The resurrected RTX 2060 graphics card was supposed to launch today to help address GPU shortages. But so far, the product has been a no-show at major US retailers.
On Tuesday, several GPU vendors, including Gigabyte, Zotac and Palit, introduced the revamped RTX 2060, which doubles the video memory to 12GB. However, we’ve only encountered an electronics retailer in France selling them, and even then, pricing is ridiculous.
Retailer LDLC lists the RTX 2060 models from €649 to €699, which translates into $729 to $789. In contrast, the newer RTX 3060 arrived earlier this year starting at $329, although prices have now topped $500.
None of the GPU vendors have released suggested retail pricing for their products either. So it’s unclear if the LDLC is inflating costs. Nevertheless, last week Nvidia suggested that its revamped RTX 2060 models wouldn’t be cheap, even though the computing inside them is almost three years old.
“It is a premium version of the RTX 2060 6GB and we expect the price to reflect that,” a company spokesperson said at the time.
One Hong Kong media outlet, called PCMarket, did receive an RTX 2060 review unit. Its tests found the card does perform behind an RTX 3060 on gaming and benchmark tests. However, the RTX 2060 was better at cryptocurrency mining, although this was probably because the review unit did not have an Ethereum “Lite Hash Rate” limiter installed, as the RTX 3060 did.
PCMarket’s review also notes that the supply volume for the RTX 2060 will be small and that many units had yet to arrive in Hong Kong, which may explain the underwhelming launch.
We’ve reached out to Nvidia for comment and will update the story if we hear back. But the missing RTX 2060 joins a long line of disappointing graphics card launches that consumers have had to endure over the past year.