RTX 3060 graphics card is about to be resurrected, and a return to old processes such as 7nm is unlikely

Due to the increase in memory prices, this year's PC market may experience situations that were previously unimaginable. Classic models that have been out of production for many years will be resurrected. AMD has the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and NVIDIA has returned with the RTX 3060 graphics card. As the most successful 60-series graphics card in history, the RTX 3060 is actually not that far away. The current performance is still very good. It is not a big problem to play mainstream 3A games at 1080p. The ray tracing and AI performance are lagging behind, which may be a good thing at present.

The performance of RTX 3060 is currently similar to that of A770 and RX 6600 XT, and is only about 15% behind RTX 4060.However, this is the 12GB version. If it is the 8GB version, the performance will be even lower.

The RTX 3060 is produced using Samsung's 8nm process. Compared with the current 5nm-3nm, the cost is much lower, and production capacity is not a problem, so it helps ensure supply in the market, unlike the RTX 50 series, which is affected by rising costs.

But whether the RTX 3060 will eventually be launched is not yet certain, because NVIDIA CEO Huang Jensen also talked about returning to the old process in an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, and he did not endorse this approach.

Regarding the issue of using old processes to alleviate supply pressure,Huang Renxun said that it is theoretically possible to do this, but it is not economically worthwhile at all.The progress of each new generation of architecture is not only in the process technology, but also in innovations in packaging, stacking technology and overall system architecture. Unless one day it is really impossible to increase production capacity, NVIDIA will never go back.

Judging from Huang Renxun's response, although returning to the old process is technically possible, it is not easy, and the cost is not small, so it is not cost-effective.

However, Huang Renxun’s disapproval of the rollback process may be for AI cards. Specifically for the RTX 3060, they are not using the old process to produce new architecture graphics cards, but restarting the previous old architecture and old process graphics cards. Therefore, this is not a regression, but more of a compromise in market strategy. It is still possible to see the rebirth of the RTX 3060 in the future.