Nvidia is preparing to re-release the GeForce RTX 2060 and 2060 Super GPUs. So says French hardware site, Overclocking (via Videocardz).
The rumour comes around a month ahead of the late February launch of the RTX 2060’s successor, the RTX 3060. It’s claimed stock of the reborn RTX 2060 and 2060 Super has already been sent out to board partners and system builders.
If true, the move comes as Nvidia continues to struggle with supply of its new RTX 30 series boards in the face of huge potent up demand from gamers and cryptocurrency miners, plus supply chain upheaval in the face of a global pandemic.
As it happens, if you take a look at the data Nvidia itself supplied regarding the new RTX 3060’s performance, reintroducing 2060 GPUs makes a lot of sense.
In the two raster-only rather than ray-traced titles show in the graph, the RTX 3060 is a pretty modest step over the RTX 2060. In the same graph, the RTX 2060 is shown to be a much, much bigger jump over the RTX 1060, albeit the graph points for the 1060 are almost invisible, by accident or design we dare not speculate.
Anyway, Nvidia’s own performance numbers imply the RTX 2060 will deliver a pretty similar experience in conventional raster games to an RTX 3060. That will only be even more true of the RTX 2060 Super. And, of course, the vast majority of games are still pure raster games.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | RTX 3060 | RTX 3060 Ti | RTX 2060 | RTX 2060 Super |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 3,584 | 4,864 | 1,920 | 2,176 |
| Boost Clock (GHz) | 1.78 | 1.67 | 1.68 | 1.65 |
| Base Clock (GHz) | 1.32 | 1.41 | 1.365 | 1.47 |
| Memory | 12 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 192-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit |
| Price | $329 | $399 | $349 | $399 |
| Availability | Late February, 2021 | December, 2020 | January, 2019 | July, 2019 |
Anyway, the big question is pricing. The RTX 3060 is $329 board. But where will the reborn RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super be positioned? On the one hand, it’s hard to imagine them being more expensive than the RTX 3060. Indeed, early last year the RTX 2060 had a price cut for $349 to $299.
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On the other, with supply so tight, it’s also not hard to imagine them finding homes. The RTX 2060 Super is a particularly tricky one. Thanks to a 256-bit memory bus, it has at least one obvious advantage over the RTX 3060. Performance-wise, it’s likely not far off the RTX 3060 in raster games, albeit the new Ampere architecture will give the 3060 a healthy lead in ray-tracing and perhaps where DLSS is in use.
Problem is, the RTX 2060 Super was a $399 board. So it either needs a big price cut to come in under the RTX 3060. Or we’ll have the weird situation of an old RTX 20 series board re-released and priced above its RTX 30 series near successor and on par with the RTX 3060 Ti.
Then again, the GPU supply situation is pretty catastrophic right now. With the RTX 2060 and 2060 Super based on TSMC’s old 12nm process, maybe there were a few old 12nm machines sitting idle and ready to pump old old GPUs for cheap. Our only concern is that the chipmaking industry is at capacity as a whole, it would seem, meaning the components necessary for even the RTX 2060 or 2060 Super, beyond GPUs, could be hard to come by. In that case, would many of these cards see the light of day?
Anyways, here's hoping that if these rumours are true, the cheap chips bit is accurate. PC gaming could do with a win.
