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Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti is once again under the spotlight for speculation, as after a leaked specs update yesterday, we now have a performance estimate for the mid-range Lovelace GPU.
The bad news, though, is that this approach to performance isn’t what you, or anyone else, wants to hear. If Kopite7kimi is right, then the RTX 4060 Ti will be equivalent to the RTX 3070 in terms of frame rate switching power.
Okay, we need to remember that this is just a rumor, and it could be off the mark, maybe off the mark in some way (hopefully so).
However, even hearing this level of performance as a rumor is very concerning in terms of Nvidia’s potential direction with the RTX 4060 Ti. In terms of it being much smaller than the RTX 3060 Ti that the rest of the Lovelace range has borrowed from their respective counterparts.
Perhaps we can expect better things on the price front. Or maybe not, if a MyDrivers (opens in a new tab) article (featured by VideoCardz (opens in a new tab)) is right, add more salt here, which cites sources claiming the RTX 4060 Ti will hit shelves priced at around $499 US (around £400 / AU$720), the same as the RTX 3070. The Assumption The release date for this mid-range GPU is still mid-2023, as previous speculations claimed.
Analysis: Er, this can’t be right…can it?
A price of ‘less than $500’ as noted by VideoCardz seems to indicate that Nvidia might be looking at a price of $499. In theory, perhaps this could be lower, but the suggestion is certainly that it will cost more than the 3060 Ti sold. retail ($399 in the US at launch).
However, the performance buzz on Twitter is the most concerning part of these new revelations. If the claim that the RTX 4060 Ti will be on par with the RTX 3070 is correct, it’s a huge disappointment. Basically, this means that Nvidia is looking to make the RTX 4060 Ti as minimal a generational gain as possible. Remember, just one step below the RTX 3070 is the 3060 Ti, and you could hardly have a situation where the 4060 Ti would perform the same as its predecessor.
In that sense, this is a somewhat perplexing rumor – we hope, and indeed believe, that it will turn out to be wrong. For us, the RTX 4060 Ti surely has to compete with the speed of the 3070 Ti, or at least be very close to it.
That said, the leaked specs for the 4060 Ti so far indicate a disappointingly weak card, with just 8GB of VRAM (and a 128-bit memory bus), along with fewer cores than the 3060 Ti by the way. And if the latest speculation of 160 W for power usage is correct, that points to some possibly quite moderate clock speeds for the GPU to boot up.
These specs could be wrong, of course, in fact all these rumors could be, and even if this is Nvidia’s plan right now, it could change before launch (which is still half a year away).
Hopefully Nvidia realizes that the weak sauce with the RTX 4060 Ti will be a very unpopular move, especially if that price tag stays relatively high for the card (as has been the case with Lovelace graphics cards thus far). Simply because this is such an important GPU for the average PC gamer in terms of the midrange sweet spot.
