Nvidia's RTX 5060 will launch without reviews since chipmaker opts not to supply press drivers to reviewers

Gigabyte RTX 5060/Ti lineup
(Image credit: Gigabyte)

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.

Nvidia RTX 5060 drivers not available for pre-release

(Image credit: harukaze5719 / X)

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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Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

  • warezme
    Smells like a dog they are to embarrassed to show.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    Yeah, this reeks of likely underwhelming performance, especially against its pricing. Which, if so, is really bad for gamers as it likely will be the volume seller for most.
    Reply
  • King_V
    I agree, it COULD be something simple, like they want to finalize the drivers. Or, it COULD be that they have something to hide. Admittedly, it's not a great look for Nvidia, considering the mess that drivers have been with the 5000-series release.

    The solution is simple: don't buy any of these until reviews are up. It's unfortunate that people will ignore that advice.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Like I said in the other thread, Just look at 4060Ti/8GB benchmarks to gauge the 5060.
    The results are most likely the same.
    Reply
  • VizzieTheViz
    Well that’s not suggestive of this being a crappy card at all.

    I don’t buy the drivers but, they haven’t been able to get their driver right for months, no reason to think the drivers will magically be fixed may 19th.
    Reply
  • Eximo
    RTX 4060 in the US is $340 right now, no stock it seems. It is a decent replacement. It should be cheaper, but we all know that isn't happening. MSRP is supposed to be $300... and there will probably be a small number of those at launch.

    Still, decent gain in CUDA cores and a huge jump in memory bandwidth, even gained a little cache.

    3072 -> 3840 cores
    272 -> 448 GB/s (Same as a 3060 Ti/3070)
    24 -> 32 MB cache

    Clock speed is about the same, so it should fall right behind the 4060 Ti?
    Reply
  • DS426
    *Popping more popcorn*. This is just funny.

    nVidia almost needs to run two different branches of their drivers -- one just for Blackwell and one for Ada and everything else that's still in support.
    Reply
  • Eximo
    The real question is what will the price of a 5060 Super with 12GB of memory cost a year from now.

    Or will the next thing from Nvidia be a 5060 9GB card or something.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    This goes hand in hand with the 8GB VRAM 5060 Ti in my opinion. Not a bad product per se but it's going to be another overpriced 8GB card.

    They know they're going to sell no matter what so this way they think the negative press won't hit until after launch. Of course I've already seen some YT folks calling it out so I'm not sure this strategy is going to pay off. The uninformed would never see all the negative press in the first place so all this really does is allow everyone to run wild.

    My problem with all of these 8GB cards has been the pricing and that there isn't anything truly entry level anymore. Telling someone who's looking at building a gaming PC coming from say consoles and having the price of entry for a non compromised experience being a $430 MSRP video card (really +$50 in the US right now) is awful. Intel is still at least a generation away from being a universal recommendation, but if someone was only playing newer games they are an option though the cheapest B580 when I looked was $310 which obviously isn't great.
    Reply
  • jlake3
    Nvidia just confirmed that it’s withholding pre-release drivers from reviewers for the RTX 5060, which will rival the best graphics cards.
    I know you've gotta get your SEO in, but them blocking reviews suggests it's maybe not gonna be one of the best graphics cards.
    Reply