NVIDIA has showcased their new GTX 1060 3GB GPU at a Chinese Press conference, though the GPU is showing as GTX 1060 in reality, it’s not same as the 6GB version of GTX 1060. The 3GB Version not only lost half its memory but also has 128 less CUDA cores, a total of 1152 CUDA core compares to 1280 CUDA core of 6GB version. This 3GB version looks a lot more like a GTX 1050 Ti than a traditional GTX 1060.
The GTX 1060 3GB with its less CUDA core will give 10% less performance around 4.0TFLOPS than the GTX 1060 6GB 4.4TFLOPS performance. The naming of this card as GTX 1060 3GB will confuse a lot of consumers, making them think they are buying the same GPU with less memory which in reality they are not. Personally, I think NVIDIA should name it GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti to differentiate from the regular GTX 1060 6GB cards.
Right now it is unknown if this GPU will be released outside of the Chinese market and what pricing or release date is but we can assume this new card will come in at a similar price point of AMD $199 RX 480 8GB.
| GTX Titan X | GTX 1080 | GTX 1070 | GTX 1060 (6GB) | GTX 1060 (3GB) | |
| GPU Architecture | Pascal | Pascal | Pascal | Pascal | Pascal |
| Process node | 16nm | 16nm | 16nm | 16nm | 16nm |
| SP FP Performance | 11 TFLOPs | 9 TFLOPs | 6.5 TFLOPs | 4.4TFLOPS | 4.0TFLOPS |
| CUDA Core Count | 3584 | 2560 | 1920 | 1280 | 1152 |
| VRAM Type | GDDR5X | GDDR5X | GDDR5 | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| VRAM Cappacity | 12GB | 8GB | 8GB | 6GB | 3GB |
| Memory Bus Size | 384-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 480 GB/s | 320 GB/s | 256 GB/s | 192 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
| Base clock speed | 1417MHz | 1607MHz | 1506Mhz | 1506MHz | 1506MHz |
| Boost clock speed | 1531MHz | 1733MHz | 1683MHz | 1708MHz | 1708MHz |
| TDP | 250W | 180W | 150W | 120W | 120W |
| Power Connection | 1x 8-pin 1x 6-pin | 1x 8-pin | 1×8-pin | 6-pin | 6-pin |
| PCI Express | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 |
| MSRP | $1200 | $599 | $379 | $249 | $199 ?? |
