Nvidia’s $299 GeForce RTX 4060 is launching June 29, not in July

Nvidia’s hotly anticipated GeForce RTX 4060 will hit the streets earlier than expected. Originally scheduled to launch in July, the $299 graphics card—the first mainstream GPU in Nvidia’s RTX 40-series lineup—will now release on June 29.

Nvidia quietly updated its RTX 4060 Family webpage to list the new release date, as spotted by WccfTech and shown in the screenshot above. (The 16GB version of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, announced at the same time as the 4060, remains slated for July.)

There’s a lot riding on the RTX 4060’s shoulders. Desktop graphics cards are suffering their worst sales slump in decades, exacerbated by Nvidia’s $400 RTX 4060 Ti, $600 RTX 4070, $800 RTX 4070 Ti, and $1200 RTX 4080 offering either exorbitant pricing, stagnant performance upgrades, or both. With GPU sales struggling, AMD skipped over the usual 1440p high-end cards for its rival Radeon RX 7000-series, jumping from the flagship 7900 XT family all the way down to the $269 Radeon RX 7600, which launched last month.

AMD Radeon RX 7600

Price When Reviewed: 299 Euro

We called the Radeon RX 7600 a good, affordable graphics card—the first of its kind to launch in damned near five years thanks to pandemic, crypto, and supply chain woes. Meanwhile, we called Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 Ti “a disappointment for $400,” and ours was one of the nicer reviews around.

The RTX 4060, wielding Nvidia’s new DLSS 3 technology and awesome software features, could be a hero at $300. The cut-down memory system that cripples the RTX 4060 Ti is a much more acceptable compromise at the $300 price point (the Radeon RX 7600 uses a similar configuration). But it’ll all depend on performance.

The 4060 Ti did not move the performance needle whatsoever compared to the last-gen 3060 Ti unless you’re using DLSS 3, which is only available in select games. If the $299 GeForce RTX 4060 exhibits similar stagnation, it could be a hard sell. But if it offers a value upgrade like the Radeon RX 7600 does—AMD’s GPU delivers 35 percent performance uplift over the last-gen Radeon RX 6600, for an 18 percent lower MSRP—and DLSS 3, it could be a superstar.

All that’s left to do is wait for independent performance reviews. Now you’ll be getting those—and the RTX 4060 itself—a bit earlier than expected.