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.”

Intel, as you know, plans to build new factories in the US, like a number of other semiconductor giants. However, such projects require huge costs.

Intel said the Arizona factory would cost $30 billion to build, but the company would not finance the entire project itself.

Back in August, Intel entered into an agreement with the Canadian company Brookfield Asset Management, with which together it will finance the construction of the plant. Those same 30 billion dollars in this case will be divided almost equally. Intel said that a similar approach will be applied in future projects. Such a decision, along with subsidies, will allow reaching the same level of costs as in the case of building a factory in Asia.

Intel said that the market already felt a high level of interest in such projects, so the company will have the opportunity to attract both old and new partners in the future. The company also notes that Europe is also going to pass laws that will allow companies to receive subsidies and build new factories in this region.

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%.