As far back as February, we told you that the RTX 4060 rumors were taking a turn for the better in terms of performance. The latest news (open in new tab) is that the RTX 4060 and its sibling, the Ti, will be released in May.

Unfortunately, in the intervening period, the GPU's specs have been shaved down quite significantly, at least according to rumors; in February, an early RTX 4060 benchmark was reportedly done, revealing performance that was roughly equivalent to the RTX 3070 Ti.

That "RTX 4060" GPU was said to have 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock of 2.5 GHz with an AD106 GPU. However, the latest rumor (opens in new tab) is that the RTX 4060 has a smaller AD107 chip with only 3,072 cores.

As for the RTX 4060 Ti, it is said to use the AD106 chip, which is slightly reduced to 4,352 cores running at 2.5 GHz. Both the AD106 and AD107 also have a 128-bit memory bus.

Of course, all of this information is only rumor. However, we strongly hope that this information is wrong. Here is why. Consider the rumored 4060 Ti. It is said to have half the memory bus compared to the existing 256-bit RTX 3060 Ti (open in new tab) and will have 4,352 fewer shaders compared to 4,864.

The 4060 Ti will have a much higher clock and more cache. Therefore, its pure computing performance will be better than the 3060 Ti. However, the memory bus is a killer. Not only is the bandwidth significantly lower. It also limits memory size options.

Unless a new video 32Gb memory chip specification is introduced, both the 4060 and 4060 Ti will have the technical option of a total of 4GB or 8GB video memory using existing 16Gb GDDR6 memory.

However, if these GPUs have 192-bit buses, then 12GB would be an option, which would be a much better solution for a new mid-range GPU in 2023. 8GB would be a lot more than enough for the latest 1080p games, let alone high resolutions. It would really be the limit.

Why would that be the case; the PC version of "The Last of Us: Part 1" has just been released. According to early tests (open in new tab), at 1080p Ultra settings, the game consumes nearly 11 GB of VRAM. This means that various graphics data will be drained into system RAM, which is terrible for performance.

Even at 1080p High, just over 8 GB of video data is used, which can drain into RAM. Higher resolutions will only make it worse. In short, an RTX 4060 Ti that lacks the base specs to support 1080p top detail settings for a newly released game is not a good prospect. A tiny RTX 4060 based on an ultra-budget AD107 GPU is even less so.

Of course, one could argue that The Last of US is a badly ported title to consoles. But that's just the way it is. It's probably not the only badly ported game you'd want to play, and the reality is that the video memory used for that game--12 GB--would be fine.

Anyway, all the usual caveats apply. None of this is official information. However, the launch of these GPUs is likely to be very close. And the closer we get to launch, the more reliable the rumored specs tend to be. Oh dear.