RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB launch: NVIDIA could limit coverage of GPU by offering no Founders Edition model and official review program

It would be an understatement to say that the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB had a rough launch. The GPU not only got criticized by the press for failing to offer any meaningful performance and value improvements over the RTX 3060 Ti, but it may also have sold rather poorly as evidenced by the immediate price cuts that followed. The key reasons why the RTX 4060 Ti fell flat on its face were the constrained 8 GB of VRAM and the 128-bit memory bus. To partly fix this, NVIDIA is launching the RTX 4060 Ti with 16 GB of memory this month.

However, according to Hardware Unboxed on Twitter, the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB could have very limited media coverage, as there is reportedly neither an official review program from NVIDIA nor a Founders Edition GPU.

Hardware Unboxed also claimes that even the AIBs are unwilling to provide any review samples. Per the outlet, “Every Nvidia partner I’ve spoken to so far has said they won’t be providing review samples, and they’re not even sure when they’re model will be available.”

Finally, Hardware Unboxed suggests a July 18 release date for the card which is one day later than what the earlier rumors alleged.

Now the question becomes: why is NVIDIA limiting the coverage of the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB? The answer could lie in the fact that the RTX 4060 Ti is expected to be essentially the much-maligned RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB with 8 GB more memory for US$100 more. So, the CUDA core count, clock speed, and, more importantly, the narrow 128-bit will remain exactly the same as the RTX 4060 Ti. Therefore, the issues that plagued the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB like a meagre performance uplift in 1440p will still remain in the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB.

Furthermore, the performance/price proposition of the RTX 4060 Ti which was already bad in the 8 GB variant will suffer even more as the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB costs a whopping US$100 more. This pricing seems even more absurd when you consider that the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB won’t have any Founders Edition at MSRP and many AIB cards will cost comfortably more than US$500. At that rate, one might as well jump on the US$599 RTX 4070 which is readily available at MSRP at the time of writing.

All we need to do now is wait and see if the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB brings anything different than the 8 GB model or if it is just another middling GPU release.

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