NVIDIA's RTX 3060 is back on shelves in China, selling at around $325 with limited batches

NVIDIA's five-year-old RTX 3060 has made a comeback sooner than expected. Earlier reports pointed to a July return, but the Ampere-based GPU has already appeared on shelves in China, presumably ahead of a wider global rollout. According to ChannelGate, the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB is now available in mainland China.

The specific model making its entry is the Colorful Battle-Ax GeForce RTX 3060 DUO 12GB V2. The bulk wholesale price is 2,199 yuan, or around $325, while VideoCardz highlights that Colorful's official store lists it at 2,349 RMB, which comes to approximately $347. For context, the card's original MSRP back in 2021 was $329. The listing also shows shipment starting this week, with delivery expected before June 5.

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The initial allocation is reportedly very limited, with some regions receiving only a few dozen units. Colorful is reportedly planning weekly restocks to build toward a stable supply, but it will likely take a couple of months before the GPU is fully available again at scale. Apart from Colorful, previous reports also named ASUS, MSI, and GALAX among the board partners expected to receive allocation.

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The RTX 3060 12GB has always had a following among budget gamers, largely because of its VRAM advantage over newer cards like the GeForce RTX 4060 and RTX 5060. However, as we previously noted, the only way this revival would make sense as a budget option is if NVIDIA priced it in the sub-$200 range.

The GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB launched at $299 and, while rising memory costs have pushed street prices closer to $350, it still delivers significantly better performance than the RTX 3060. The older card offers an extra 4 GB of VRAM, which can be useful for higher-resolution workloads, but despite having less memory, the RTX 5060 8 GB outperforms the RTX 3060 12 GB in the vast majority of games and scenarios.