Confirmed: Though we're already well into the life cycle of RTX 30-series cards, rumors have been floating around that suggest Nvidia is working on a new, 12GB 2060 model. With next-gen titles increasing texture sizes substantially, an affordable, RT-ready card with twice the VRAM of its predecessor is a pretty appealing notion to many. However, the card hadn't been confirmed officially by Nvidia... until now.
In today's Game Ready Driver release notes, for driver version 497.09 WHQL, Nvidia distinctly mentions adding support for what it calls the "GeForce RTX 2060 12GB." Upon first glance, it might seem odd that the company didn't attach the "Super" moniker to this card. After all, all signs point to the specs lining up closely with the 8GB 2060 Super rather than the older 6GB 2060.
It will likely have the same number of CUDA, RT, and Tensor cores, and the boost clock is also predicted to be identical. However, there are still differences, according to Videocardz. Specifically, the 2060 12GB will ship with a 192-bit memory bus and 336 GB/s memory bandwidth, which is what the base 2060 had. For contrast, the 2060 Super has a 256-bit bus and 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
A few things are still unclear at the moment, though. We aren't sure precisely when the card will release – rumors point toward December 7 – nor do we know how much it will cost. We wouldn't expect an MSRP too different from the 2060 Super, which sat right at the $400 mark.
Either way, we probably won't be waiting long for answers to these unknowns. Presumably, Nvidia wouldn't list it as a newly-supported device if a release date isn't on the horizon. Of course, that assumes the company didn't mistakenly mention the 2060 in its latest GRD changelog, which is possible.
Ordinarily, the re-release of what is effectively a last-gen card with some extra VRAM might not be cause for so much buzz. However, the PC hardware market is in terrible shape right now, with crypto miners and bot-equipped scalpers buying up every GPU they can get their hands on in bulk. As such, almost every new card launch is worth paying attention to for ordinary gamers.