It looks like Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4060 might arrive sooner than expected. Although initial predictions put its arrival sometime in July, Nvidia may still launch it before June is over.
With a questionable set of specifications, but a highly affordable price, will the RTX 4060 become one of this year’s best GPUs?
4060 non-Ti will on shelf a little bit earlier than it used to be planned
— MEGAsizeGPU (@Zed__Wang) June 11, 2023
The information comes from Twitter leaker MEGAsizeGPU, who shared a document that details a few important dates pertaining to Nvidia’s RTX 4060, including that Nvidia may be speeding things up with its budget GPU.
According to the document, Nvidia will have already started shipping the RTX 4060 today (June 12), and it will be available for sale starting on June 29. Review embargos are said to be lifting on June 28 for cards with the $299 list price (MSRP), and on June 29 for cards that cost more, meaning models made by Nvidia’s board partners that have slightly improved specs.
Speaking of specs, it’s not looking all too good for the RTX 4060. The GPU is said to have fewer cores than the RTX 3060, just like the RTX 4060 Ti had fewer cores than the RTX 3060 Ti. This time, the card is reportedly sporting 3,072 CUDA cores (versus 3,584 in the 3060) and 8GB of memory across a 128-bit bus. As we’ve covered before, 8GB VRAM is not great for 2023 gaming, but the RTX 4060 may get away with it due to its much more modest $299 price tag.
The RTX 4060 might have an edge over its predecessor, though, in the form of total graphics power (TGP). While the RTX 3060 had a TGP of 170 watts, the Ada Lovelace counterpart is said to only run at 115W. It’ll also likely to have a greatly increased cache size, much like the other RTX 40-series cards did. That can excuse the massively cut-down core count.
In other words, we’re looking at a budget GPU that doesn’t consume much power and likely doesn’t deliver outstanding performance in return. It’ll find its home in budget PC builds as a strictly 1080p GPU.
The question now is how it’ll compare to the AMD Radeon RX 7600. AMD’s card is $30 cheaper, but Nvidia offers DLSS 3, which has been a major selling point for the largely overpriced Ada Lovelace generation. Meanwhile, Nvidia is also readying an RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB VRAM, priced at $500, but the release date is currently a mystery.