Nvidia just confirmed that it’s withholding pre-release drivers from reviewers for the RTX 5060, which will rival the best graphics cards. According to Dutch publication Tweakers.net [machine translated], the company said that it will only make the drivers for the mainstream graphics card available on May 19, the card's release date.
Many reviewers already have the GPU in their labs and test benches, but they still haven’t received the pre-release drivers typically included in the review kit. Several publications that usually receive these pre-release drivers have taken to social media and their respective pages to say they still haven’t gotten the required software to run what would be Nvidia’s most affordable RTX 50-series (codenamed Blackwell) GPU.
Team Green finally confirmed this to Tweakers.net, who said that it will only make the RTX 5060 drivers available on the day of release. This means that the tech media won’t be able to test the GPU until May 19 and publish their results after it goes on sale.
Another complication is that the GPU will arrive exactly one day before Computex 2025. This will make it harder for publications with smaller teams to run tests upon the driver’s release, as most of their people will likely travel to Taiwan to attend the tech expo.
Because of this, budget gamers who are keen on getting a new “affordable” GPU will have no way of gauging how the RTX 5060 will perform on the day of launch. If you’re one of those raring for a new graphics card, we recommend holding off until you see independent reviews for the mainstream card.
After all, a new GPU release does not automatically mean that you’re getting a good, powerful card for the money you’re spending. For example, the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, which has a $379 MSRP, falls behind the $429 16 GB version, especially when attached to a PCIe 4.0 slot.
Nvidia did not give a reason for the delay, but it could be that it’s still making some last-minute tweaks to the GPU driver. That way, it can ensure that the RTX 5060 will deliver some performance measure despite only having 8GB of VRAM. Or the company is avoiding getting its lowest-tier RTX 50-series GPU compared to the Intel Arc B580, which Tom’s Hardware has dubbed the $249 GPU champion, even before it starts selling.
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