It’s not a good sign when you launch a product without offering review samples to the press. But that’s what’s happening with Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB edition graphics card.
Newegg is now selling the product, but Nvidia hasn't been promoting the launch. Nor did it offer any media outlets samples of the product for review. Hence, the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB edition is arriving without much fanfare.
Why the low-key launch? In May, Nvidia began selling the 8GB version of the RTX 4060 Ti, which starts at $399. The 16GB edition doubles the video memory while bumping up the starting price to $499. But despite the memory increase, even Nvidia is implying users are better off buying the more affordable 8GB version.
“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,” the company said in a 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).”
Nvidia has further confirmed this in a new benchmark it released for the 16GB card, which shows the card largely offering the same frame rates as the 8GB model. The only exception is in two games, A Plague Tale: Requiem and Resident Evil 4, which seem to have been benchmarked on different graphics settings.
The reason both cards perform the same is likely because they use a 128-bit memory interface, which represents a step down from the 256-bit interface found in the product’s direct predecessor the RTX 3060 Ti. The result can prevent both versions of the RTX 4060 Ti from rendering smooth graphics at higher resolutions, such as 1440p and 4K, which we found to be the case in our review of the 8GB model.
We’ll have to obtain a review sample for the 16GB model to truly see whether it’s worth any consideration. But consumers may not even care. So far, reception for Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series has been weak, as many consumers have been complaining about the RTX 4000's high price and relatively low performance gains over the earlier RTX 3000 series.