It has been several months since Nvidia introduced its RTX 40 Super series of graphics cards, and the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4080 Super were welcome upgrades, albeit more advanced than their non-Super predecessors. It was a welcome upgrade. And new reports from reputable leakers indicate that the RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, and, a bit more surprisingly, the RTX 4070 are due for an update.

According to a table posted by MEGAsizeGPU (via PCgamesN), the GeForce RTX 4060, 4060 Ti, and 4070 GPUs will ship with new GPUs. Apparently, the new GPUs are merely harvested dies with the same specs as the GPUs they replace. [The current RTX 4060 is built on the AD107 GPU. The new model will have an AD106, the chip that drives the RTX 4060 Ti. The updated RTX 4060 Ti, on the other hand, will have an AD104 GPU. This is the chip used in the RTX 4070. The updated RTX 4070 will have the AD103 chip used in the RTX 4080.

If Nvidia were to be generous, each new card could include an increased number of shaders, ray tracing, or Tensor cores, more memory, or a wider bus, but sadly, the specs of the GPUs they replace are seem to be reduced to mimic the The end result is that nothing changes.

If these specs turn out to be accurate, then there will be no upgrade at all. We all hope that gamers will add a little something extra for their dollar, not that Nvidia is under any pressure to do so; Nvidia has a commanding lead in market share, and as long as their cards continue to sell well, they will be under no pressure to release a real super upgrade. They will not feel pressure to do so. And they have made countless huge profits from their AI business. [Of all the cards in the RTX 40 series, the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is the one most likely to benefit from the upgrade; it is still expensive compared to the 8GB version, and any performance boost over the 8GB version would go a long way to justifying its high price. [Thus, there is still time for Nvidia to release some sort of super upgrade for the RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti. To put it mildly, there is only so much that can be done with DLSS and frame generation. Performance at native resolution remains critical.

This is not the first time Nvidia has introduced a mid-life GPU replacement; the RTX 3060 12GB is a recent example. The original RTX 3060 was built on a GA106 GPU with 3,584 shader units, 28 RT cores, and 112 Tensor cores. Later, Nvidia released a version with a larger GA104 GPU, but the specs were nearly identical; the number of ROPs was increased from 48 to 64; the number of shader units was increased to 3,584, and the number of Tensor cores was increased to 112. So, given recent history, I would expect to see changes under the hood of these "new" RTX 40 series cards.