Nvidia seems to have come to its senses with the release of the RTX 4060 and 4060TI on Thursday.
While the company’s prices for its flagship 4090 and 4080 cards retailed for a whopping $1,599 and $1,199 respectively when they launched in October, the chipmaker won’t be charging a premium for its mid-range graphics cards.
The slightly higher-spec 4060 and 4060TI will sell for $299 and $399, respectively. If you recall, the RTX 3060 actually had an MSRP of $329 when it launched, not that it ever sold for that much because of cryptocurrencies. As a result, Nvidia’s entry-level 40 series is actually cheaper in theory. We’ll have to wait and see what the onboard partners actually charge when the cards hit store shelves.
The cards themselves are still aimed at 1080p gaming – that hasn’t changed much – but unlike older cards they should be able to push much higher frame rates, especially if Nvidia’s deep learning supersampling is turned on. The technology, now in its third generation, uses deep learning to upscale lower resolutions to achieve higher frame rates.
One of the reasons behind its apparent stagnation could be down to vRAM. Both cards feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory. While this was sufficient for AAA games, it may not be enough to satisfy the latest titles at the highest settings. And even though this is a mid-range card, the vRAM requirements have risen steadily over the past few years. Many new and upcoming games — Eat Survivorfor example — now require a minimum of 8 GB of vRAM.
For those worried about vRAM bottlenecks, Nvidia says it will offer a 16GB version of the 4060TI for $499 alongside the 4060 in July.
While vRAM has remained unchanged and has actually gone back in the case of the lower end 4060, both cards have received a pretty significant boost to their cache architecture. The 4060 now has 24MB of L2 cache, compared to only three last generation, and the TI-variant now has 36MB.
However, don’t expect the larger cache to contribute much in terms of generation-to-generation earnings. Nvidia hasn’t shared much about the performance of these cards, but if its claims are to be believed, you can expect the 4060 TI to run around 1.7x faster than its predecessor when using its frame-generated DLSS 3.0. With Nvidia’s AI upscaler turned off, the card is about 1.6x faster than the two generations old 2060 Super. If you already have a 3060 or 3060TI, these cards are probably not for you.
The 4060 TI will be available from May 24 and will receive the “Founders Edition” treatment. Meanwhile, TI’s 16GB version and the entry-level 4060 will be released sometime in July. ®
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