Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU could arrive disappointingly late in 2023

As for Nvidia’s RTX 4060, we haven’t heard much about this GPU yet, but now a detailed rumor has come through about the graphics card – although we’d treat some of this with more skepticism than usual.

As reported by @harukaze5719, who regularly contributes to hardware leaks on Twitter, this reportedly comes from Lenovo’s Gaming Desktop Product Planning Manager in China, a certain ‘Wolstame’ who shares information about the performance and release date of the RTX 4060 via Weibo (opens in new tab). (Hats for video cardz (opens in new tab) by the way to spot this).

And if you thought this more affordable Lovelace GPU was within your reach, think again – although the lack of speculation around the graphics card so far kind of tells its own story in that regard.

According to Wolstame, the RTX 4060 will arrive on “618,” which refers to June 18, 2023, the date of a major shopping festival in China.

As for the performance rumors, Wolstame makes it pretty clear that they are just guessing, but that we should expect something in the ballpark of the RTX 3070. At the same time, they state that the 4060 is 20% faster than the RTX 3060, which doesn’t match with a 3070, which falls pretty short – so this part of the rumor is kind of a head-scratcher (in other words, bring in a ton of extra spice).

The power consumption will presumably be lower than that of the RTX 3060, perhaps as much as 150W.

In terms of price, the RTX 4060 will have roughly the same asking price as the RTX 3060 Ti, the leaker claims – at least that’s how we read it (some wording and translations leave room for doubt).

Going by the recommended price, the RTX 3060 Ti will be thrown in at $399 in the US for its MSRP (£369 in the UK).

Analysis: Nothing affordable on the horizon for Lovelace, then?

The most interesting part of this rumor is that the release date, and presumably June 2023, would be the launch target not just for the Chinese market, but elsewhere worldwide.

That’s still seven months away, so it’ll be a disappointing blow to those folks who hoped for an RTX 4060 sooner rather than later. For now – if this rumor is correct – it looks like we’ll be stuck with the top of the line RTX 4080 and 4090, and then maybe an RTX 4070 Ti (said to be the previously ‘unlaunched’ RTX 4080 12GB, of course ).

In terms of price, we’re not counting on the RTX 4070 Ti to be that reasonably priced, especially when you consider the price tags strapped onto the RTX 4080 models. So affordable Lovelace GPUs don’t seem far on the horizon, in short – the only hope is that we’ll get a vanilla RTX 4070 soon, and this is more reasonable price-wise. At the moment, however, Nvidia seems resolutely pursuing a “tiered” strategy we heard talk about a while ago, where people looking for a cheaper graphics card are simply forced to buy an RTX 3000 model (since there is still an excess stock with this one).

This is indeed what Wolstame is suggesting – the leaker seems pretty downbeat about the prospects for the RTX 4060, so rather than wait a long time for the GPU to appear, Wolstame advises getting an Ampere model (basically RTX 3080 – though the RTX 3070 is presumably the performance equivalent of the RTX 4060).

Speaking of that purported feat, it’s contained in terms of an absolute guess – and confusingly conveyed, as Wolstame actually seems to be making two different guesses – so overall we think it’s probably way too early to even sign. vague conclusions about the power of the RTX 4060.

That said, it’s worth noting that the RTX 4060 will get the benefit of DLSS 3, so for some games that will really improve performance levels compared to RTX 3000 models. (Wolstame may also be talking about gridded performance, though that’s not made clear – so ray tracing gains could also be bigger for the RTX 4060).

So let’s now treat this rumor dump with the caution it really deserves, but we can’t say we’re surprised to hear that the RTX 4060 could still be a long way off – although admittedly we weren’t quite thinking quite as far off as June next year. Time will tell.