If you spent part of the last six months struggling to buy new PC gear, good news! Nvidia has a new GPU, the RTX 3060, and naturally it’s already overpriced as all hell.
The 60 series cards are big deals for Nvidia, because they’re the GPUs that most PC gamers tend to actually buy. The GTX 1060 is still the most popular graphics card among Steam users, followed by the GTX 1050 Ti and the GTX 1650. It’s the biggest user base Nvidia has that hasn’t upgraded to RTX-capable cards, and consequently it’s also one of the most competitive price points in the Australian market.
Well, that would be the case under normal circumstances anyway. Let’s take a look at how much the RTX 3060 is supposed to be, versus how much Australians will actually pay.
Nvidia RTX 3060: Specs, Australian Price
Thanks to changes in the memory subsystem, the RTX 3060 actually ships with 12GB of VRAM. (Nvidia could have shipped the RTX 3060 with 6GB VRAM instead, but that would have looked very awkward against AMD’s rival offerings.)
It does mean, however, that you’re getting more VRAM than the 3060 Ti. The 3060 has higher boost clocks than the 3060 Ti too, although with a slower memory interface you’re not getting any extra performance.
Here’s a breakdown of the RTX 3060’s specs:
- Base / Boost Clock: 1.32GHz / 1.78GHz
- VRAM: 12GB GDDR6X
- CUDA Cores: 3584
- Memory Interface Width: 192-bit
- Power: 170W
- Power connectors: 1x PCIe 8-pin
- Recommended System Power: 550W minimum
There’s no custom 12-pin connector for the RTX 3060, since Nvidia aren’t producing Founders Edition models for this one.
Officially, Nvidia has confirmed to Kotaku Australia that the RTX 3060 has a MSRP of $529 in Australia, and $NZ609 in New Zealand. But as we’ve seen with previous cards, that’s not what you end up paying in practice.
RTX 3060: Actual Australian Pricing
If you thought you had a chance in hell of getting the RTX 3060 for anything close to its actual MSRP, you’ve got another thing coming. At the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 3060 in Australia is selling for $719, almost $200 more than its MSRP. What’s infuriating is that this basically makes the RTX 3060 the same price as the RTX 3060 Ti at some retailers.
Here’s the cheapest RTX 3060 graphics cards in Australia right now:
- Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Twin X2 OC 12GB (from PC Case Gear): $719
- eVGA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti XC 8GB GDDR6 (from PLE Computers): $729
- MSI GeForce RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X 12GB OC (from Tecs): $729
- EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC 12G GDDR6 (from PLE Computers): $749
- PNY GeForce RTX 3060 XLR8 Revel Single Epic-X RGB 12GB (from PC Case Gear): $749
- PNY GeForce RTX 3060 XLR8 Gaming REVEL EPIC-X RGB Single 12GB Video Card (from MWave): $749
- PNY GeForce RTX 3060 Single Fan 12GB GDDR6 (from PLE Computers): $759
- MSI GeForce RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X OC 12GB GDDR6 (from PLE Computers): $759
- MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X OC 12GB (from PC Case Gear): $759
- MSI GeForce RTX 3060 VENTUS 2X 12G OC Graphics Card (from CPL): $759
- Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 Twin X2 OC 12G Graphics Card (from Umart): $759
- MSI GeForce RTX™ 3060 VENTUS 2X 12G OC (from Scorptec): $759
- ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge OC 12GB (from Scorptec): $759
- ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge OC 12GB GDDR6 (from PLE Computers): $759
- MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC Graphics Card (from Umart): $759
- Inno3D GeForce RTX 3060 12GB TWIN X2 OC (from Scorptec): $759
Stock of most of these cards — unsurprisingly — is out right now, although you might be lucky in some cases. But I’d argue you shouldn’t buy any of them. Scorptech has the EVGA RTX 3060 Ti available and in stock for $729. There’s also some slightly nicer 3060 Ti models, also from PLE Computers, for about the same price as what most of the RTX 3060 cards are above.
Of course, while we’d all really love the RTX 3070 or 3080, prices for those are ridiculous right now. There are RTX 3080 cards legitimately retailing for over $2000 in Australia right now, and the cheapest RTX 3080 in stock is $170 more than the local MSRP. So if you don’t feel like an upgrade is worth it right now … well, it’s not. The RTX 3080 or the Radeon RX 6800 are the cards offering real power, but it’s hard to recommend anyone buy anything until the supply nightmare calms down.
Leave a Reply