Nvidia’s RTX 2060 12GB isn’t due to launch until tomorrow, but retailers obviously know what’s happening and have to prepare their product listings accordingly. The idea though, is not to publish a listing before it’s allowed, lest you incur the wrath of Nvidia. French retailer PC21 seems to have hit the publish button a little early. It prematurely listed a pair of MSI RTX 2060 Ventus 12GB cards. Though the listings have since been taken down, Videocardz grabbed a couple of screenshots showing two separate listings for €528 and €645 including VAT. This is more than several RX 6600 XT's on the same site which begin at €490. Curiously, the two listings appeared to show the same card, so perhaps one or both are just placeholders.
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As we’ve written about in the recent past, the RTX 2060 12GB is designed to plug a hole in Nvidia’s product line up. It’s Ampere RTX 30-series begins with the RTX 3060, which in the current market cannot in any way be considered an affordable GPU. The older 2060 should be able to be produced in large quantities and it should be relatively unattractive to miners too. The hope is that it can fill the large hole above the ageing GTX 16-series and below the RTX 3060.
We also wrote that Nvidia’s listing of the specifications of the RTX 2060 12GB on its own website was premature, with the company stating that it had no intentions of releasing a Founders Edition variant, with all 2060 12GB cards being sold by Nvidia’s partners.
It’s going to be interesting to see where the pricing of the card settles. We know that the RTX 2060 Super trades blows with AMD’s RX 6600. Given that neither are regarded as high performance GPUs, it’s going to be interesting to see how the market reacts. Is the 2060 12GB fast enough to entice upgraders or will it be priced too high to generate much interest? The fact that such a re-release exists at all is an sad indictment on the state of the GPU market.
