Asus has officially released its latest graphics card, the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD, which boasts a unique feature – an on-board M.2 slot for connecting an SSD directly to the card. Despite this, it can also host other components, and Asus showcased its use with the Nvidia RTX 4090.
The purpose of this innovative feature is to make use of the 8 PCIe lanes on the RTX 4060 Ti, leaving half of the lanes in a 16-lane PCIe slot unused. By using 4 of these empty lanes to run the SSD, users can experience full PCIe 5.0 speed if both the motherboard and the NVMe drive in a system support PCIe 5.0.
One of the key benefits of this setup is the ability to cool a high-speed SSD effectively, with a thermal pad in the M.2 slot enabling the graphics card’s heat sink to provide adequate cooling. Asus claims up to a 40% reduction in temperature on the attached SSD compared to a standard M.2 slot on the motherboard.
The release of the RTX 4060 Ti follows a previous demonstration by Asus, with the graphics card going on sale after four months.
While this innovation is niche, there will undoubtedly be some interest in its novelty. One interesting possibility is the ability to connect another graphics card to the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, essentially creating a double GPU. However, this is also not very practical because the secondary board only gets 4 PCIe lanes of bandwidth, significantly impacting its performance.
Overall, the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD presents an intriguing take on graphics card design, and while it may not be a revolutionary innovation, it certainly adds a new aspect to the ever-evolving world of GPUs.
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