RTX 3060 Graphics Card Revival Imminent, Return to Older Processes Like 7nm Unlikely
Due to rising memory prices, the PC market may see something previously unthinkable this year – the revival of classic models that have been discontinued for years. AMD has the Ryzen 75800X3D, and NVIDIA has the return of the RTX 3060 graphics card. As one of the most successful 60-series graphics cards, the RTX 3060 isn't actually that far off, and its current performance is still quite competitive. It's no problem to enjoy mainstream 3A games at 1080p, and the lagging ray tracing and AI performance may actually be a good thing in the current context.
The performance of the RTX 3060 is currently comparable to the A770 and RX 6600 XT, only about 15% behind the RTX 4060. However, this is the 12GB version; the 8GB version will have even lower performance.
The RTX 3060 is manufactured using Samsung's 8nm process, which is much cheaper than the current 5nm-3nm processes, and capacity is not a problem. This helps ensure supply in the market, unlike the RTX 50 series, which is impacted by significant cost increases.
However, whether the RTX 3060 will ultimately be launched is not yet certain, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang also discussed the issue of returning to older processes in an interview with the Dwarkesh Patel podcast, and he does not approve of this approach.
Regarding the use of older processes to alleviate supply pressure, Huang Renxun said that it is theoretically possible, but economically completely unprofitable. The progress of each new architecture is not only in the manufacturing process, but also in packaging, stacking technology, and overall system architecture innovation. Unless one day it is really impossible to increase production capacity, NVIDIA will never go back.
From Huang Renxun's response, it can be seen that returning to the old process is technically feasible, but it is not easy and comes at a considerable cost, making it uneconomical.
However, Huang Renxun's disapproval of reverting to older processes may be referring to AI cards. Specifically, for the RTX 3060, they are not using older processes to produce new architecture graphics cards, but rather restarting the previous old architecture and old process graphics cards. Therefore, this is not a regression, but more of a compromise in market strategy, and it is still possible to see the RTX 3060 reborn in the future.