Upgraded GPU from Turing to Ampere, but degraded in CUDA Version

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Setup and Installation
1

I just upgraded from a RTX 1650 (Turing architecture) up to a RTX 3060 (Ampere architecture). However, when running nvidia-smi I see that RTX 1650 supports CUDA version 13.0, while the RTX 3060 supports CUDA 12.6.

GTX 1650

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 581.57                 Driver Version: 581.57         CUDA Version: 13.0     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                  Driver-Model | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650      WDDM  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 34%   46C    P0             18W /   75W |    3284MiB /   4096MiB |     12%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

GTX 3060

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 560.94                 Driver Version: 560.94         CUDA Version: 12.6     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                  Driver-Model | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060      WDDM  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   48C    P5             36W /  170W |     845MiB /  12288MiB |      1%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

According to the CUDA GPU Compute Capability page, the RTX 3060 supports a CUDA Compute Capability 8.6 while the RTX 1650 is only up to 7.5.

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How can I enable CUDA version 13.0 on the newer RTX 3060?

Related posts:

2

✅ Fixed by updating to 591.74 drivers

Sun Jan 11 23:14:17 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 591.74                 Driver Version: 591.74         CUDA Version: 13.1     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                  Driver-Model | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060      WDDM  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   50C    P5             42W /  170W |     355MiB /  12288MiB |      1%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+