NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards have been spotted using the GA104 GPU by Matthew Smith (TechPowerUp's GPU Database Editor). The entries are very recent which means that AIBs are using defective Ampere dies to power the mainstream gaming graphics card.

NVIDIA's GA104 GPU Powered GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics Cards Spotted

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card is based on the Ampere GA106 GPU which is a whole different SKU compared to the GA104 which powers the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti & GeForce RTX 3070.

Based on the new entry, it looks like NVIDIA may have a surplus stock of defective GPU dies that didn't make it into the higher-end graphics card but are still good enough for the RTX 3060 cards. This means that while the graphics card will retain its core specifications such as 3584 CUDA cores and 12 GB of GDDR6 memory running across a 192-bit bus interface, the chip itself will be a much higher-end SKU than the RTX 3060's original GA106 GPU core.

NVIDIA Ampere GA104 and GA106 GPU dies pictured together. (Image Credits: TechPowerUp)

This won't be the first time that NVIDIA has used defective 104 dies to replace 106 SKUs. The RTX 2060 that was originally based on the TU106 GPU received several configurations including one of which featured a TU104 GPU. Other cards such as the Turing TU117 powered GeForce GTX 1650 also received updated configurations in TU116 and TU106 flavors. The latter offered better NVENC support and slightly faster content creation capabilities though we are unlikely to see those in the TU104 based RTX 3060 cards since Turing had a lot of architectural differences in the higher-end & the mainstream GPU SKUs.

What we could see is the GA104 powered GeForce RTX 3060 to allow stable boost clocks along with better control over power than its constrained GA106 variant. So overall, most of you would never know what's lying under the hood of your NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card, whether it be a GA104 or a GA106 GPU-based variant. It was recently reported that the supply of GA106 GPUs might become constrained so that might also explain why these defective GA104 dies are being repurposed for the RTX 3060.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications: