NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Cards With Ampere GA104 GPUs Spotted

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards have been spotted using the GA104 GPU by Matthew Smith (TechPowerUp's GPU Database Editor). The entries are very recent which means that AIBs are using defective Ampere dies to power the mainstream gaming graphics card.

NVIDIA's GA104 GPU Powered GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Cards Spotted

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card is based on the Ampere GA106 GPU which is a whole different SKU compared to the GA104 which powers the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti & GeForce RTX 3070.

Based on the new entry, it looks like NVIDIA may have a surplus stock of defective GPU dies that didn't make it into the higher-end graphics card but are still good enough for the RTX 3060 cards. This means that while the graphics card will retain its core specifications such as 3584 CUDA cores and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory running across a 192-bit bus interface, the chip itself will be a much higher-end SKU than the RTX 3060's original GA106 GPU core.

NVIDIA Ampere GA104 and GA106 GPU dies pictured together. (Image Credits: TechPowerUp)

This won't be the first time that NVIDIA has used defective 104 dies to replace 106 SKUs. The RTX 2060 that was originally based on the TU106 GPU received several configurations including one of which featured a TU104 GPU. Other cards such as the Turing TU117 powered GeForce GTX 1650 also received updated configurations in TU116 and TU106 flavors. The latter offered better NVENC support and slightly faster content creation capabilities though we are unlikely to see those in the TU104 based RTX 3060 cards since Turing had a lot of architectural differences in the higher-end & the mainstream GPU SKUs.

What we could see is the GA104 powered GeForce RTX 3060 to allow stable boost clocks along with better control over power than its constrained GA106 variant. So overall, most of you would never know what's lying under the hood of your NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card, whether it be a GA104 or a GA106 GPU-based variant. It was recently reported that the supply of GA106 GPUs might become constrained so that might also explain why these defective GA104 dies are being repurposed for the RTX 3060.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications:

Graphics Card Name	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
GPU Name	Ampere GA107	Ampere GA107	Ampere GA106-300	Ampere GA104-200	Ampere GA104-300	Ampere GA104-400	Ampere GA102-200	Ampere GA102-225	Ampere GA102-300
Process Node	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm	Samsung 8nm
Die Size	TBA	TBA	TBA	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	395.2mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2	628.4mm2
Transistors	TBA	TBA	TBA	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	17.4 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion	28 Billion
CUDA Cores	2048?	2560?	3584	4864	5888	6144	8704	10240	10496
TMUs / ROPs	64 / 40	80 / 48	112 / 64	152 / 80	184 / 96	192/ 96	272 / 96	320 / 112	328 / 112
Tensor / RT Cores	64 / 16	80 / 20	112 / 28	152 / 38	184 / 46	192/ 48	272 / 68	320 / 80	328 / 82
Base Clock	TBA	TBA	1320 MHz	1410 MHz	1500 MHz	1575 MHz	1440 MHz	1365 MHz	1400 MHz
Boost Clock	TBA	TBA	1780 MHz	1665 MHz	1730 MHz	1770 MHz	1710 MHz	1665 MHz	1700 MHz
FP32 Compute	TBA	TBA	12.7 TFLOPs	16.2 TFLOPs	20 TFLOPs	22 TFLOPs	30 TFLOPs	34 TFLOPs	36 TFLOPs
RT TFLOPs	TBA	TBA	25.4 TFLOPs	32.4 TFLOPs	40 TFLOPs	42 TFLOPs	58 TFLOPs	67 TFLOPs	69 TFLOPs
Tensor-TOPs	TBA	TBA	101 TOPs	129.6 TOPs	163 TOPs	174 TOPs	238 TOPs	273 TOPs	285 TOPs
Memory Capacity	4 GB GDDR6?	4 GB GDDR6?	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6X	10 GB GDDR6X	12 GB GDDR6X	24 GB GDDR6X
Memory Bus	128-bit	128-bit	192-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	320-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Memory Speed	TBA	TBA	15 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps	19.5 Gbps
Bandwidth	TBA	TBA	360 Gbps	448 Gbps	448 Gbps	608 Gbps	760 Gbps	912 Gbps	936 Gbps
TGP	~75W	~100W	170W	200W	220W	290W	320W	350W	350W
Price (MSRP / FE)	$149?	$199?	$329	$399 US	$499 US	$599 US	$699 US	$1199	$1499 US
Launch (Availability)	2021?	2021?	February 2021	December 2020	29th October 2020	10th June 2021	17th September 2020	3rd June 2021	24th September 2020

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