The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB has been announced; Dave called it "a truly cynical graphics card, almost poking fun at it," and I agree; a quick check on Newegg shows several models listed, and all six are out of stock. It's not so ironic that they're holding back the release to avoid negative press; the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB is already out in the cold, and the 16GB model, which has a 25% higher asking price, is having an uphill battle. To say the least

one might have expected one or two reviewers to get their hands on the cards through back channels or from distributors, but that didn't happen. This says a lot about the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB: Nvidia, its AIB partners, and the $500 consumer have shown little enthusiasm for the card. [But the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB does exist; MSI picked up the RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Slim 16G and compared it to its 8G sibling via live stream. This is another curiosity. This suggests that someone upstairs came in with instructions to remove it.

But before it was removed, @momo_us (via TechPowerUp) grabbed a screenshot of the money, and the results were as expected: both cards performed almost within the margin of error. In five of the six tests, however, the 8GB card slightly outperformed. Even Hogwarts: Legacy, notorious for consuming large amounts of VRAM, showed no tangible gains for the 16GB card. [With the same core configuration and clock speeds, we would expect the 8GB and 16GB cards to beat each other in a sufficient number of tests; there are a number of possible reasons why the 8GB is leading by a narrow margin. For example, natural variations in silicon, power limitations, memory latency of 8GB vs. 16GB, or Windows doing unknown random processing in the background and drawing excessive CPU cycles.

The power budget of the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is 165W, 5W higher than the 160W of the 8GB version; the 16GB version may be power-limited in more loaded situations than the 8GB card, but in scenarios that do not require much VRAM, this 5W will allow the 16 GB card clocks a few MHz higher and should perform well enough to win its fair share of tests.

After all, it really doesn't matter; at 0.5% to 1%, no one will notice. What would be of concern would be the impact of the cost of the additional 8GB on the deposit balance; Nvidia's asking price for a 16GB RTX 4060 Ti is ludicrous. If this had been released instead of the 8GB card and priced at $399, it would obviously have received better reviews.

Of course, if they had released an RTX 4060 Ti 12GB with a 192-bit bus for $399 (or less), it would have been even better, or call it the RTX 4060 for goodness sake! But I digress, this is the reality.

For now, the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is a mirage. Even if you could afford it, there is no reason to buy it over the 8GB version. That may change in the future as more VRAM-hungry games come to market. Eventually the price difference may narrow and 16GB cards may replace 8GB cards.

The RTX 4060 Ti has a long lifespan, and the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB will certainly appear in the future when the RTX 40 series lineup is revamped.