NVIDIA to reintroduce the RTX 2060 series into the market

[Nineshadow]

Summary

 

Among the GPU shortages of these days, NVIDIA has plans to reintroduce more RTX 2060 and 2060 Super cards into the market, even though the 3060 is planned to be released next month.

 

The prices are expected to hover around 300 EUR for an RTX 2060 and around 400 EUR for an RTX 2060 Super (in France).

 

Quotes

Quote

Interesting information has been shared by Overclocking.com today. According to multiple sources of theirs, NVIDIA has plans to reintroduce GeForce RTX 2060 series to the market, just as we expected its successor. The site claims that NVIDIA has already distributed new GPU stock to board partners and system integrators. The numbers of the shipments are not disclosed, nor it is explained why is it happening right now.

 

The reintroduced RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 SUPER will be priced at 300 EUR and 400 EUR respectively. The latter being well above the RTX 3060 which will retail at 339 EUR in France. Hopefully, this isn’t an indicator of limited GA106 GPU stock at launch.

 

 

My thoughts

I've wanted to upgrade my GPU for quite a while now, but I, like a lot of other people out there, don't want to spend a big amount of money on a GPU. Right now, most mainstream video cards, such as the 1660 super or the RTX 2060, are either out of stock everywhere, or sold by scalpers at insane prices. The only cards that I see available are 600+ Euros and that leaves a lot of budget gamers with no GPU options.

 

This news brings some hope of finding a decent GPU at a reasonable price. However, it remains to be seen if it will be effective. The new GPU stock could be gone really quickly, or it could be sold at inflated prices.

 

On the other hand, this also hints at issues with the RTX 3060. NVIDIA might not be able to release it on time (unlikely), or NVIDIA has issues with supply and their partners won't be able to sell them at launch price (likely). Considering the new stock of RTX 2060 Super is expected to cost more than the MSRP of the RTX 3060, I think it's the latter.

 

Sources

overclocking.com [french]

videocardz.com

[Levent]

€300 for RTX2060 is a really good deal. Color me surprised. Considering you haven't been able to get any card at MSRP for the last 14 months and this card as is sells for €550 in France.

[Morgan MLGman]

8 hours ago, Levent said:

€300 for RTX2060 is a really good deal. Color me surprised.

Considering that the 12GB 3060 is supposed to cost €330 in late February? I wouldn't really say so.

[Stahlmann]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

supposed to cost 330€

Exactly, supposed. Everyone who still believes there will be plenty of stock and you can just buy one for MSRP is just naive at this point.

[Morgan MLGman]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Exactly, supposed. Everyone who still believes there will be plenty of stock and you can just buy one for MSRP is just naive at this point.

Well, you'll probably be able to order one for the MSRP at launch day. When you're going to actually receive it is a completely different story.

I'm still waiting on an ASUS TUF 3080 that I ordered exactly for MSRP about 20 minutes after they went on sale. 4 months have passed already

[Levent]

4 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Considering that the 12GB 3060 is supposed to cost 330€ in late February? I wouldn't really say so.

Looking at this I would say it is.

[flashiling]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

 

Looking at this I would say it is.

are you french? because for some reason they're expensive in france

[Morgan MLGman]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

Looking at this I would say it is.

In this context, sure. But nobody should be buying it at such price anyway.

[Bombastinator]

58 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Considering that the 12GB 3060 is supposed to cost 330€ in late February? I wouldn't really say so.

We shall see. It’s gpu update season for manufacturers, and they do it from the top down. It also happened at exactly the same time as a console refresh which is an even bigger jump which happens a lot less often.  Then there was the first actual CPU shift in a very very long time.  They all happened at the same time which was during a world first pandemic.  There has literally never been anything of this magnitude before.  The closest thing was in 1919?!  That’s over a hundred years ago.  Computers didn’t even really exist as home appliances before the 80’s.  Everything happened all at once. What was the gpu lineup actually available when the PS4 and XboxONE came out?  I don’t recall, but I don’t think there was even a 10 series Nvidia gpu out at the time. Consoles affect both CPUs and GPUs.  There is great worry that anything Turing or anything 8 thread or less simply isn’t going to be able to play new games when they are released.

Edited January 20, 2021 by Bombastinator

[porina]

For the purposes of this post, when I talk about GPU, I mean just the chip, not the assembled card.

 

In a quick look, these GPUs were made on TSMC 12nm process. If you buy into the fab constraint or unproven yield speculation, then re-introducing a product made on older process could be a way around that.

 

There are multiple problems with that. Even if we assume TSMC has the capacity to process an order immediately, the time it takes between starting to make a GPU chip and it coming out of a factor is somewhere on the order of a month or two. Anyone more familiar with chip making give a better timescale for that? So depending on when nvidia made this decision, there would be that much time before we see GPUs. Then these would have to be passed to AIBs who then turn them into cards that we can actually use. More lead time on that, assuming they have the other components available. Not a given either, with shortages reported on related components. Igor's lab recently posted the below on that topic:

https://www.igorslab.de/en/more-details-and-backgrounds-on-the-scarcity-why-graphic-cards-are-so-hard-to-buy-and-manufacture/

 

So I'm not sure what to make of this. It kinda makes sense in some ways, but not others. Are the other components used on Turing gen cards that much different from Ampere, and better available? Logically the AIBs will have to make substantially the same designs they already have. These are unlikely to be completely new designs.

[TetraSky]

And like everything else, it will be sold out in milliseconds and be resold for 3x the price.

 

I'm guessing Nvidia had a bunch of older GPU cores they needed to get rid of.

