Nvidia may restart production of its most popular GPU: the RTX 3060

[midian182]

Rumor mill: Is Nvidia going to restart production of the Steam survey's most popular GPU? According to a leaker, the company is going to bring back the RTX 3060, launched in early 2021, this quarter due to the memory shortage crisis that's plunged the industry into turmoil.

The RTX 3060 remains a much-loved card – as illustrated by its position atop the Steam survey. Production reportedly stopped in 2024, with partners continuing to sell inventory through 2025. It's believed that all warehouse inventory was depleted in December 2025.

However, we may not have seen the end of new RTX 3060 models. According to leaker hongxing2020, who has a long and impressive record when it comes to revealing Nvidia's plans, Team Green has told its partners that the RTX 3060 will be returning in the first quarter of 2026.

Most popular GPUs among Steam survey participants during December

The leaker never said which of the RTX 3060 series would be coming back. In addition to the original and its 12GB of VRAM, there's a cut-down model with 8GB and reduced memory subsystem, as well as the RTX 3060 Ti and the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) models with the old cryptomining limiter.

While all rumors and unverified claims should be taken with a grain of salt, it's easy to understand why Nvida would take this action.

01.05update
rtx3060 Q1 come back… 🥲

– hongxing2020 (@hongxing2020) January 5, 2026

The tech industry as a whole is feeling the impact of the memory shortage caused by massive demand from AI data centers.

It was reported last week that both AMD and Nvidia are expected to raise prices of their current-gen graphics cards in the first quarter of 2026 – the already expensive RTX 5090 could reach a comical $5,000, according to some reports. Asus, meanwhile, has confirmed that some of its products will be receiving price hikes as a result of the AI boom.

The latest RTX 5000-series cards use GDDR7 memory, which is expected to be impacted by the hikes more than the older GDDR6. With prices – across more than just tech products – and the cost of living so high, a brand-new RTX 3060 at a very reasonable price might be more successful than you'd imagine – as long as it's not the 8GB version.

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Nvidia may restart production of its most popular GPU: the RTX 3060

 

[yRaz]

The only reason 8GB GOUs are bad is that developers don't know how to use UE5. With the RAM shortages we almost certainly won't see an increase in VRAM next generation and, know what, in fine with that. VRAM doesn't actually help graphics fidelity all that much. Instead of devs using VRAM to make better games, they're using to cut development costs.

The AAA games that use all that VRAM aren't even worth bothering with these days anyway. Was Bauldgers Gate 3 a AAA game? Because I can't think of the last one played.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The only reason 8GB GOUs are bad is that developers don't know how to use UE5. With the RAM shortages we almost certainly won't see an increase in VRAM next generation and, know what, in fine with that. VRAM doesn't actually help graphics fidelity all that much. Instead of devs using VRAM to make better games, they're using to cut development costs.

The AAA games that use all that VRAM aren't even worth bothering with these days anyway. Was Bauldgers Gate 3 a AAA game? Because I can't think of the last one played.

The reason 8GB GPUs are bad is because 8GB is insufficient. It's OK to upgrade.

 

[yRaz]

The reason 8GB GPUs are bad is because 8GB is insufficient. It's OK to upgrade.

Remember I told you how you don't ask questions? WHY is 8GB bad? It's unreal engine 5 and AAA games that are barely worth bothering with. Should they have more VRAM? Sure, but we aren't getting more VRAm especially now with the shortage.

So here's an idea, stop supporting the developers and citing hardware as the problem. I also love how people max out graphics settings on entry level GPUs and talk about how they don't have enough VRAM to play the game.

As to me upgrading, I had no idea that my 6700xt was an 8GB GPU. As long as it plays EvE and ESO at 4k120, my 6700xt isn't going anywhere at these prices.

 

[NumberNine]

Nvidia selling the solution to the problem they created. Fun stuff.

 

[themastergoose]

We're supposed to be excited Nvidia is throwing gamers the scraps from a card launched almost 5 years ago (and likely to hit the market today above the original MSRP)?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Remember I told you how you don't ask questions? WHY is 8GB bad? It's unreal engine 5 and AAA games that are barely worth bothering with. Should they have more VRAM? Sure, but we aren't getting more VRAm especially now with the shortage.

