NVIDIA currently has no plans to offer RTX 3060 Founders Edition cards
Gamers angling for a RTX 3060 GPU will only be able to acquire partner cards this February.
In a mildly surprising move, it seems that NVIDIA will eschew offering Founders Edition variants of its upcoming GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card. The company generally releases most new consumer graphics products with an initial run of cards built using an in-house design but appears to be leaving that work up to its add-in board partners ahead of the RTX 3060 launch.
The original report that NVIDIA would abstain from selling Founders Edition RTX 3060 cards came to that conclusion based on the lack of reference cooler designs across marketing slides that were shown off last week at CES 2021 when the GPU was formally announced. Any of NVIDIA’s slides during the presentation with pictures of RTX 3060 cards were exclusively partner designs.
Such a decision is not without precedent as NVIDIA has previously introduced new desktop GPUs to the market that were handled entirely by its partners. Generally, these launches have occurred later in an architecture’s life span or with product line refreshes. The TX 3060 partner cards are expected to be available by late February.
The actual availability of these cards is uncertain due to a number of factors — manufacturing hangups and the ongoing cryptocurrency value spike, in particular, are leaving retail shelves and online dealers bereft of stock. Some four months have passed since the launch of the RTX 3080 GPU and the cards are still frustratingly difficult to find in stock and at reasonable prices. Component pricing for GPUs and motherboards has already jumped massively this month thanks to tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. All these external factors have left the GPU market in shambles and the RTX 3060 launch is not likely to alleviate ongoing issues.
-
Shacknews
replyChris Jarrard posted a new article, NVIDIA currently has no plans to offer RTX 3060 Founders Edition cards
