The desperation to get rid of RTX 30 components and inventory not only by NVIDIA, but also by its partners, led them to create special models outside of the standard lineup categories in order to clean up the stock. The example that we bring to you now is that of the RTX 3060 8GBa graphics card with significant performance shortcomings and where its own name is, in part, a subtle lie.
The announcement by the 12GB RTX 4080 raised some blisters, more than anything because neither the GPU nor the video memory was what its name said, but rather an RTX 4070 with a changed name. People’s reactions were such that NVIDIA was forced to cancel the release. Well, ASUS has taken a similar step with its 8GB RTX 3060 Dual graphics cards, which have the GPU of an RTX 3060, but shouldn’t be considered as such due to their lower performance.
Why is the ASUS RTX 3060 Dual 8GB less efficient?
First of all you have to differentiate the RTX 3060 from the finished model with Ti, since the second uses a different and more powerful GPU and GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus. In exchange, the RTX 3060 typically uses a 192-bit bus, allowing for 6GB or 12GB configurations. what if we cut the memory to 8 GB? well it happens to be 128 bitlosing a third of your bandwidth.
Taking into account that graphics chips depend for their performance on the flow of data reaching them, this means that if the memory bus is shorter and can transmit less data, performance will suffer. This means that The 8GB RTX 3060s not only have less video memory, but they also perform significantly worse than the 12GB models.
The affected models are one of the unknown Manli and a variant of the ASUS RTX 3060 DualWe don’t know if other manufacturers will go this route, but they would have an easy job, since they would only have to not solder two GDDR6 chips of 2 GB each to the board of the RTX 3060 12 GB. however, this is not a substantial cost reduction in that it does not exceed 15 dollars on the cost of manufacturing the graphics card, which is not the selling price.
Is it better than the 6GB models?
Logically, when we see a graphics card with a larger video memory capacity, we tend to think that it is more powerful. It makes sense, more VRAM means more chips on board, a wider bus and a more powerful GPU. However, since 1GB and 2GB chips are sold to manufacturers with GDDR6, there are situations like this. In which we have, on the one hand, 6 GB cards with a 192-bit bus and on the other hand, 8 GB cards with a 128-bit bus.
So you have to be careful when buying them, they can be cheaper, but the drop in performance can be expensive