So here's an idea, stop supporting the developers and citing hardware as the problem. I also love how people max out graphics settings on entry level GPUs and talk about how they don't have enough VRAM to play the game.

As to me upgrading, I had no idea that my 6700xt was an 8GB GPU. As long as it plays EvE and ESO at 4k120, my 6700xt isn't going anywhere at these prices.

I dont need to waste my time researching your questions. You can use Google to find the answers. I'm just giving you the information you need to get your brain running, because thinking is good and I can help you think instead of just reacting. Instead of asking questions. Stop relying on ChatGPT man and open your mind!

And the 6700xt was a 12GB GPU dude. Not 8GB. Seems there's a lot you dont know.

We're supposed to be excited Nvidia is throwing gamers the scraps from a card launched almost 5 years ago (and likely to hit the market today above the original MSRP)?

Well yeah, there's lots of gamers that cant help but CONSOOM and constantly cry that there are no affordable cards.

Well here you go, an affordable card.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

The only reason 8GB GOUs are bad is that developers don't know how to use UE5. With the RAM shortages we almost certainly won't see an increase in VRAM next generation and, know what, in fine with that. VRAM doesn't actually help graphics fidelity all that much. Instead of devs using VRAM to make better games, they're using to cut development costs.

The AAA games that use all that VRAM aren't even worth bothering with these days anyway. Was Bauldgers Gate 3 a AAA game? Because I can't think of the last one played.

8GB GPUs are bad because GPUs have gotten fast enough to use more VRAM.

More polygons, better textures, machine learning tricks, rasterization tricks, better NPC "AI", and just raw compute all take VRAM. Mainstream GPUs are now fast enough to need more than 8GB to feed them.

It's the same reason 10GB was "bad" for the 3080 because 12GB was a better fit for its GPU performance.

It's about balance. An 8GB 3060 is more balanced than an 8GB 5060. And buying (or still using) old hardware is fine if it is priced right and people have appropriate expectations.

Note: It doesn't matter if the devs could take more time to slightly reduce VRAM requirements (which would increase the cost of every game), just like it doesn't matter that Windows has bloat slowing down your CPU. The software industry is moving on with the expectation that your hardware is too. You of course can switch to linux and only play older/indie games, but don't complain that new things run poorly on old hardware.

 

[Vulcanproject]

As I have said before, it is mainstream consoles that set the baseline targets for game developers. PS5 and Series X gave developers and game engines expectations there will be 8GB+ of available VRAM as a bare minimum. That was in 2020. Even Switch 2 is giving developers 6-7GB for VRAM and it only targets 1080p much of the time.

An 8GB card in a PC in windows on a common 1440p display is only giving you about 7GB available.

There is nothing more to be done. We can say that the game engines should be more efficient and developers more careful with resources and they should. We all know practically that just isn't happening. There would need to be another major industry downturn to force austerity on devs.

I don't think it would be a bad thing for games, anyway. Realistically though the minimum is now going to be beyond 8GB even if there is a severe economic situation. All that would happen is a couple more years added to existing hardware before it is replaced.

 

[Burty117]

WHY is 8GB bad? It's unreal engine 5 and AAA games that are barely worth bothering with. Should they have more VRAM? Sure, but we aren't getting more VRAm especially now with the shortage.

The PS4 released in 2013, with 8GB of shared VRAM, so it's been the bare minimum for 13 years now.

I do agree developers are doing some really poor work with UE5, I'm not disputing that and I agree developers can make their games work with 8GB VRAM much better than they currently do.

I think 8GB has become a bit of a bottleneck because even the lowest end cards today (this includes the 3060) have dedicated RT cores built-in and are incredibly fast, but they don't have enough VRAM to actually utilise all their performance.
Why bother putting RT cores in the design if it's going to paired with such low VRAM it's not really usable? Why does someone who's just spent £300~ on a GPU have to have lower texture quality than the console version?

Game engines have moved on since 2013 and use more VRAM 13 years later, can't really blame them when 16GB became the norm on consoles since 2020, 6 years ago now.

