Nvidia's rumored GeForce RTX 3060 Ti has been unveiled and offers a lot of power at a mainstream price of $399.

Positioned below the $499 Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, the RTX 3060 Ti can outperform the GeForce RTX 2080 Super and is a graphics card capable of handling 1440p resolution games at maximum settings with ray tracing enabled It can also handle 1080p games. It will also be able to handle 1080p games. [In terms of specs, the RTX 3060 Ti has the same GA104 GPU and 17.4 billion transistors as the RTX 3070. However, it has 4,864 fewer CUDA cores versus 5,888, and 38 RT cores used for ray tracing versus 48 for the RTX 3070. [The RTX 3060 Ti's base clock starts at 1,410 MHz and goes up to 1,665 MHz, slightly slower than the RTX 3070. It has the same 8GB of GDDR6 video memory and runs at 14Gbps. In short, it is, in effect, slightly less powerful than the RTX 3070, which is not a bad thing considering it costs $100 less than the RTX 3070.

Our colleagues at Tom's Hardware tested the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition and were reasonably impressed with the performance this new graphics card offers for the price. Its performance placed it just below the AMD Radeon RX 6800, a powerful $549 GPU, in standard gaming benchmarks, and above AMD's card in tests using ray tracing.

We're talking about games that can easily run at 60 frames per second or more at the maximum setting of 1440p. And even with the demanding ray tracing option enabled, the RTX 3060 Ti manages to maintain 60 fps or lower in many games.

"The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a relatively small step down from the RTX 3070 and a larger step down in price. In fact, it is the best overall card in terms of price-to-performance ratio (fps per dollar) among current and previous generation GPUs," explained Jarred Walton of Tom's Hardware.

"If you're looking to upgrade to a new graphics card, the RTX 3060 Ti is definitely a contender.

TechRadar was also impressed with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, praising it as a powerful 1440p GPU and a graphics card that will allow those who game at 1080p to run titles at maximum settings with ray tracing for years.

"Those looking for a mid-range graphics card that supports 1440p gaming will find plenty to like. At this resolution, it's easy to just max out the settings and forget about it," concluded TechRadar's Bill Thomas, "something that hasn't really been possible at this price point.

"What's the best? Just don't expect the buttery smooth 60fps experience that the RTX 3080 can deliver."

These things are very promising for the RTX 3060 Ti if Nvidia can bring enough RTX 3060 Ti inventory to market. This is something Nvidia has struggled with with the RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3080, both of which are very difficult to find in stock.

Nevertheless, the mid-range graphics card segment has thrown down a veritable gauntlet to AMD. Currently, Team Red has no next-generation RDNA 2 graphics cards below $500. Therefore, with the performance and price offered by the RTX 3060 Ti, Nvidia may have seized the market for graphics cards suitable for gaming desktops around $1,000.

We expect AMD to launch a mid-range competitor in 2021. However, to compete with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, they will need to offer a card that brings a lot of bang for the buck.