Nvidia’s budget GTX 1630 gets a delayed launch date

Nvidia’s upcoming budget graphics card, the GTX 1630, was initially reported to be launching on May 31. Now, it seems that the release date has been pushed up to June 15.

Alongside the rumored release date, new information about the graphics card emerged, and unfortunately, it’s not all too exciting. According to these reports, the GTX 1630 might be up to 72% slower than the GTX 1650 GDDR6 in synthetic 3DMark tests.

Today’s round of not-so-happy Nvidia news comes from VideoCardz, which cites its own anonymous source as it shares the alleged embargo timeline for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1630. The embargo lifts on June 15, 2022, at 6 a.m. PT — which strongly implies that would be the day for the GPU to hit the shelves. This is a two-week delay compared to previous predictions.

Interestingly, the embargo timeline only mentions an “on-shelf” date. It might be that Nvidia decided not to send out samples to publications for reviewing ahead of the launch. Seeing as AMD’s recent Radeon RX 6500 XT received mostly unfavorable reviews, it could be that Nvidia also expects a lukewarm welcome for the rival to AMD’s budget GPU. Based on the specifications, that does seem quite likely.

According to VideoCardz, the upcoming GTX 1630 features the TU117-150 GPU. The CUDA core count has been cut down to 512, which is considerably less than the GTX 1650 with its 896 cores. It also has a tiny 64-bit memory bus, 4GB GDDR6 memory clocked at 12Gbps, and a less-than-impressive bandwidth of 96GB/s.

Comparing the new Turing GPU to its older siblings puts the new release in a bad light. The 6-year-old Pascal GeForce GTX 1050 Ti has a higher memory bandwidth (112GB/s) than the GPU we’re about to see in two weeks. VideoCardz also notes that based on synthetic 3DMark tests, the dated GTX 1650 GDDR6 should be at least 72% faster than the fresh GTX 1630.

It’s a curious time for Nvidia to release such a cut-down product. With GPU prices falling and the situation on the market finally on its way to something akin to normalcy, the demand for a low-end product might be limited. On the other hand, perhaps Nvidia doesn’t need the GTX 1630 to be wildly successful. The manufacturer might be releasing the GPU in small quantities, fully knowing that it won’t be a hit on the current market.

Nvidia hasn’t disclosed how much the GPU will cost, so that might still become the selling point for this model. If it’s very cheap, it might find its way into low-end desktop builds. However, if the pricing is not very competitive, many people will likely choose to get a better model and spend a little bit more for a boost in performance.

Until Nvidia itself speaks up on the scope of the launch and the pricing, all we can do is speculate. However, it’s pretty safe to say that the RTX 4000 launch later this year will bring a lot more excitement than the GTX 1630 can ever hope to muster — and rightfully so.

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