8GB is plenty for really low end cards, that primarily are used for trancoding video, or cards that aren't that fast, Hardware Unboxed has done several video's even comparing the 3060 12GB vs 3060Ti and in certain games, the 3060 12GB was just the better card even though it's actual GPU is substantially slower, the 3060Ti purely hindered by VRAM. You could say "turn the graphic settings down on the 3060Ti" but now you're having a worse experience than a cheaper 3060, you paid all that extra money for the more powerful GPU, just to not be able to use it properly because Nvidia cheaped out on the VRAM, and I think we can easily say this is Nvidia / AMD failures here, Intel starts at 10GB and consoles come with 16GB.

 

[yRaz]

And the 6700xt was a 12GB GPU dude. Not 8GB. Seems there's a lot you dont know.

I know sarcasm doesn't translate well to text, but jeez. I was giving you enough credit to have the reading comprehension skills to pick up on it. If one of us is dependant on AI, it sounds like you

 

[Xelions]

We're supposed to be excited Nvidia is throwing gamers the scraps from a card launched almost 5 years ago (and likely to hit the market today above the original MSRP)?

Fu#$ yeh boi! Your card will be manufactured from the bin - the bin of chips. AI cards will use premium chips and all the off-cuts will be for the 30XX series. This is capitalism in hardware oh man, crazy times!

 

[Xelions]

Alley ways ain't just for drugs or contraband, you know..

Hey man, I wanna buy some chips, I'm desperate for an upgrade. Hit me straight with 32GB - I want the best stuff money can buy

GPU board modding may become a norm

 

[Loadedaxe]

The PS4 released in 2013, with 8GB of shared VRAM, so it's been the bare minimum for 13 years now.

I do agree developers are doing some really poor work with UE5, I'm not disputing that and I agree developers can make their games work with 8GB VRAM much better than they currently do.

I think 8GB has become a bit of a bottleneck because even the lowest end cards today (this includes the 3060) have dedicated RT cores built-in and are incredibly fast, but they don't have enough VRAM to actually utilise all their performance.
Why bother putting RT cores in the design if it's going to paired with such low VRAM it's not really usable? Why does someone who's just spent £300~ on a GPU have to have lower texture quality than the console version?

Game engines have moved on since 2013 and use more VRAM 13 years later, can't really blame them when 16GB became the norm on consoles since 2020, 6 years ago now.

8GB is plenty for really low end cards, that primarily are used for trancoding video, or cards that aren't that fast, Hardware Unboxed has done several video's even comparing the 3060 12GB vs 3060Ti and in certain games, the 3060 12GB was just the better card even though it's actual GPU is substantially slower, the 3060Ti purely hindered by VRAM. You could say "turn the graphic settings down on the 3060Ti" but now you're having a worse experience than a cheaper 3060, you paid all that extra money for the more powerful GPU, just to not be able to use it properly because Nvidia cheaped out on the VRAM, and I think we can easily say this is Nvidia / AMD failures here, Intel starts at 10GB and consoles come with 16GB.

The PS4 comparison is misleading, that 8GB was shared memory on fixed hardware with extreme optimization. That’s not the same as 8GB of dedicated VRAM on a PC juggling drivers, OS overhead, and very different configs.

I agree UE5 implementations are often poor, but that’s part of the problem, bad scaling and console first development are being used to justify higher VRAM use rather than efficiency. Consoles having 16GB since 2020 doesn’t translate 1 to 1 to PC either, since it’s shared, tightly controlled memory.

The 3060 12GB vs 3060 Ti example mostly highlights Nvidia’s segmentation. Pairing stronger GPUs with constrained VRAM was deliberate.

And even if this shouldn’t be the reality, it clearly is...this behavior isn’t going to change, so GPUs simply need more VRAM to avoid being artificially bottlenecked.

It’s going to be an interesting few years ahead as we deal with the memory situation at hand.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I know sarcasm doesn't translate well to text, but jeez. I was giving you enough credit to have the reading comprehension skills to pick up on it. If one of us is dependant on AI, it sounds like you

You don't understand how to make a sarcastic comment. And now that you have no argument against your screw up you resort to insults.

