MSI And EVGA Pounce On NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 3GB With Custom Graphics Cards

NVIDIA just announced a new, cheaper variant of its Pascal-based GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. While the standard GTX 1060 comes with 6GB of memory and retails for $249, NVIDIA is launching a 3GB variant that costs just $199.

All other specs remain the same, which means that you’ll find 1152 CUDA cores, a base clock of 1506MHz, a boost clock of 1708MHz, a 192-bit memory interface and a TDP of 120 watts. NVIDIA does note, however, that the GTX 1060 6GB is on average about 5 percent faster than its new 3GB counterpart. On the other hand, NVIDIA is also quick to point out that the GTX 1060 3GB is still roughly 10 percent faster than the AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB.

With that being said, two graphics OEMs have already come out swinging with their own GTX 1060 3GB families: MSI and EVGA. When it comes to graphics cards, MSI is a manufacturer that likes to blanket its customers with plenty of choices. Such is the case with MSI’s take on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 — the company is offering no less than five models to choose from at varying clock speeds:

Likewise, EVGA also has five SKUs to choose from, including the pint-sized GeForce GTX 1060 3GB SSC.

NVIDIA says that drivers are being issued today to support the new 3GB cards, while retail availability is expected to open up within the coming weeks.