We are deeply saddened – and even heartbroken – to report that Nvidia appears to be going RTX2060long regarded as one of the best budget graphics cards ever made.
Recent reports seen on a Chinese website My Drivers (opens in a new tab) seem to indicate that Nvidia has stopped supplying its suppliers in Asia with RTX 2060 chips (as well as enhanced RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2060 12GB), and also appealed to its production and trading partners to limit the supply of cards until the end of November.
It may be over three years old, but we’re rather longing to see the passing of the 2060 family. These graphic cards were amazing: reasonable price with sound performance, bringing many budget games to the magic of Nvidia’s DLSS technology, as well as ray-traced graphics.
We weren’t the only ones who appreciated this budget GPU. Even today, the RTX 2060 is the second most popular GPU among Steam users, according to the latest figures Steam Hardware Survey (opens in a new tab). First place goes to the GTX 1060, another star cheap graphics card.
Why has Nvidia put the RTX 2060 to sleep now?
It’s hard to speculate on the reasons behind Nvidia’s decision to end the life of the RTX 2060, but it’s most likely a move to push out the RTX 3000 series we know the GPU giant is still knocking.
The xx60 and xx50 versions of Nvidia GeForce GPUs are typically much more popular than Team Green’s insanely expensive flagship cards – such as the recently launched RTX4090. Looking at the survey results, the ten most used cards are all xx60 or xx50 budget variants except for the perfect middle RTX3070 in seventh place.
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who hasn’t lived in a deep-sea cave for the past few years. The cost of living crisis is straining our wallets, widening the gap between rich and poor, and the simple fact is that most gamers today can’t afford to spend $1,000 on a GPU.
The RTX4080 turns out to be a particularly apt example of this. In the UK, where soaring energy bills and food prices are wreaking havoc on people’s finances across the country, we’ve seen clearly greater availability of goods than in the US. The average PC gamer doesn’t have hundreds of pounds to spend, so we’re all sitting with our trusty RTX 2060 cards.
Hopefully a new dawn for budget GPUs
Nvidia’s planned RTX 2060 recall will pave the way for (hopefully) cheaper Lovelace GPUs like the RTX4060 and newly announced RTX4050. Let’s face it: these are the cards people really want, provided they’re not as ridiculously priced as the currently available RTX 4000 cards.
It’s a bit disheartening to see Nvidia and AMD racing for the top when it comes to GPU prices. AMD has long been providing solid budget alternatives to Nvidia cards, but the recent reveal of it new Radeon graphics cards it made us want more – or, more accurately, fewer numbers on price tags. The RTX 2060 first came out at a very respectable price of $329 (£300 / AU$599); today you can buy it for around $250.
If you’re still running an old GPU that’s in desperate need of an upgrade, fear not: the RTX 2060 will likely stay on the shelves for months while Nvidia shakes the remaining stock out of its sleeves.
In fact, this news means there’s a very good chance we’ll see some serious discounts on older RTX GPUs this year Black Fridayso we heartily recommend that you keep an eye on the best graphics card deals our handy guide.
Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to dig up our old office RTX 2060 and rock it gently while listening to REM’s “Everybody Hurts”.