Nvidia is at it again: 3060 8GB released, up to 35% slower than its 12GB counterpart

[HenrySalayne]

This is really good news for Intel. They can now claim their A7XX GPUs are considerably faster than Nvidia's RTX 3060^_8GB.

[podkall]

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

Imagine buying entry/mid range Nvidia cards

some of them are/were good though

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, HenrySalayne said:

This is really good news for Intel. They can now claim their A7XX GPUs are considerably faster than Nvidia's RTX 3060^_8GB.

"Buy Intel, know what you're getting"*

_{*Unstable garbage}

 

There you go Intel marketing, you can have that one for free 

[podkall]

Just now, leadeater said:

"Buy Intel, know what you're getting"*

_{*Unstable garbage}

 

There you go Intel marketing, you can have that one for free 

honestly what can you lose if your PC performs worse on games like LoL or CS:GO? it's better to not play those games anyway

 

speaking from experience

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Indeed yes actually. If VRAM capacity is the only difference as per the product name indication then performance will be identical up until graphical setting require more vram capacity than the product with less than this.

 

I would and will always expect a xx60 8GB and xx60 16GB to perform the same. I will always expect a xx70 16GB to be faster than a xx60 8GB and xx60 16GB etc.

 

Similarly I also find Ti and Super unnecessary and stupid but at least there is historic understanding that these denote performance.

They are identical bar for the ram, the 8G is slower ram (128 versus 192 on the 12G model).     So my question is, do the benchmarks highlight a general problem or do they just show the difference between 8g at 128b and 12g at 192b?  Because last time I bought a GPU  (long time now) they show that spec on the box too.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

They are identical bar for the ram, the 8G is slower ram (128 versus 192 on the 12G model).     So my question is, do the benchmarks highlight a general problem or do they just show the difference between 8g at 128b and 12g at 192b?  Because last time I bought a GPU  (long time now) they show that spec on the box too.

Memory bus hasn't been on GPU boxes for decades. Right now if it's on the box then it's on the bottom on the barcode and that is highly unrealistic to expect anyone to read that. Have a RTX 3060 Ti box in from of me right now.

 

It's on the manufacturer to name things properly. If you are going to make a change to a product and it is unable to maintain the same performance consistency then it needs to carry a different product name that makes this clear. Nvidia hasn't run out of numbers.

 

RTX 3055

RTX 3058

RTX 3050 Ti Super LX GS 128 8GB

 

Because just as a reminder there is no RTX 3050 Ti desktop GPU.

[TetraSky]

When they know gamers are disregarding the competition just to have the latest Nvidia branded shiny, because it's "better"... You can do this sort of crap.

[WereCat]

10 hours ago, starsmine said:

like the original 3060 was never called just a 3060 now was it. It was called a 3060 12GB, it literally always was. 
 

 

Except they don't bother to call it so on the box. Yes, the VRAM amount is on the box but not in the name where most people look. It's also easy to overlook as it's placed in such way that you can easily not notice if you just glance over the box and if you're not aware that there is now 8GB version then you may not even bother checking if you're just looking for 3060.

 

[xAcid9]

Does the price is actually same as the original 12GB 3060? No way that's true.

[porina]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Memory bus hasn't been on GPU boxes for decades. Right now if it's on the box then it's on the bottom on the barcode and that is highly unrealistic to expect anyone to read that. Have a RTX 3060 Ti box in from of me right now.

Got a few boxes next to me so checking them out in turn:

 

Asrock Arc A380: can't see bus width

Asus 1030: can't see bus width

Asus Rog Strix 1080 Ti: can't see bus width

Gigabyte 1650: listed on barcode label

MSI Gaming X Trio 3070: printed on back of box (not label)

 

Might depend on manufacturer. Would take more samples to see if there is a trend.

 

Regardless of above, I'm not sure having the bus width on the box is that important for an uninformed user. The information is implied through VRAM quantity for informed users.

 

57 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Does the price is actually same as the original 12GB 3060? No way that's true.

I covered this in a previous post. There's only a few available from smaller sellers. Pricing is likely inflated due to new and they don't know what to do with it yet. Give it time to settle.

[Fasterthannothing]

11 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

And that's the problem. People see "3060" and think the only difference is the VRAM amount 

To play devil's advocate Technically speaking it literally is only a different in ram. It just so happens the ram bus affects the performance. Also in all seriousness I'm perfectly fine with what Nvidia did it's clearly named different at this point if you don't expect a speed change based on the ram amount (which both Nvidia and AMD have done for years) then your a person who doesn't care about hardcore performance and thus it literally doesn't matter.

[Vishera]

11 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

You can get a new RX6600 for $250 today though. ~50% more performance. 

 

I know that that's not 100% more performance but GPU mining and COVID became a thing, those definitely hindered the progress quite a bit. 

It will completely break my purchasing model,

With your suggestion i will probably have to upgrade a year or two sooner because of the performance.

 

I think long term here, in the end of the day your suggestion will cost me more money.

I would rather wait for prices to come down, I am in no rush to upgrade my GPU.

