Nvidia’s most popular graphics card just bit the dust

Nvidia is reportedly discontinuing the RTX 3060, which is easily one of the best graphics cards Nvidia has released in the past few years. The GPU is now over three years old, and Nvidia has apparently sent a notice to its board partners that the next order for these cards will be the last the company sends out.

The notice was posted on Board Channels, which is a forum where board partners discuss the internal movements of companies like Nvidia and AMD. Although Nvidia hasn’t confirmed that the RTX 3060 is being discontinued, it would make sense. The card was originally released in February 2021, and sales have likely declined in the face of newer cards like Nvidia’s own RTX 4060 and competitors like the Intel Arc A750.

The RTX 3060 stands as the most popular GPU on Steam, and it has for quite a few months. According to the latest Steam hardware survey, the RTX 3060 shows up in 5.71% of all gaming PCs. The GTX 1650, which is in second place, is found in 3.88% of gaming PCs. Although the RTX 3060 is massively popular, Nvidia’s newer RTX 4060 has been slowly crawling up the Steam hardware survey over the past few months, and it now shows up in 3.36% of gaming PCs.

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Board partners — the ones who actually release Nvidia’s GPUs — might be placing their final orders now, but it’ll take several months for the RTX 3060 to disappear from store shelves. Retailers are still likely getting shipments from board partners, and it’ll take a few months for Nvidia to send the final orders out to board partners. All of that is to say, although the RTX 3060 will slowly disappear from retailers, it won’t totally be gone for quite some time.

By the time the RTX 3060 is gone, Nvidia will likely have its RTX 5060 ready to go. We’ve seen rumors ramp up about Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs over the past few months, suggesting the generation will launch later this year. As we saw with the RTX 3060, a new card in this class will prop up the last-gen RTX 4060, and it will continue to rise in the Steam hardware survey.

Although the RTX 3060 remains the most popular graphics card around, it’s not exactly a great buy in 2024. Prices for the GPU haven’t significantly dropped, so you’ll spend around $300 for one today. At around that price, Nvidia’s RTX 4060 and AMD’s RX 7600 are both better buys.