NVIDIA is reportedly bringing back the RTX 3060 12GB in June, as RTX 5050 9GB gets pushed back

The gaming hardware scene seems to be peddling backward. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is now rumored to return as early as June, and rather than pushing ahead with a new entry-level RTX 5050 9GB variant, the green team is apparently prioritizing a two-generation-old GPU architecture.

The rumor comes from well-known hardware leaker MEGAsizeGPU on X, who claims NVIDIA is pausing the transition from its 8GB RTX 5050 to a 9GB model specifically due to the reintroduction of the 12 GB RTX 3060. That lines up with previous chatter around the RTX 3060's return and reports that Samsung has resumed production of NVIDIA's 8nm GeForce RTX 3060 at its Pyeongtaek factory.

It does feel a bit bananas that NVIDIA is reaching back two generations instead of just refreshing the RTX 4060, but there is a logic to it. The RTX 40 and 50 series use TSMC's 4nm process, meaning that producing more RTX 40 series GPUs would reduce capacity reserved for the newer RTX 50 series. The RTX 30 series, on the other hand, runs on Samsung's 8nm node and uses GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR7, which may simply be easier to source now.

That said, the performance trade-off is real. The RTX 3060's older architecture means it will work harder than RTX 40 series options or newer cards like the RTX 5060 and 5070. It also misses out on NVIDIA's newer features entirely, with no support for DLSS Frame Generation or Multi-Frame Generation, putting it at a clear disadvantage against more recent NVIDIA GPUs.

Pricing is still unknown, but based on current RTX 5050 pricing of around $300 and RTX 5060 at about $350, it should fall somewhere between these two cards. The card uses an older architecture but brings considerably more CUDA cores than the RTX 5050, roughly on par with the RTX 5060. We hope NVIDIA prices it somewhere in the sub-$200 range, as that is where it would actually make sense as a budget option.

2

It's also worth noting that this isn't the first time the company has resurrected an older GPU in times of trouble. In 2021, the RTX 2060 12GB made a surprise comeback right before the RTX 4090 arrived. So you could say this is standard in NVIDIA's approach, and it wouldn't be doing this unless it felt it needed to.

The RTX 3060 was one of the best budget GPU options when it launched, and five years later, it is still sitting near the top of Steam's Hardware Survey most-used GPU charts. There is a real audience for this card, whether that is users upgrading from something even older or first-time budget PC builders. The 12GB of VRAM is also a genuine selling point in a market where newer 8GB cards are reaching VRAM limits on the latest games.