I’ve simply hit an enormous snag with my plan to check the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 subsequent week, because it seems I will not truly be capable of publish a evaluation of Group Jensen’s new $299 graphics card earlier than it comes out. That is as a result of Nvidia has taken the extraordinary step to not challenge the press with a pre-release driver. In truth, an Nvidia rep simply advised me that the primary driver I am going to be capable of use is the general public one which comes out on Might 19, which is the GPU’s launch day.
Nvidia hasn’t given me its reasoning for the choice, however it seems to be like an enormous flag lined in shiny purple dye to me. Does Nvidia assume avid gamers will not purchase the brand new GPU on the RTX 5060 launch date if they really know the way it performs? Has Nvidia realized that this 8GB GPU is more likely to fall over in a few of the newest video games at prime settings, making its $299 worth look a bit foolish? I genuinely cannot consider a single good cause why you’d refuse to provide the press a driver to allow them to check it earlier than launch.
I am going to let you know what I feel has occurred, although. As I discovered in my Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti evaluation, right now’s GPUs want a good bit of VRAM to run video games with all of the settings maxed out. In truth, at the very least two video games in our check suite run properly on the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti at some settings, whereas the identical settings ran at a stuttering crawl in my RTX 5070 evaluation, as a result of the dearer card solely has 12GB of VRAM. Latest exams of the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti have additionally painted an image of a card that is severely bottlenecked by its lack of reminiscence, as you may see within the video from {Hardware} Unboxed beneath.
In the meantime, the Intel Arc B580 has 12GB of reminiscence and may be readily purchased for $309 proper now, and AMD is extensively tipped to be producing 8GB and 16GB variations of the brand new Radeon RX 9060 XT quickly. If the 16GB 9060 XT is priced in the identical ballpark because the RTX 5060, then Nvidia’s new finances GPU may very well be in some actual bother.
After seeing how badly the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti has been acquired by the press, it is affordable to ask whether or not the brakes have been placed on the RTX 5060 driver to stop the brand new 8GB RTX 5060 from getting an identical pasting. Given the massive disparity between provide and demand of the newest GPUs proper now, significantly within the US, such a technique might even work.
Nvidia’s GeForce model is huge, and its GPUs have repeatedly been promoting out on launch day. Many avid gamers could be pleased to purchase the newest finances GPU with an even bigger quantity than 4060 within the mannequin title as quickly because it comes out, primarily based on Nvidia’s repute alone.
However I strongly advise that you just wait till you see the efficiency figures earlier than you make a purchase order, and that you just additionally wait and see how the rumored AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT performs. Nvidia could possibly delay efficiency knowledge from being launched, however I am going to learn the way it holds up in our benchmark suite as quickly as I can.
The RTX 5060 has a superb 25% bump within the variety of CUDA cores over its predecessor, the RTX 4060, so I am hoping it should provide a good step up in rendering energy, and it’ll additionally assist Nvidia’s new multi body gen tech. Nonetheless, that 8GB of VRAM is more likely to let it down in demanding recreation exams, particularly at that $299 worth in 2025.
Within the meantime, try our information to one of the best graphics card when you’re on the lookout for an improve now, and be sure to learn my tutorial on methods to set up a GPU as properly.
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