Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Nvidia doesn’t want you to know about its controversial new GPU

Logo on the RTX 4060 Ti graphics card.
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends

Confirming previous rumors, Nvidia released its RTX 4060 Ti on Tuesday without much fanfare. Most of the best graphics cards release with a bang, but the updated 16GB RTX 4060 Ti released with barely a whimper. Nvidia is putting more weight behind Portal: Prelude RTXon the same day it’s launching a new graphics card. Weird.

This is the 16GB variant that Nvidia promised when the original 8GB RTX 4060 Ti was released in June, and although it has technically been released, you can’t buy it.

Recommended Videos

Listings are up at Newegg, but there are only five models available, all of which are out of stock. Gigabyte and MSI each have two models, while Zotac has one, and it doesn’t appear we’ll be seeing more any time soon. Asus has announced one model at $600, but most board partners have, reportedly, been reluctant to put too much weight behind the GPU.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

The main reason is the price. The 16GB RTX 4060 Ti is $500, which is $100 more than the 8GB model. That’s a $100 premium for an extra 8GB of VRAM alone. Otherwise, the 16GB variant comes with the same number of CUDA cores and, critically, the same limited memory bus. It’s the same graphics card, just $100 more expensive and with a bump to VRAM.

Between $300 to $500, there haven’t been many next-gen options.

We haven’t had a chance to test this new card — reports suggest Nvidia didn’t spread out review samples — but it’s hard to imagine the price increase is worth it. There are games where the RTX 4060 Ti became so limited by VRAM that it was even outperformed by last-gen’s RTX 3060 Ti. In those titles, the 16GB model will excel, but the raw performance of the card was already disappointing.

The limited availability isn’t surprising, despite what you could infer from rumors. Reports claim that there was “zero” interest in the base model. The 16GB is an even tougher sell at $500. At this price, it’s dangerously close to the excellent RTX 4070, which is somewhere in the range of 30% faster.

Between $300 to $500, there haven’t been a ton of next-gen options for midrange gamers. Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti duo is the most controversial, but AMD’s RX 7600 failed to impress despite its bargain bin price. And Nvidia’s $300 RTX 4060, although a decent value, seemed more like a vessel for the company’s Deep Learning Super Sampling 3 (DLSS) than a strong budget-focused GPU.

Limited VRAM in graphics cards has been a major focus in 2023, as games like Resident Evil 4 and The Last of Us Part One challenge the typical capacity we see on midrange GPUs. The 16GB RTX 4060 Ti addresses capacity issues, but it loses the plot when priced at $500. We’d have to test it ourselves to see if it’s worth buying, but from what we know now, it’s probably a GPU to avoid.

Not that it matters much anyway; it doesn’t look like there will be too many 16GB RTX 4060 Ti models floating around.

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
This GPU just beat the RTX 4090 — and Nvidia didn’t make it
The board of the RTX 4090 Super graphics card.

Modders are doing what Nvidia won't. The team at Teclab put together a Frankenstein graphics card, which it calls the RTX 4090 Super, that was able to beat the RTX 4090 by 13% in benchmarks.

You can't buy this graphics card, of course, but it's an interesting look into how splicing together the best components can deliver big performance gains. The heart of the RTX 4090 Super is the RTX 4090 GPU, which is Nvidia's AD102 die. Teclab changed everything else about the graphics card, though.

Read more
Don’t upgrade your GPU until you’ve read this
The RTX 4070 sitting on top of another GPU.

We’re on the brink of a new generation of graphics cards. AMD, Nvidia, and even Intel have all hinted that we’ll see new graphics cards this year, and if you’ve been sitting on your GPU for a while, you’ll probably be eyeing an upgrade.

Upgrading your graphics card isn’t as simple as looking up a few reviews and making a decision, though. If you get too eager to buy a shiny new GPU, you could be missing out on extra performance, better value, or even additional features. If you’re looking to upgrade your GPU soon, make sure to follow these guiding principles.
Forget the name

Read more
5 cheap graphics cards you should buy instead of the RTX 4060
Two RTX 4060 graphics cards sitting next to each other.

If you're in the market for a budget GPU, the RTX 4060 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy. It's available for a reasonable price, offers solid 1080p performance, and comes with a suite of Nvidia-exclusive features. Still, it's not the right graphics card for everyone.

As you can read in our RTX 4060 review, Nvidia's value-focused GPU has a few minor issues.  It's still a card to keep in mind if you're shopping for a budget graphics card, but we rounded up five alternatives that fill in the gaps that the RTX 4060 leaves.
AMD RX 7600

Read more