GeForce RTX 3060 Return Rumored As GPU Leads The Pack On Steam
Following reports that NVIDIA discontinued production of its two-generations old GeForce RTX 3060 in August 2024 and, more recently, chatter that supplies of the mid-range GPU in the retail channel were running out, a fresh rumor has emerged indicating that the Ampere part will be resurrected for another production round this quarter.
That's the extent of the rumor, with @hongxing2020 on X simply stating that the GeForce RTX 3060 is slated to come back in Q1. Assuming their information is accurate, there's no indication of whether the card's renewed production run will be in 8GB or 12GB form, or potentially both.
01.05update
— hongxing2020 (@hongxing2020) January 5, 2026
rtx3060 Q1 come back… 🥲
NVIDIA originally launched the GeForce RTX 3060 in February 2021. The original SKU debuted with 12GB of GDDR6 linked to a 192-bit bus, giving the card up to 360GB/s of memory bandwidth. Then in October 2022, NVIDIA's hardware partners quietly began offering a version with 8GB of GDDR6 and a narrower 128-bit bus, yielding up to 240GB/s of memory bandwidth.
It was one of two new additions to the GeForce RTX 30 series lineup at the time, the other being an upgraded version of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti with faster GDDR6X memory (the original launched with GDDR6). Both Ti models feature a 256-bit bus, and the faster memory chips gives the GDDR6X variant a memory bandwidth boost to 608GB/s (versus 448GB/s).
"To give more choices to gamers and creators, we're introducing a couple of additional options from our network of graphics card partners worldwide," NVIDIA said at the time.
None of those cards are terribly exciting now that NVIDIA's followed up the GeForce RTX 30 series with the 40 series (Ada Lovelace) and 50 series (Blackwell). However, they remain popular. Valve's final Steam hardware survey of 2025 shows the GeForce RTX 3060 retaking the stop spot as the most widely used GPU, followed by the GeForce RTX 4060 (laptop and desktop, in that order), GeForce RTX 3050, GeForce GTX 1650, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
The rankings don't differentiate between different VRAM configurations for any given GPU model, but the trend is clear—gamers on Steam by and large flock to more affordable GPUs, even if higher end models steal the spotlight in news headlines, forums discussions, and so forth.
If NVIDIA does open production back up for the GeForce RTX 3060, we can reasonably assume it's a maneuver to contend with the memory chip shortage that it helped create in the consumer segment. Companies are prioritizing more lucrative data center clients, as Micron indicated when it announced plans to retire its consumer Crucial brand after 29 years.
The implication is that GDDR6 memory chips are less prone to price hikes compared to GDDR7, though we'll have to wait and see if @hongxing2020's post proves accurate.
