Nvidia reportedly revives RTX 3060 production with Samsung to ease shortages
Nvidia reportedly revives its RTX 3060 using Samsung’s 8nm node to ease GPU shortages
According to sources at Hankyung, Nvidia has tasked Samsung with restarting RTX 3060 GPU production using its 8nm lithography node. This will revive Nvidia’s two-generation-old RTX 30 series, which exited production in 2024. This revival will reportedly ease the global shortage of GPUs and help Nvidia work around export restrictions imposed by the US on China and other regions.
This new report follows up on reports in January of Nvidia’s planned RTX 3060 revival. Currently, it is unknown whether Nvidia plans to revive its RTX 3060 in 8GB or 12GB form, or how it plans to price these new graphics cards. Furthermore, it is unclear why Nvidia reportedly plans to revive its RTX 30 series instead of its RTX 40 series.
Why the RTX 3060?
NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series and RTX 50 series both use TSMC 4nm production capabilities. As such, producing RTX 40 series GPUs would take production capabilities away from Nvidia’s newer RTX 50 series. By reviving its older RTX 30 series, Nvidia can use Samsung’s 8nm lithography node, which has undoubtedly matured and become more cost-effective since the RTX 30 series launched. This means that Nvidia will use separate fab space and will not affect the production of its newer products. Nvidia’s RTX 30 series launched in 2021 using Samsung’s 8nm lithography node.
According to the semiconductor industry on the 8th, Samsung Electronics’ foundry division will soon begin producing the older GPU, the RTX 3060, using the 8-nanometer process. GPUs were previously used to render images in PCs and game consoles, but are now being used as core components in AI accelerators (semiconductor packages specialized for AI). The RTX 3060 is a GPU that NVIDIA introduced in 2021, and was produced by Samsung Electronics using the 8-nanometer process at the time.
– hankyung
Honestly, reviving the RTX 3060 would be a strange move from Nvidia. After all, Nvidia’s RTX 30 series does not support Nvidia’s newest RTX features. DLSS Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation are unsupported. This places this GPU at a disadvantage compared with newer Nvidia GPU models.
While restarting RTX 30-series production could be seen as a clever move to address shortages, the RTX 3060 is a low-end GPU by today’s standards. It was an excellent GPU for its time, but given the memory constraints in today’s market, Nvidia are unlikely to re-release this GPU in its original (superior) 12GB form. If this GPU is indeed revived, Nvidia will likely re-release its 8GB model, which has less memory capacity and lower memory bandwidth than the original 12GB variant.
You can join the discussion on Nvidia reportedly restarting RTX 3060 production on the OC3D Forums.