Maybe you should speak to some AI agents and work on your argumentative skills. And now that you've hallucinated an argument (that someone insinuated that you sounded like AI) your response will claim you are somehow just trying to proselytize information to open people's minds for some reason.

The PS4 comparison is misleading, that 8GB was shared memory on fixed hardware with extreme optimization. That’s not the same as 8GB of dedicated VRAM on a PC juggling drivers, OS overhead, and very different configs.

I agree UE5 implementations are often poor, but that’s part of the problem, bad scaling and console first development are being used to justify higher VRAM use rather than efficiency. Consoles having 16GB since 2020 doesn’t translate 1 to 1 to PC either, since it’s shared, tightly controlled memory.

The 3060 12GB vs 3060 Ti example mostly highlights Nvidia’s segmentation. Pairing stronger GPUs with constrained VRAM was deliberate.

And even if this shouldn’t be the reality, it clearly is...this behavior isn’t going to change, so GPUs simply need more VRAM to avoid being artificially bottlenecked.

It’s going to be an interesting few years ahead as we deal with the memory situation at hand.

Game consoles have long led the demand on Vram. the Xbox 360/ ps3 era saw even 512 mb cards become insufficient despite the consoles having 512 mb total.

Consoles run sup par settings and dithered resolutions. It's good rule of thumb: whatever ram consoles have, choose a card with that much Vram and you are set for a generation. 2, 3, even 4GB proved insufficient during the ps4 era.

What I really don't understand is why people are so stuck on 8 GB GPUs. You didn't see this with 2gb or 512mb GPUs. But people really think GPUs, despite being much faster, should stick to an arbitrary VRAM limit from 2014.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Ampere is back, baby!

 

[yRaz]

You don't understand how to make a sarcastic comment. And now that you have no argument against your screw up you resort to insults.

Maybe you should speak to some AI agents and work on your argumentative skills. And now that you've hallucinated an argument (that someone insinuated that you sounded like AI) your response will claim you are somehow just trying to proselytize information to open people's minds for some reason.

You started throwing insults around initially and it seems like the limit to them is saying I'm am AI or that I'm using AI. Meanwhile, I've talked to you plenty of times where you have told me "AI said this, AI said that so what you're saying isn't true". Sounds like you're projecting yourself onto me. Things like this is why I said you don't ever contribute anything to the conversation. The minute someone says something you don't like you just start throwing insults around. This is kid stuff.

 

[poshflamingos]

My god, this comment section shows how uninformed even the so called "enthusiasts" in a tech forum are.

The only reason 8GB GOUs are bad is that developers don't know how to use UE5. (...) VRAM doesn't actually help graphics fidelity all that much.

No, the reason 8 GB of VRAM is bad is because the current gen consoles, which determine the baseline spec for game development, have more than 8 GB of VRAM. Any game that makes full use of console VRAM budget (10+ GB) will not run on 8 GB cards without ugly compromises.
Also, VRAM absolutely does help graphics fidelity, it's what allows you to use higher resolution textures.

Remember I told you how you don't ask questions? WHY is 8GB bad? It's unreal engine 5 and AAA games that are barely worth bothering with.

8 GB is bad because it forces you to sacrifice texture quality even when the GPU core itself is faster than the GPUs in the consoles.
Also, no, it is not only Unreal Engine 5. There's plenty of other games not using UE5 that have issues with 8 GB cards (like, off the top of my head, The Last of Us, Resident Evil 4, and Halo Infinite, for example).

8GB GPUs are bad because GPUs have gotten fast enough to use more VRAM.

More polygons, better textures, machine learning tricks, rasterization tricks, better NPC "AI", and just raw compute all take VRAM. Mainstream GPUs are now fast enough to need more than 8GB to feed them.

This is also very incorrect. The only thing that is correct here is "better textures". Everything else you listed has little to no impact on VRAM usage.
VRAM usage in modern games is ~80% to ~90% textures, and ~10% to ~20% framebuffers (the part that scales with resolution). In games that use ray tracing, BVH structures for raytracing also take a significant portion. But that's it, everything else is insignificant as far as VRAM usage goes.
Polygons, "rasterization tricks" (whatever that means), compute shaders and other shader effects have negligible impact on VRAM. NPC AI doesn't run on the GPU at all, it runs on the CPU, and has nothing whatsoever to do with VRAM.
In practice, the only thing that suffers when it comes to lack of VRAM is texture quality. Every game that runs poorly on 8 GB cards have the same issues, either degraded texture quality or texture pop-in.

