ASUS has officially launched its latest development with interesting functionality. The Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD graphics card is equipped with an M.2 slot and allows you to connect a high-speed NVMe drive. This concept was first shown by the developers back in early July, and now the company has decided to add the graphics adapter to the list of serial products. We have previously reported on the emergence of such a "hybrid", and now we have a little more information about this model.
The video card offers the same features as the regular ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. The model is equipped with an AD106 graphics processor with 4352 cores and a frequency formula of 2310/2565 MHz. The adapter is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory with an effective 18,000 MHz. The 128-bit bus allows for a bandwidth of 288 GB/s.
The adapter has a 2.5-slot design and is equipped with a cooling system with a pair of fans. Overall dimensions of the video card are 227x123x49.6 mm. There is one 8-pin connector for connecting additional power, which is quite enough, given the TDP of 160W. At the same time, the developers recommend using a 650W or more PSU in the system.
A unique feature of ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD is that it is the first graphics card equipped with an M.2 port, which allows you to connect a high-speed SSD of the appropriate format. This does not affect the performance of either the video card or the drive.
As a reminder, GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards use 8 lines of PCI-E 4.0 bus. Therefore, when you connect such a graphics adapter to a PCI-E x16 slot, another 8 lines usually remain unused. It is these system resources that are used to connect an M.2 SSD.
The M.2 port is located on the back of the video card PCB, with the SSD installed on the back side. This way, the drive is in direct contact with the video card's fan-assisted radiator unit through a thermal pad. According to the developers, this arrangement cools the drive even better than on the motherboard. Among the features, we also note that the SSD is attached to the connector using Q-Latch clamps without additional screws.
In operating mode, the M.2 connector is covered by an additional plastic cover that protects the SSD from possible mechanical damage.
Although the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards use the PCI-E 4.0 bus, if the motherboard and NVMe drive in the system support PCI-E 5.0, the SSD will operate at full PCI-E 5.0 speeds. For this reason, ASUS recommends that you install the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD in the top PCI-E x16 slot of your motherboard, which communicates directly with the CPU.
This is a fundamental feature primarily for Intel platforms, which have rather limited capabilities for connecting the highest-speed M.2 drives. M.2 PCI-E 5.0 x4 ports can usually be found only on top-end motherboards for which manufacturers have implemented PCI-E 5.0 processor line splitting. Much more often, the fastest standard lines are available only in the main PCI-E x16 slot. For such cases, the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD is almost the only way to connect an M.2 PCI-E 5.0 x4 drive without losing performance.
ASUS developers often boldly experiment with different concepts, trying to find new meanings in seemingly familiar things. Some solutions remain at the prototype level and provide some experience for further experiments, while others open up new possibilities and claim to become an industry standard. Only time will tell what fate awaits a video card with the ability to disable the SSD.
The press release announcing the new graphics card sent out by ASUS' Ukrainian representative office is a reason to believe that Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSDs will also be officially delivered to our country. The timing and estimated retail price have not yet been announced.