NVIDIA’s new RTX 3000 series may be impressive pieces of kit for anyone looking to experience the best ray tracing experience available today, but they’re not exactly what you’d call affordable. It seems like NVIDIA agrees with you, as the company has released the most affordable Ampere GPU that has RT capabilities in the form of the new RTX 3060.

The new GPU is a trimmed-down version of the RTX 3060 Ti, offering just 25 ray tracing TFLOPs VS the 39.7 on the more expensive model and just 13 shader TFLOPS VS 16.2. Curiously though it has more memory – 12GB of GDDR6 – VS the one in the RTX 3060 Ti (8GB) or even the RTX 3080 (10GB).

Like its more expensive brothers, the RTX 3060 also has access to a plethora of exclusive NVIDIA tech, including ray tracing capabilities and DLSS 2.0. It also gets Resizable BAR technology support if you have the right motherboard, eroding the edge that AMD had with their SAM technology if you went all AMD.

MSRP for the new card is just $329 or Php 15.7K directly converted, that is if AIBs like ASUS and the like follow NVIDIA’s pricing guidance and if there’s enough of this card to go around when it drops in late February. The way things are going the price might not stay that way when supply dries up, either to scalpers and bots or to crypto miners buying them in bulk. Still, anyone who has held off upgrading from their Pascal-based cards may consider buying this if their budget allows.