As expected, Nvidia has officially launched its newest member of the Ada Lovelace GPU family, but you wouldn't know it by glancing around online today. As we previously reported, Nvidia wasn't planning to send review boards to the media as it wasn't producing its own Founders Edition boards. Its partners were, or are, apparently also not interested in sampling cards to reviewers, likely out of a fear it will not receive favorable coverage. Regardless, the GPU is theoretically on sale now, though a cursory glance at Newegg reveals it's already out of stock. We haven't seen a 40-series GPU disappear from inventory this quickly since the RTX 4090 launch, hinting that the supply was exceedingly low for this model.
As a quick refresher, the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti has the same specs as its 8GB baby brother but costs $100 more at $499. Since the version with 8GB didn't receive a lot of favorable coverage, it's assumed the 16GB version would get a similar drubbing despite its doubling of VRAM. That's because although 8GB of memory did hamstring the previous card, it was also limited by its 128-bit memory bus, so adding more memory won't increase memory bandwidth. We'll have to wait for reviews to see if this is the case, but we suspect it will be born out by benchmarks. Though more memory will help in certain games, its narrow memory bus is what's really holding it back.
Another weird ripple surrounding this launch is Nvidia seems to be making the case that the 8GB GPU is a better value. In a statement about the 16GB card reported by PCMag, Nvidia stated that both cards will perform exactly the same in many scenarios. “In most games, both versions of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (8GB and 16GB) will deliver the same level of performance because the specs are otherwise identical,” read the statement. “There are a handful of games which play best at ‘High’ settings presets on the RTX 4060 Ti (8GB), and ‘Ultra’ settings on the RTX 4060 Ti (16GB).”
That's an odd statement for Nvidia to make, though we have no doubt it's true. At the same time, the visual difference in-game between High and Ultra settings will be virtually indistinguishable for the vast majority of people, calling into question the benefits of 16GB of memory on a GPU with such a narrow memory bus.
Regardless, all the cards appear to be sold out already on Newegg, so even if you were in the group of people ready to buy, you would have to wait a bit. We're sure every media outlet on the Internet has tried to purchase one to do its own review of the GPU, having its hand forced by Nvidia this time. We'll have to wait a week or so for those cards to be run through the gauntlet to find out if it is the dud people expect it to be.
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