The desperation to get rid of the components and inventory of the RTX 30 by not only NVIDIA, but also its partners, has led them to create special models outside the standard categories of the range in order to clean stock. The example that we bring you now is that of the RTX 3060 8GBa graphics card with significant deficiencies in terms of performance and where its own name is, in part, a subtle lie.
The announcement by the 12 GB RTX 4080 raised blisters, more than anything because neither the GPU nor the video memory was what its name said, but rather an RTX 4070 with the name changed. People’s reactions were such that NVIDIA was forced to cancel the release. Well, ASUS has made a similar move with its 8 GB RTX 3060 Dual graphics cards, which does have the GPU of an RTX 3060, but should not be considered as such due to its lower performance.
Why do ASUS RTX 3060 Dual 8GB perform worse?
First of all we have to differentiate the RTX 3060 from the model finished with Ti, since the second uses a different and more powerful GPU and GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus. Instead, 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 then happens to have it 128 bitslosing a third of your bandwidth.
Taking into account that graphics chips depend for their performance on the data flow that reaches them, this means that if the memory bus is shorter and can transmit less data, then performance will suffer as a result. This means that The 8GB RTX 3060s not only have less video memory, they also perform much worse than the 12GB models.
The affected models are one of the unknown Manli and a variant of the ASUS RTX 3060 DualIt is unknown if other manufacturers are going to go this route, but they would have it easy, 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 due to the fact that it does not exceed 15 euros on the manufacturing cost of the graphics card, which is not the selling price.
Is it better than the 6 GB models?
Logically, when we see a graphics card with a larger video memory capacity, we tend to think that it is more powerful. It is logical, a greater amount of VRAM this means more chips on board, a wider bus and a more powerful GPU. However, since 1GB and 2GB chips are sold to builders 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 we must go carefully when purchasing them, they may be cheaper, but the cut in performance can be expensive