I can wait a year.

[Vishera]

8 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

then your a person who doesn't care about hardcore performance and thus it literally doesn't matter.

That's not how it works.

People that don't know much about PCs but want to upgrade,

How would you expect the average Joe to know those things?

 

At the end of the day the average Joes buy more GPUs than us enthusiasts.

[starsmine]

6 minutes ago, Vishera said:

That's not how it works.

People that don't know much about PCs but want to upgrade,

How would you expect the average Joe to know those things?

 

At the end of the day the average Joes buy more GPUs than us enthusiasts.

I dont expect them to be enthusiasts. I expect them to be in two camps

1 they dont care, its better then what they have, when you are talking about being literal magnitudes faster then their old gtx 960, then being 10% faster or slower really does not mater. 
You just spend 350 usd to get a part that is 300% faster, or 320% faster then what you have. 

2 are smart enough to ask. I don't mean be an enthusiast, like you don't have to be a dish washer enthusiast to go and look up consumer reports tests on dish washers. You don't have to be a TV enthusiast to pull up rtings. You don't have to be a car enthusiast to look research your purchases.

[Blademaster91]

33 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

To play devil's advocate Technically speaking it literally is only a different in ram. It just so happens the ram bus affects the performance. Also in all seriousness I'm perfectly fine with what Nvidia did it's clearly named different at this point if you don't expect a speed change based on the ram amount (which both Nvidia and AMD have done for years) then your a person who doesn't care about hardcore performance and thus it literally doesn't matter.

There isn't anything to differentiate the 3060 8GB from the 12GB other than the amount of VRAM, and I would expect performance of both 3060 models to be the same except in games that can use more than 8GB of VRAM. And if someone was upgrading from for example a 1060 6GB then they might think a 3060 8GB is the same as a 3060 12GB, people are going to go for the cheaper option as well if the product seems the same on the box.

27 minutes ago, Vishera said:

It will completely break my purchasing model,

With your suggestion i will probably have to upgrade a year or two sooner because of the performance.

 

I think long term here, in the end of the day your suggestion will cost me more money.

I would rather wait for prices to come down, I am in no rush to upgrade my GPU.

I can wait a year.

The upgrade model on the nvidia side seems pretty broken, the increase in performance is stagnating and prices are way up for anyone upgrading in the xx60 and xx70 tiers.

 

[Vishera]

23 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

The upgrade model on the nvidia side seems pretty broken, the increase in performance is stagnating and prices are way up for anyone upgrading in the xx60 and xx70 tiers.

There is a lot of inventory on store shelves and the second hand market if flooded with GPUs at significantly cheaper prices - Maybe it's time for NVIDIA to realize that in the market of today they will need to lower prices if they want to sell more GPUs.

[CTR640]

A serious question, does Jensen suffer from a brain parasite?

[WereCat]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Got a few boxes next to me so checking them out in turn:

 

Asrock Arc A380: can't see bus width

Asus 1030: can't see bus width

Asus Rog Strix 1080 Ti: can't see bus width

Gigabyte 1650: listed on barcode label

MSI Gaming X Trio 3070: printed on back of box (not label)

 

Might depend on manufacturer. Would take more samples to see if there is a trend.

 

Regardless of above, I'm not sure having the bus width on the box is that important for an uninformed user. The information is implied through VRAM quantity for informed users.

 

I covered this in a previous post. There's only a few available from smaller sellers. Pricing is likely inflated due to new and they don't know what to do with it yet. Give it time to settle.

Gigabyte 3060ti EAGLE also bus width printed on the label next to bar code.

I also have MSI 1030 box somewhere I believe but can't find it.

 

Agree that if you know how important a bus width is then you probably also know what you're exactly looking for.

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, Fasterthannothing said:

To play devil's advocate Technically speaking it literally is only a different in ram. It just so happens the ram bus affects the performance. Also in all seriousness I'm perfectly fine with what Nvidia did it's clearly named different at this point if you don't expect a speed change based on the ram amount (which both Nvidia and AMD have done for years) then your a person who doesn't care about hardcore performance and thus it literally doesn't matter.

Not how it works or consumers think.

 

This is an intentional obscuring of products and performance by Nvidia.  To sell lower performing products under the already established 3060 12gb performance metric.

 

We can make examples and analogies all day, but I firmly believe it's an intentional on purpose decision by Nvidia to trick the consumer into buying.

 

Unethical and immoral.  Not illegal.

 

But the lemmings will continue to support it.

 

Are you playing devil's advocate or a fanboy defending their idols?

[porina]

Random thoughts: We had a kinda reverse situation. Where was the outrage when nvidia released the 3080 12GB after the 10GB? The changed the vram quantity and width there too, and even the core count! Where were the calls to name it a 4085 or something? I'll give in that case, the performance between the two was a lot closer. If we assume the 3080 was balanced for 10GB and associated width to start with, adding more doesn't really give as much benefit. If 3060 was tuned for 12GB then reducing to 8GB could be more of a constraint, although it may be partially offset if they choose to find some faster vram for it.