[Morgan MLGman]

53 minutes ago, porina said:

There are multiple problems with that. Even if we assume TSMC has the capacity to process an order immediately, the time it takes between starting to make a GPU chip and it coming out of a factor is somewhere on the order of a month or two. Anyone more familiar with chip making give a better timescale for that? So depending on when nvidia made this decision, there would be that much time before we see GPUs. Then these would have to be passed to AIBs who then turn them into cards that we can actually use. More lead time on that, assuming they have the other components available. Not a given either, with shortages reported on related components. Igor's lab recently posted the below on that topic:

https://www.igorslab.de/en/more-details-and-backgrounds-on-the-scarcity-why-graphic-cards-are-so-hard-to-buy-and-manufacture/

Adding to all that, in the article he doesn't even mention increased shipping costs, additional costs related to buying protective equipment like masks, disinfectants etc., limits on shipping due to priority for shipping medical supplies and so on.

What's more to consider, is that many of the factories closed down completely at some point due to COVID, and "restarting" production takes a lot of time for some of those, I've read info that it may take 3-4 months to even get back to 75-80% of previous production capacity after shutting down.

[Mark Kaine]

ok the supply drought is really real huh, otherwise this move makes no sense. and if it is real, then this is really clever... 

 

 

24 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

I'm guessing Nvidia had a bunch of older GPU cores they needed to get rid of.

That or it's easier to make them, would be interesting to know... 

[Jet_ski]

A lot of people missed this part of the leak: Nvidia will also be launching RTX branded flying unicorns in March for a low price of $69.99 and they come with 10 bejilion CUDA Tensor cores. If you can hold on a little longer though, I hear RTX Flying Unicorn Ti dubbed Flying UTI is also around the corner.

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, Levent said:

Looking at this I would say it is.

 

Thats pretty damn cheap, in comparison! 

 

[Kisai]

I think we're reading too much into this. 

 

It's more likely these are being re-introduced for OEMS (eg Dell and HP) because otherwise they will have to resort to selling only iGPU systems when their current stock of... everything, runs out. There would be no other compelling reason to introduce them back into the market other than OEM's being unable to make budget low-end systems.

[Morgan MLGman]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

I think we're reading too much into this. 

 

It's more likely these are being re-introduced for OEMS (eg Dell and HP) because otherwise they will have to resort to selling only iGPU systems when their current stock of... everything, runs out. There would be no other compelling reason to introduce them back into the market other than OEM's being unable to make budget low-end systems.

I don't think so. If this was the case and these cards were meant for OEMs, then why mention the prices at all? It's obvious no OEM ever paid this kind of money for a 2060, let alone when it's a last-gen product.

[Ar558a]

Blatent Price gouging for old tech by Nvidia knowing it has some desperate fans out there. Paying almost the same as a 3060 should cost is crazy. Wouldn't touch with a barge pole

[PlayStation 2]

Today I learned that the RTX 2060 is a "budget low-end graphics card". I wonder what that makes my RX 580. Probably some piece of shit HD 5450-esque card.

[Bombastinator]

9 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

A lot of people missed this part of the leak: Nvidia will also be launching RTX branded flying unicorns in March for a low price of $69.99 and they come with 10 bejilion CUDA Tensor cores. If you can hold on a little longer though, I hear RTX Flying Unicorn Ti dubbed Flying UTI is also around the corner.

I don’t want to have a flying UT.  It sounds really unpleasant. 

[SFFDesigns]

Honestly I agree with this. I think leaving last-gen cards on the market till stock stabilizes is a good move.

 

Those that need a card now and can't refresh pages and all can get the 2060, those that can get the 3060.

[Random_Person1234]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

I think we're reading too much into this. 

 

It's more likely these are being re-introduced for OEMS (eg Dell and HP) because otherwise they will have to resort to selling only iGPU systems when their current stock of... everything, runs out. There would be no other compelling reason to introduce them back into the market other than OEM's being unable to make budget low-end systems.

The 2060 was just restocked on B&H for $339, so I don't think this is just for OEMs. If you were wondering, it sold out fairly quickly, as expected.

This could also have just been B&H having some random stock.

[Exidor]

Damn seems that the logistical chain is still very much hindered then.

I mean if they have to fall back to older production process and older memory just to have something out there is not a good sign for 3000 availability.

[Kisai]

19 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

I don't think so. If this was the case and these cards were meant for OEMs, then why mention the prices at all? It's obvious no OEM ever paid this kind of money for a 2060, let alone when it's a last-gen product.

OEM's don't include GPU's for free.

 

Like there's really only two scenarios that make sense:

- Insufficient stock to fill all OEM orders, so they have to produce a minimum of X amount of GPU's on Y foundry

- They want to cash in on the supply problem. The miners are only after the high end cards, but a RTX 2060 is roughly the same performance as a GTX 1080

 

So whatever is released, isn't going to solve a supply problem driven by scalping and cryptocoin madness.

 

Most of the sales of laptops and desktops in the low-end tier, tend to use these kinds of parts, and since the 2060 is probably good enough to drive a 1080p120hz monitor, they can be used for budget gaming, just not CP2077 at maximum settings.

 

[ToboRobot]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

 

Like there's really only two scenarios that make sense:

- Insufficient stock to fill all OEM orders, so they have to produce a minimum of X amount of GPU's on Y foundry

- They want to cash in on the supply problem. The miners are only after the high end cards, but a RTX 2060 is roughly the same performance as a GTX 1080

 

 

 

Probably a bit of both.

Big OEM (or miners) orders to financially justify it, and then selling off anything beyond the big orders at retail is all profit.