Prior to the expected July 18 release of its GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB GPU, NVIDIA is reportedly maintaining a hands-off stance. Speculation from the previous week suggested that add-in card (AIC) partners were not overly optimistic about the possibilities of the variant because there was little planned in the way of promotional effort. NVIDIA will rely on board partners to have special design units sent out to press outlets/reviewers as it is not producing a Founders Edition GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB variant on its own. No hardware will be sent to the media, claims Hardware Unboxed, who earlier today announced this on Twitter. “Now there’s no official review program for this model, there will be no FE version, and it seems that NVIDIA and their partners really don’t want to know about it,” the website stated. To now, every NVIDIA partner I’ve spoken with has stated they won’t be offering review samples and aren’t even sure when their model will be ready.

“So I don’t know when you’ll be able to view our review, but I will be purchasing one as soon as I can,” they continued. The release strategy here is identical to that of the RTX 3080 12 GB, therefore I anticipate coverage to be rather thin. TPU has confirmed that NVIDIA’s board partners have not sent out test samples, thus a retail device will be bought (out of pocket) for reviewing purposes. According to previous reports, there won’t be many bespoke models available at launch, and the $499 series MSRP won’t do it much good in terms of attracting buyers. It is encouraging to see at least one AIB making an effort; nonetheless, a press sample would be helpful. MSI has developed a new white GAMING X design for the 16 GB edition.