LogInThe cards are either not ready, or, as board partners said, NVIDIA stops them from sending out these models for testing.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 are expected to be the final additions to the Blackwell-based RTX 50-series lineup, for now, at least. The RTX 5060 Ti, which launched on April 16th, comes in two memory configurations: 8GB and 16GB, priced at $379 and $429, respectively.
However, if you search for reviews, you'll likely notice something odd: early coverage focuses exclusively on the 16GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti. It appears that only the 16GB models were sent out to reviewers and influencers ahead of launch.
Releasing an 8GB GPU in 2025 already raises eyebrows, but the situation has drawn even more attention thanks to Hardware Unboxed, a popular YouTube channel focused on PC hardware and gaming. In a video titled "Nvidia Try to Hide the RTX 5060 8GB," Tim Schiesser delves into just how strange and concerning this launch strategy really is.
According to him, NVIDIA said the 8GB version is coming slightly later, "perhaps a week or so after the 16GB card, which would make it launch on a different day". However, both versions are still considered to have the same official release date.
He also mentions that although both variants are said to launch on the same day, only the 16GB card is being sampled for reviews by NVIDIA, so that's the version media will be covering on launch day. But it goes further than that: they were informed that AIBs won't be providing the 8GB model for review, or in fact, they can't. Even though NVIDIA allowed reviewers to independently source 8GB cards for day-one coverage, board partners said they couldn't provide a sample either because the cards weren't ready or, in some cases, because NVIDIA had explicitly prohibited them from doing so.
This is a really strange situation, obviously leading many to believe the intention might be to sell the cheaper GPUs to people who either don't notice the difference in VRAM or don't fully understand it, since most reviews will be of the 16GB version, which could give the impression that the 8GB model performs similarly.
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