 

I still think the true price for the 8GB is not currently reflected by the few random 3rd party listings via Newegg. If we assume its overall performance sits between 3050 and 3060 12GB, and likewise is priced as such, is balance not restored to the Force?

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Random thoughts: We had a kinda reverse situation. Where was the outrage when nvidia released the 3080 12GB after the 10GB? The changed the vram quantity and width there too, and even the core count! Where were the calls to name it a 4085 or something? I'll give in that case, the performance between the two was a lot closer. If we assume the 3080 was balanced for 10GB and associated width to start with, adding more doesn't really give as much benefit. If 3060 was tuned for 12GB then reducing to 8GB could be more of a constraint, although it may be partially offset if they choose to find some faster vram for it.

 

I still think the true price for the 8GB is not currently reflected by the few random 3rd party listings via Newegg. If we assume its overall performance sits between 3050 and 3060 12GB, and likewise is priced as such, is balance not restored to the Force?

Should be called out every time it happens.

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Random thoughts: We had a kinda reverse situation. Where was the outrage when nvidia released the 3080 12GB after the 10GB? The changed the vram quantity and width there too, and even the core count! Where were the calls to name it a 4085 or something? I'll give in that case, the performance between the two was a lot closer.

Because you will not notice a 5% difference but you will notice a 30% difference. The step from the 3080 10GB to the 3080 Ti was barely noticeable and they launched a better performing SKU with the same name, so the validity of benchmark results was still there.

The "new" 3060 is not slightly worse, but sometimes noticeably 30% worse. Imagine two chocolate bars which look identical from the front and which share the same name but the older model has 100 g of chocolate and the "new" model only packs 70 g. That's your everyday reality in supermarkets to hide price hikes from costumers and it's really annoying. Now Nvidia launched a worse SKU with the same name as one of the most prolific GPUs of the last two years. They want costumers to confuse these two SKUs.

 

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

To play devil's advocate Technically speaking it literally is only a different in ram. It just so happens the ram bus affects the performance. Also in all seriousness I'm perfectly fine with what Nvidia did it's clearly named different at this point if you don't expect a speed change based on the ram amount (which both Nvidia and AMD have done for years) then your a person who doesn't care about hardcore performance and thus it literally doesn't matter.

Ah for years AMD have made sure their different VRAM variants used the same bus width so performance was in fact the same. Nvidia might, and has, messed around with this before and multiple times but like the 4080 situation repeated bad behavior doesn't make it ok. Just proves they don't give a damn.

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, starsmine said:

I dont expect them to be enthusiasts. I expect them to be in two camps

1 they dont care, its better then what they have, when you are talking about being literal magnitudes faster then their old gtx 960, then being 10% faster or slower really does not mater. 
You just spend 350 usd to get a part that is 300% faster, or 320% faster then what you have. 

2 are smart enough to ask. I don't mean be an enthusiast, like you don't have to be a dish washer enthusiast to go and look up consumer reports tests on dish washers. You don't have to be a TV enthusiast to pull up rtings. You don't have to be a car enthusiast to look research your purchases.

So basically you support consumer confusion and letting them be mislead so long as what they got is better than what they had.... I don't think that's a good position to take.

 

You can be better off than what you were and also ripped off or mislead. It's like you're arguing a soft punch to the face is fine because it wasn't hard. I'll take no punch to the face thank you.

 

Also you can look up the reviews all you like but if you mistakenly end up looking at RTX 3060 12GB reviews for an 8GB model you do or do not know you are getting then this hasn't helped at all. They can very likely put in the effort to specifically misinform themselves due to the bad product naming and it wouldn't be their fault at all. We should do as much as possible to avoid confusion not a little as possible.

[Poinkachu]

13 hours ago, starsmine said:

I dont expect them to be enthusiasts. I expect them to be in two camps

1 they dont care, its better then what they have, when you are talking about being literal magnitudes faster then their old gtx 960, then being 10% faster or slower really does not mater. 
You just spend 350 usd to get a part that is 300% faster, or 320% faster then what you have. 

2 are smart enough to ask. I don't mean be an enthusiast, like you don't have to be a dish washer enthusiast to go and look up consumer reports tests on dish washers. You don't have to be a TV enthusiast to pull up rtings. You don't have to be a car enthusiast to look research your purchases.

1. Maybe they don't care, until they finds out that there's actually 2 version of it, and they got the gimped one. And it's gonna be a hell lot more annoying/devastating for them if the pricing between the 2 version was the same.

2. Not everyone follows tech news, especially the non enthusiast.

Let's say a kid asked for a 3060 for christmas, and since this kid don't follow tech news every week like us, s/he only know that there's only 1 version of 3060. His/Her parents goes out and buy one from, let's say, Microcenter, saw 3060, grabs it and pays, not knowing it's the gimped version one. Their fault? or are they stupid for not following tech news like it's dinner ?

 

This thing is a quiet release, in the middle of RTX4000 release period.

Now I wonder how many non tech savvy parents/relatives/friends/lovers gonna mistakenly end up buying the 8gb version for christmas gift.