Nvidia's 'new' budget gaming GPU has 12GB VRAM, arrives in June, according to leak

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 could be returning to store shelves imminently, if a new Nvidia GPU leak is to be believed. Having returned to the top of the most-used GPU charts on Steam's Hardware Survey last month, a new production run of the five-year-old mid-range option could be available by June, helping ease the current budget graphics card situation.

When it launched, the RTX 3060 was one of the best graphics card options for gamers on a budget, and now Nvidia is pitching it as an ideal upgrade for users with even older cards, or who are looking to build their first truly budget gaming PC.

We first saw rumors of Nvidia resurrecting the RTX 3060 at the start of the year, with leaks reporting that production of the card's GA106 GPU had recommenced at its original manufacturer, Samsung. The crucial factor here is that current-gen GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia are produced by TSMC, which is currently at capacity making chips for everyone from Apple to Qualcomm. By using Samsung's manufacturing, Nvidia should be able to produce these chips in high enough volume to actually keep the prices of these cards low.

Just how low the price of the RTX 3060 will be isn't yet known, but with the RTX 5060 currently selling for around $350 and the RTX 5050 for around $300, I'd expect it to land somewhere in that region. The card uses a two-generation-old architecture but has considerably more CUDA cores than the RTX 5050, while having around the same number as the RTX 5060. It's also expected to ship with 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, which is more than both the RTX 5060 and RTX 5050, which have only 8GB.

A new version of the RTX 5050 that includes 9GB of VRAM had been expected to arrive at around the same time as this intriguing RTX 3060 relaunch. However, rumors suggest this is delayed, and potentially even cancelled now.

The latest leak regarding both launches comes from regular tech leaker, MEGAsizeGPU. In a post on X, they claim that the "RTX 5050 9G is delayed, launch becomes pretty uncertain now," and that, "The newly produced RTX 3060 will fill the gap, ETA June 2026."

MEGAsizeGPU has a strong track record of their leaks proving to be correct, and this particular leak does sound very plausible. However, as ever, take such news with a pinch of salt, as nothing of either launch has been confirmed by Nvidia.

Part of the reason both launches are potentially significant is that 8GB graphics cards can run out of VRAM, causing some games at certain settings to simply not run. By bumping up the VRAM on its budget offering, Nvidia could allay these concerns.

Our own tests of the RTX 5060, for instance, have shown the likes of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle runs particularly slowly on this card, when running at 1080p with Ultra detail settings. Moreover, it won't run at all when the resolution is bumped up to 1440p at Ultra detail. In contrast, the similar-performing RX 9060 XT breezes through both tests because it has 16GB of VRAM.

These instances are still fairly rare, though, despite getting a lot of news coverage. That's why I now recommend the RTX 5060 as the best budget graphics card (despite our RTX 5060 review not being very favorable when it launched), as its price has risen far less than most other competitors, making it reasonable value in the current graphics card market, and it still delivers decent performance in most situations.

Also, crucially, the RTX 5060 has full support for the latest DLSS features, which gets you class-leading upscaling and multi frame generation, both of which are divisive, but can be great for unlocking smooth frame rates at higher resolutions and detail settings. If this not-so-new RTX 3060 does arrive in June, it will only have access to DLSS upscaling, not frame generation, at least officially.