The PS4 released in 2013, with 8GB of shared VRAM, so it's been the bare minimum for 13 years now.
(...)
Game engines have moved on since 2013 and use more VRAM 13 years later, can't really blame them when 16GB became the norm on consoles since 2020, 6 years ago now.

The PS4 had 8 GB of shared MEMORY, it was not all VRAM. It reserved 2 GB for the system/OS, and another portion had to be used by the CPU to run the game software itself. Only about 4 GB out of those shared 8 GB could actually be used as VRAM.
Same for current consoles, they do not have 16 GB of VRAM, they have 16 GB of shared memory. The Series X has a "cap" at 10 GB of VRAM, because if you go above that you step into the slower 6 GB portion of the memory (10 GB at 560 GB/s and 6 GB at 336 GB/s in an asymmetric setup) and take performance hit to the GPU. The PS5 is more flexible since it doesn't have this memory setup issue (all 16 GB at 448 GB/s), but it will still be around 10 GB of VRAM usually, 12 GB at most on games that are light on CPU RAM usage.

 

[MiqWalsh]

Well yeah, there's lots of gamers that cant help but CONSOOM and constantly cry that there are no affordable cards.

Well here you go, an affordable card.

Face it, the days of cards capable of playing everything on ultra-high settings & possessing ridiculous amounts of VRAM for the price of an entry-level card never in fact existed. But you try telling folks that.....'cos too many people "remember" the past through badly out-of-focus rose-tinted glasses.

The extent of my gaming these days is the odd half-hour here & there with a small number of quite enjoyable indie titles.....like the elderly Nexuiz, and it's successor Xonotic. And the rather similar Red Eclipse.

(I have a mate to blame for my having any interest at all.....back in the late 90s with a PS1. He played Doom & Quake till the cows came home; didn't matter what time of day or night I went round his, he was ALWAYS on them....)

(*shrug...*)

Miq.

 

[Burty117]

The PS4 comparison is misleading, that 8GB was shared memory on fixed hardware with extreme optimization. That’s not the same as 8GB of dedicated VRAM on a PC juggling drivers, OS overhead, and very different configs.

You're proving my point even more as to why PC needs more VRAM, and It's not misleading, developers use consoles as the baseline for target hardware, that's just how it is.

I agree UE5 implementations are often poor, but that’s part of the problem, bad scaling and console first development are being used to justify higher VRAM use rather than efficiency. Consoles having 16GB since 2020 doesn’t translate 1 to 1 to PC either, since it’s shared, tightly controlled memory.

I agree with all of that, the fact of the matter is 3000 series GPU's onwards should have had double the VRAM than what they actually came out with, especially the 4000 and 5000 series, we can't hang onto 8GB of VRAM forever, Intel being the latest player in the field and they've decided 10GB is a minimum with 12GB and upwards being normal.

The 3060 12GB vs 3060 Ti example mostly highlights Nvidia’s segmentation. Pairing stronger GPUs with constrained VRAM was deliberate.

And even if this shouldn’t be the reality, it clearly is...this behavior isn’t going to change, so GPUs simply need more VRAM to avoid being artificially bottlenecked.

It’s going to be an interesting few years ahead as we deal with the memory situation at hand.

Which is precisely why journalists and gamers alike are now shouting about the poor VRAM limitations in such expensive products, it was a cost cutting measure by AMD and Nvidia, it now needs to hurt their reputations a little bit so they can get it back on-track.

In the immediate future though, game devs are going to have to learn to scale their games for 8GB cards, it's absolutely possible, but they're actually going to need to spend time optimising.

