Nvidia has effectively relaunched its five-year-old GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card as a stopgap measure amid the ongoing GPU shortage driven by AI demand. Palit, an Nvidia board partner, has officially announced the RTX 3060 Infinity 2 OC, a “new” version of the 2021 GPU with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory.
The move is a direct response to the AI-driven component scarcity that has pushed GPU prices sharply higher. With the ongoing global DRAM shortage squeezing production capacity for newer GPUs, Micron has warned the shortage could extend beyond 2026. Nvidia and its partners are turning to older, less memory-intensive designs to maintain supply at the entry level. The RTX 3060 uses GDDR6 memory rather than the newer and more expensive GDDR7 used in the RTX 50-series, and its 12 GB VRAM configuration remains competitive for budget-conscious users, particularly those running AI inference workloads like small LLMs and Stable Diffusion.
The original RTX 3060 launched in 2021 and has remained the most popular GPU on the Steam hardware survey for years, buoyed by its appealing price-to-performance ratio and generous 12 GB memory buffer for its tier. The Infinity 2 OC version carries a factory overclock out of the box, using Palit’s dual-fan cooling solution with a compact two-slot design and no lighting effects.
The relaunch reflects a broader industry trend: as AI demand consumes an ever-larger share of memory production capacity, manufacturers are being forced to resurrect older designs that use less constrained components. It is also a revealing signal that the GPU market, already squeezed by crypto boom cycles and pandemic-era supply constraints, now faces a structural shortage that shows no sign of easing.
Sources: Palit officially announces RTX 3060 return with ‘new’ Infinity 2 OC launch (Tom’s Hardware, July 2026); Nvidia Re-Release RTX 3060 GPUs to Combat RAM Prices (Game Rant, 2026)