Nvidia quietly launched one more GPU this season. It is the RTX 3060 8GB. And many expected it to be in the same ballpark of performance as the RTX 3060 12 GB, but our friend Steve over at hardwareunboxed revealed on Thursday, that that is definitely not true.

The 3060 8 GB trims the memory interface and bandwidth by a third dropping from 192 bit down to 128 bit resulting in 17% slower performance versus the 12 GB model on average, and sometimes lagging by as much as 30%.

Surely Nvidia is offering this cart at a reduced price then, RIGHT? Haha! Of course they aren’t, they still slapped a $330 MSRP on it the same as the 12 gig and retail prices are all muddled between the two variants with most selling for $350 to $400, regardless of the memory allocation.

And you probably be correct and assuming that this was all intentional. The quiet launch. The nearly identical specs except for the memory. And even the difficulty discerning between retail boxes from one card to the next will undoubtedly lead to customers buying the wrong GPU, or at least thinking they’re getting the original 3060 when they’re actually getting this cut down version.