The PS4 had 8 GB of shared MEMORY, it was not all VRAM. It reserved 2 GB for the system/OS, and another portion had to be used by the CPU to run the game software itself. Only about 4 GB out of those shared 8 GB could actually be used as VRAM.
Same for current consoles, they do not have 16 GB of VRAM, they have 16 GB of shared memory. The Series X has a "cap" at 10 GB of VRAM, because if you go above that you step into the slower 6 GB portion of the memory (10 GB at 560 GB/s and 6 GB at 336 GB/s in an asymmetric setup) and take performance hit to the GPU. The PS5 is more flexible since it doesn't have this memory setup issue (all 16 GB at 448 GB/s), but it will still be around 10 GB of VRAM usually, 12 GB at most on games that are light on CPU RAM usage.

4.5-5.5GB was available to games on the PS4, When it comes to the PS5 though, the PS5 pro actually comes with an extra 2GB DDR5 to run the OS, the whole 16GB is available to game devs.

 

[Loadedaxe]

You're proving my point even more as to why PC needs more VRAM, and It's not misleading, developers use consoles as the baseline for target hardware, that's just how it is.

I never said I disagree with you.

 

[poshflamingos]

4.5-5.5GB was available to games on the PS4

"Available for games" isn't the same as VRAM, genius. Those 5.5 GB that are left after you substract the OS-reserved memory have to be shared by both the CPU and the GPU, it isn't all for the GPU. The CPU still needs RAM to run the game logic.

When it comes to the PS5 though, the PS5 pro actually comes with an extra 2GB DDR5 to run the OS, the whole 16GB is available to game devs.

So? The vast majority of current gen consoles in use aren't the Pro. The baseline is the standard PS5.
And again, even on the Pro, the whole 16 GB cannot all be used as VRAM, because the CPU still needs a portion of that to run the game itself.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

You started throwing insults around initially and it seems like the limit to them is saying I'm am AI or that I'm using AI. Meanwhile, I've talked to you plenty of times where you have told me "AI said this, AI said that so what you're saying isn't true". Sounds like you're projecting yourself onto me. Things like this is why I said you don't ever contribute anything to the conversation. The minute someone says something you don't like you just start throwing insults around. This is kid stuff.

Your gaslighting is easily disproven. I've never said "AI said this" because I dont use AI. The only time I ever wrote that was a comment that was clearly a joke back when chatGPT-3 came out, and I cant remember if it was even on this site.

Would you like to quote me anytime I have said that? Or is that something I should be doing for you? Because newsflash: I've never said it. False accusations, gaslighting, insults, you REALLY seem to be bad at this whole adult conversation thing.

As you said "This is kid stuff".

Face it, the days of cards capable of playing everything on ultra-high settings & possessing ridiculous amounts of VRAM for the price of an entry-level card never in fact existed. But you try telling folks that.....'cos too many people "remember" the past through badly out-of-focus rose-tinted glasses.

The extent of my gaming these days is the odd half-hour here & there with a small number of quite enjoyable indie titles.....like the elderly Nexuiz, and it's successor Xonotic. And the rather similar Red Eclipse.

(I have a mate to blame for my having any interest at all.....back in the late 90s with a PS1. He played Doom & Quake till the cows came home; didn't matter what time of day or night I went round his, he was ALWAYS on them....)

(*shrug...*)

Miq.

Yeah, everybody wants the days of $500 flagships back, but nobody wants the financial crisis that caused those prices back. nVidia making 2% margins and AMD losing billion was never sustainable.

Even back then, those $500 flagships and even $100 low end cards were out of reach because 1 of 10 people was unemployed and untold percentages were underemployed. Nobody had money in 2009.

 

[FaTaL]

I'm so glad got my 4090 when I did.

 

[Xelions]

Nobody had money in 2009.

Of course they did...

You know what bugs me on the 2008/09 GFC. It didn't affect everyone equally, and I don't mean globally! I live in OZ, and the gov bailed out the banks - the housing market was protected as a result and neither should've happened. From there products were expensive On the other hand the US housing market crashed and prices dropped. I've seen much bigger events since then with no repercussions for the country they're in or the people who caused it let alone countries who are tied in somehow economically or part of Western/Asian/Etc systems, and the only people that suffer are the avg person, or the person that has put money into something that they'd expect to have - not talking stocks either.