A rumor concerning the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 has simply dropped, and if it’s true, it’s not excellent news for the longevity of this future price range gaming GPU. This explicit leak considerations the VRAM fitted to the brand new graphics card, and until Nvidia costs this new GPU actually competitively, the RTX 5060 may very well be in some bother.
It’s been a wrestle to suggest the most effective graphics card below $300 these days, with the 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 being overpriced at $299, and the $269 8GB AMD Radeon RX 7600 scuffling with ray tracing. It’s an space the place Intel has tried to carve a distinct segment for itself, with the $249 Intel Arc B580 specs providing 12GB of VRAM and sooner efficiency than the RTX 4060. That state of affairs is additional sophisticated by a extreme lack of provide of the brand new Intel GPUs proper now, nonetheless.
Sadly, although, it seems to be as if Nvidia goes to stay with the identical quantity of VRAM on the RTX 5060 because the 4060. This newest leak from tech web site Wccftech claims the location has acquired some early particulars from its unnamed sources concerning the reminiscence used on the brand new lineup of Nvidia RTX 5000 playing cards. If this leak is appropriate, then the GeForce RTX 5060 has 8GB of VRAM hooked up to a 128-bit interface, identical to the RTX 4060 earlier than it.
There’s slightly ray of sunshine right here, although, which is that the VRAM is at the very least rumored to be GDDR7, reasonably than the GDDR6 reminiscence used on the RTX 4060, and it’s rumored to run at 28Gbps, giving it a complete bandwidth of 448GB/s. Comparatively, the RTX 4060’s reminiscence bandwidth is just 272GB/s, because of its slower VRAM. The issue right here, although, is capability. For lots of video games, 8GB remains to be sufficient to max out the settings at 1080p, however a number of the newest video games are already demanding extra VRAM.
As a working example, the Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle system necessities want at the very least a 12GB RTX 4070 to satisfy the 1080p system necessities with full ray tracing, with the 8GB RTX 4000 playing cards listed nowhere within the full ray tracing tiers.
In the meantime, current benchmarks by tech web site Pc Base present that the 12GB Radeon RX 6700 XT considerably outperforms the RTX 3080 on this sport, not as a result of it has a extra highly effective GPU, however as a result of it has extra VRAM at its disposal.
I’ve discovered this in my very own testing too, In my Intel Arc A770 evaluation I discovered that this 16GB card was over 3 times the pace of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti in my Doom Everlasting ray tracing benchmark. That’s as a result of efficiency at these settings crashes on 8GB playing cards, as they don’t have sufficient reminiscence capability to maintain the GPU fed with information, whereas 12GB and 16GB playing cards pull forward. Doom Everlasting got here out over 4 years in the past, with ray tracing added in 2021 – this isn’t a brand new sport.
In fact, that is all primarily based on leaks proper now, and Nvidia hasn’t formally confirmed any particulars concerning the RTX 5060, or even when this GPU truly exists. Nonetheless, if this rumor is true, and Nvidia actually is kitting out the cardboard with 8GB of VRAM as commonplace, then it’s going to begin scuffling with some future video games with demanding system necessities.
One potential ray of hope is that Samsung has already introduced that it might make 3Gb GDDR7 VRAM chips, in addition to 2Gb chips, inspiring rumors a few 24GB RTX 5080. Utilizing these chips, Nvidia may doubtlessly package out a 12GB RTX 5060 utilizing the identical 128-bit interface because the 8GB card, and this 12GB card would be the one to purchase if this occurs.
Within the meantime, take a look at our information to the RTX 5090 to learn up on all of the leaks concerning the flagship Blackwell gaming GPU, which is rumored to be unveiled at CES 2025 in January, doubtlessly with a large 32GB of VRAM.
