Nvidia brings 5-year old gaming GPU back from the dead, throws in $329 price tag

The idea of a 5-year old gaming GPU being reintroduced might seem absurd, but the current supply chain fiasco which has taken hold of the gaming market definitely makes the event a lot less surprising. As rumored previously plenty of times previously, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB gaming GPU has finally made a comeback - 66 months after its original launch.

As spotted by VideoCardz, Newegg has listed the MSI GeForce RTX 3060 on its digital shelves, boasting 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and a price tag of $329. Here's a refresher for those who do not remember much about the card - 3,584 CUDA cores based on an 8 nm process, 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 192-bit bus, and a peak boost clock of 1807 MHz for this particular card.

Nvidia RTX 3060 is no match for the RTX 5060 - a surprise to no one

Performance wise, the newer GeForce RTX 5060 (currently $349 on Amazon) should be able to outshine the RTX 3060 by around 60% in modern benchmarks, while costing barely 10% more. Of course, the former ships with only 8 GB of faster GDDR7 memory. Folks who do not absolutely require the additional VRAM will definitely be much better served by the 5060, unless the RTX 3060 is sold at a solid discount.

In real-life gaming tests, the RTX 5060 can often be found rocking a 40-50% performance benefit over its two-generation old "Ampere" ancestor. The gap narrows at higher resolutions, particularly for games that are memory intensive. Even then, gamers who want to enjoy almost any modern AAA game will be much better served by the RTX 5060 for just 5-10% more cash.