core of the 3060 Ti and 3070.
Based on graphics provided by the Green Team, the 3060 is expected to deliver performance levels around RTX 2070 or 2070 Super – meaning comfortable games at decent 1080p or 1440p in AAA titles, up to 4K in older games or at reduced settings.
Interestingly, the card has 12GB of GDDR6 memory, which means it has more VRAM than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070, which only have 8GB. That also has faster 15 Gbps memory, compared to 14 Gbps on the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070. However, this is somewhat balanced by its 192-bit memory interface, which is narrower than the 256-bit equivalent on the two more expensive cards.
Compute is also drastically reduced, with the 3060 having only 3,584 CUDA cores versus 4864 on the 3060 Ti and 5888 on the 3070. The smaller GPU means the card is able to consume less power than the 3060 Ti, with an estimated TDP of 170W against 200W on the Ti.
It is difficult to assess how these tradeoffs will affect performance, especially in memory subsystems. Presumably the 3060 will be able to keep more textures in memory at a time, which might make it a bit more future proof, especially for RT titles, but it might take a bit longer to load the textures. time and therefore the frame rates might be a little lower, while the reductions to be calculated should result in a much slower map overall. We’ll have to test this for ourselves once the map arrives at DF HQ.
The recommended retail price of the card is $ 329, which is $ 70 less than the RTX 3060 Ti, and it will be available from the end of February … although it’s hard to imagine the scarcity issues Stocks that have affected the RTX 30 series from the start will have been resolved in just one month.
The RTX 3060 has just been announced, costs $ 9 and offers ~ RTX 2070 performance with retail availability expected in early 2025 pic.twitter.com/wLH4yVpdkS
– Digital Foundry Offers (@DealsFoundry) January 12, 2021
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The RTX 3060 will also be available on laptops from January 26, alongside the mobile versions of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 – which now come with a “ Laptop ” suffix so you can easily distinguish them from desktop variants. . Fortunately, this date is when AMD’s Ryzen 5000 laptops will also be available, so many models will receive both a CPU and GPU update at the same time – which doesn’t always happen when the processor and GPU versions are more distant.
While the new laptop parts use the same second gen RT cores and third gen Tensor cores as the other RTX 30 series boards, the general configurations here are quite different. For example, the RTX 3080 laptop gets 8GB or 16GB of GDDR6 and 6144 CUDA cores, while the 3080 desktop uses 10GB of faster GDDR6X cores and packs 8704 cores. This makes it difficult to judge the relative performance between the two; proper testing in the real world will be the best way to go here.
Unfortunately, this is further complicated by the number of different configurations available to laptop makers, which include over a dozen Max-P and Max-Q RTX 3080 laptop variants alone, with speeds of up to variable clock, memory speeds and power targets.
The comparison to previous generation laptop parts is a bit simpler, with Nvidia claiming the RTX 3080 is around 50% faster than the 2080 in games like Control, Minecraft RTX, and Borderlands 3 at 1440p. The 3070 is described as up to 50% faster than the RTX 2070 and the RTX 3060 is described as 30% faster than a PS5 … and no, we don’t know that means either. In general, however, we’re seeing slightly lower generation-to-generation gains on the laptop side compared to desktops, possibly due to the tighter power constraints of these mobile form factors.
In addition to the new hardware, there are also new features to consider. One of the most important is the support for the resizable bar, which has provided simple to low double-digit performance gains on the RX 6000 series cards. It works by allowing direct access to all VRAM. from a card, rather than through a 256MB I / O buffer. It will be interesting to see if this feature is available on all RTX 30 series laptops, and if it is just enabled in the background. or whether it can be turned on and off to assess its performance multiplier.
Note that Resizable BAR will also be available on the RTX 3060 desktop graphics card, with VBIOS updates required to enable the functionality on earlier RTX 30 cards. To use this feature, you must be running an AMD B550 or X570 motherboard that supports the feature; on Intel, some Z490 cards and all Z590 cards should also support this feature.
Nvidia’s Max-Q framework now also includes updated features including Dynamic Boost 2.0 and WhisperMode 2.0. The idea behind Dynamic Boost 2.0 is to increase GPU or VRAM power at the expense of CPU power when a game would benefit from it, thus increasing frame rates in GPU-related scenarios. It works frame by frame, allowing for a fairly dynamic power allocation. WhisperMode 2.0 works the other way around, minimizing heat and noise in exchange for reduced performance; it now works at the system level rather than in GeForce Experience.
As we mentioned earlier, the availability of these new 30 Series laptops begins on January 26, with Nvidia promising over 70 laptop models from various OEMs – like Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, Lenovo and Razer. – from the start. These start at $ 1,000 for the RTX 3060 machines up to about three times as much as for the better-equipped RTX 3080 models. If you’re looking for a laptop upgrade, be sure to check the processors as well – some models will come with latest generation AMD or Intel chips rather than the newer 11th gen Intel or AMD Ryzen 5000 processors. , and it’s always nice to get the latest components if you can.
That’s all for now, but we’ll be back soon to share more CES 2021 highlights – including Razer’s insanely bonkers announcements, the best HDMI 2.1 monitors to watch out for, and much more. In the meantime, why not check out our breakdown of AMD or Intel announcements at CES 2021?
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