NVIDIA has officially announced the 3GB version of the GTX 1060 graphics card, and it indeed contains fewer CUDA cores than the 6GB version.

The GTX 1060 Founders Edition

The product page on NVIDIA.com now reflects the 3GB model, and board partners have begun announcing their versions. The MSRP on this 3GB version is set at $199, and availablity of partner cards is expected in the next couple of weeks. The two versions will be designated only by their memory size, and no other capacities of either card are forthcoming.

  GeForce GTX 1060 3GB GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
Architecture Pascal Pascal
CUDA Cores 1152 1280
Base Clock 1506 MHz 1506 MHz
Boost Clock 1708 MHz 1708 MHz
Memory Speed 8 Gbps 8 Gbps
Memory Configuration 3GB 6GB
Memory Interface 192-bit 192-bit
Power Connector 6-pin 6-pin
TDP 120W 120W

As you can see from the above table, the only specification that has changed is the CUDA core count, with base/boost clocks, memory speed and interface, and TDP identical. As to performance, NVIDIA says the 6GB version holds a 5% performance advantage over this lower-cost version, which at $199 is 20% less expensive than the previous GTX 1060 6GB.