The RTX 4070 is expected to launch in April and the latest rumors point to the RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti launching a month later in May. However, what could be the final RTX 40-series launch – the RTX 4050 – could happen a month later in June.
The RTX 3050 was the cheapest graphics card in the RTX 30-series and was in low demand , [+]
Videocardz found a post by Twitter user @zed_wang that purportedly contained information about the 4050 and 4060-series GPUs. Currently, the cheapest RTX 40-series card is the RTX 4070 Ti with a launch price of $799. The RTX 4070 is predicted to hit the shelves at $599, but the RTX 4050 will be significantly cheaper as at least one other graphics card – either the RTX 4060 Ti or the RTX 4060 or both – will sit between it and an expected RTX 4050.
The post suggests that the RTX 4060 will launch in May as other rumors have suggested, while the RTX 4050 may launch in June. Such a tight launch schedule wouldn’t bode well for Nvidia’s activity this year, however, with the RTX 4070 Ti reviewed just after the new year and the RTX 4070 being predicted to launch in early April.
Still, Nvidia is trying to capitalize on AMD’s absence in the mid-range market with its RX 7900 XT trading in RX 7000-series cards alongside the pricier RTX 4070 Ti. The RTX 4050 is a much-talked-about graphics card, given how Nvidia has revamped the RTX 2060 and the apparently high prices and low value of many models, especially at the low end.
only 6GB VRAM?
Perhaps we were spoiled by the choice of the GTX 1650, which sits as the most popular discrete GPU on Steam’s hardware survey, but there are some concerns over the RTX 4050’s specifications as well. First, there’s rumored to be only 6GB of VRAM, which isn’t much more than the aging RTX 2060. This can be a problem with modern games, many of which require more than this to run smoothly or use HD textures.
Even at 1080p, having at least 8GB of VRAM can be beneficial and less of a disadvantage in modern games. It’s possible that Nvidia is banking on RTX 40-series features such as improved ray tracing performance, frame generation and DLSS3 to increase frame rates and raise interest here and certainly about these features coming to cheaper graphics cards. There’s good reason to be excited. However, the tech-savvy would be right to be concerned about the baseline memory for Nvidia’s cheapest RTX 40-series cards, which is just 6GB as opposed to 8GB. Only time will tell if this is true and what effect it has.
Source: www.forbes.com
