The fact that a five-year-old graphics card has suddenly reappeared on the market seems odd at first. However, given the current supply chain chaos in the gaming market, the move is less surprising: The RTX 3060 with 12GB of VRAM is indeed back—a full 66 months after its original launch in 2021.
MSI Ventus RTX 3060 Listed Again
The relaunch was discovered by the VideoCardz website: The MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus is once again listed on the U.S. retailer Newegg, priced at the equivalent of around 282 euros. Technically, it features the well-known Ampere architecture with 3,584 CUDA cores manufactured on an 8-nm process, 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit interface, and a maximum boost clock of 1,807 MHz for this specific model. So far, the resale launch has only been confirmed for the U.S. market; it remains to be seen if and when the card will reappear in Germany.
The RTX 3060 Doesn’t Stand a Chance Against the RTX 5060
The price premium over the significantly more modern RTX 5060 is minimal—and that’s exactly what makes the relaunch questionable. In current benchmarks, the RTX 5060 outperforms the RTX 3060 by about 40 to 60 percent, yet costs only about 5 to 10 percent more. Its only drawback: It comes with just 8 GB of faster GDDR7 memory instead of the RTX 3060’s 12 GB of GDDR6. Those who rely on very memory-intensive applications or games with high VRAM requirements might actually still find a reason to choose the older card. For everyone else, the RTX 5060 is clearly the smarter choice, unless the RTX 3060 is offered at a significant discount.
| Feature | RTX 3060 (12GB) | RTX 5060 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Ampere (2021) | Blackwell (2025) |
| VRAM | 12 GB GDDR6 | 8 GB GDDR7 |
| CUDA cores | 3,584 | Significantly more (Blackwell architecture) |
| Price (approx.) | 282 euros (U.S.) | Approx. 10% higher |
| Gaming performance | Reference | approx. 40–60% faster |
Conclusion
The new version of the RTX 3060 is more a symptom of supply chain shortages than a sensible purchase recommendation. Anyone looking to invest in a new graphics card right now will get significantly more performance from the RTX 5060 for a small premium—only those who absolutely need the 12 GB of VRAM should take a closer look, provided the card becomes available again in this country.
