Some time ago, Nvidia introduced the GeForce RTX 3060 with 8GB of memory. And today we can evaluate its performance for the first time.

But first, let’s recall that the new version differs from the original not only in the amount of memory, but also in a narrower bus (128 bits versus 192 bits).

And if 8 GB of memory is almost always enough for modern games, then a narrower bus in the case of this adapter becomes quite critical. Tests show that in Full HD the new version is on average 17% slower than the original. At 1440p the difference grows to 18%. That is, it is quite a lot.

Yes, the gap from the RTX 3050 is still very large, and Nvidia does not have other current cards in this segment, so the release of a simplified RTX 3060 at the right price can be regarded positively.

The problem is that so far the RTX 3060 8GB is sold at a slightly lower price than the older sister, which makes buying the younger one impractical. However, if the price falls as a result, the stripped-down novelty will quite find its buyer. In the meantime, the authors of Hardware Unboxed called this video card “a terrible anti-consumer move by Nvidia.”

The Steam stats have been updated, and there are tangible changes again.

The GeForce GTX 1650 knocked the GTX 1060 off its pedestal in one big leap to become the most popular 3D gaming card… if you just look at the table.

Recall that with the release of the RTX 30 line in Steam statistics, mobile and desktop cards of this generation began to be displayed separately, while before that they were all displayed together under one name. Thus, the GTX 1650 takes 6.27%, and the RTX 3060, if you add the mobile and desktop versions, takes 8.04%, so the RTX 3060 is the most popular video card among Steam gamers, and will probably remain so for more for a very long time.

Returning to the castling in the table, the GTX 1060 has been in first place for the last couple of years, if not more, but this card has not been on sale for a long time, and the GTX 1650 is still available. In just one month, the newer card gained 0.66 percentage points while the GTX 1060 lost 1.85 percentage points for some reason. By the way, the RTX 2060 also sank very strongly (by 1.46 p.p.), and the share of the desktop RTX 3060 fell by 2.06 p.p., which is very strange.

In terms of processors, AMD’s share jumped 3.88 percentage points over the month to 32.87%. The most popular on Steam are six-core CPUs with a share of 33.52%, the share of processors with four cores is 30.07%, and eight-core processors occupy 19.19%.

AMD previously introduced the Genoa Epyc server processors with 96 cores in the maximum configuration, and now told when to expect 128-core CPUs.

These will be the Epycs of the Bergamo line, but they will receive slightly different cores than Genoa. The new CPUs will be based on Zen 4C cores, which will be somewhat simplified from regular Zen 4 cores for better power efficiency. According to AMD, Bergamo processors will also compete with server solutions based on the Arm architecture.

Bergamo will be released in the first half of 2023, will receive the same SP5 performance as Genoa. Later in the year, AMD will also release Sienna processors aimed at the telecommunications segment, but there are no details about them yet. However, as we can see, AMD is clearly placing a huge emphasis on the server market, which the company has already directly spoken about.