The RTX 5060 is set to cost $300, but Nvidia assures you that you’ll be able to afford it

To put it mildly, Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPU launch has been tense. Apart from the problems with drivers and performance, the most persistent problem is that it is extremely difficult to purchase any of these GPUs at their base price. After releasing all of its high-end and mid-range GPUs, Nvidia is adamant that this time will be different with the $300 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060. The pre-release drivers for the GPU, which is being released today, May 19, are lacking, making it difficult for reviewers to decide whether it’s worthwhile to beat the scalpers to purchase it first.

Nvidia claimed that the RTX 5060, a card built on the Blackwell microarchitecture, was designed primarily for 1080p gaming. Even though Nvidia said the cards would be released today, its drivers weren’t made available until 12 p.m. A. ET. In the afternoon, the card should begin to appear at online merchants. Gizmodo was informed by the company that it was still working with manufacturers of add-in cards (AICs) to list prices at or near the $300 asking price. Ben Berraondo, the public relations director for Nvidia, added that MSRP models would be accessible at launch. The GPU manufacturers who want to sell you a new RTX 5060 won’t necessarily benefit from Nvidia’s efforts to keep the price of its own cards low by using its position as the most popular supplier of AI training chips.

We’ve heard Nvidia’s optimistic statements regarding pricing and supply before. It was extremely difficult to find a card at the lowest possible price, even when the company released the $450 RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM last month. One of the few options for purchasing near MSRP is the Gigabyte WindForce version of the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti, which Nvidia currently lists on its website for $480. Overclocked and stock cards, including the 8GB and 16GB models, are available elsewhere for $100 or more than $150 over the base asking price.

At launch, the RTX 5060 Ti stock fared much better than the RTX 5070, 5080, or 5090. However, the 5060 is already a peculiar creature, and it’s unclear how long it can remain off the endangered species list. Before the May 19 release, Nvidia did not grant reviewers access to the card drivers. Therefore, it is impossible to determine with precision how well the cards perform in comparison to the RTX 4060 family. We advise you to hold off on making a purchase until you have seen at least some reviews. We hope that the lack of pre-release drivers for reviewers in this 50-series release is not a reflection of the performance that these entry-level GPUs can provide.

To date, those drivers have not yet been realized. Nvidia instead claimed that users would experience significant performance gains over the RTX 4060, but only after accounting for Nvidia’s DLSS 4 upscaling and multi-frame gen, a unique technology that adds artificial intelligence-generated frames in between rendered frames to boost frames per second. Performance gains from generation to generation that aren’t enhanced could be as much as 20%, but few people outside of Nvidia have had a chance to verify that. most of the biggest internet merchants in the United States. S. . have not yet disclosed their card inventory; however, Best Buy listings provide an indication of what will be available. An overclocked PNY card and a few Asus RTX 5060 cards are present. It will take time to determine how quickly the less expensive cards outperform the more costly ones.