Shangke Group has filed an ECC listing with the names of several GeForce GPU models, ranging from the RTX 4090 all the way down to the GTX 700 series. Shangke Group has added the RTX 4060 and RTX 4050 model names to the listing, suggesting Nvidia could release the desktop versions of these cards soon.
If the ECC listing can be trusted, Nvidia could release its entire RTX 40 series stack in under a year. This would be very quick by Nvidia's standards, especially in the case of the RTX 30-series, where Nvidia took two years to release its entire product stack, ranging from the RTX 3090 all the way to the RTX 3050 8GB.
GPU manufacturers use ECC listings to register GPU model names to the government for use at a later date. Generally, these listings are a good indication that a GPU is currently in the development stage. However, this is not guaranteed the GPU manufacturer will use the names included in the listing, so take it with a grain of salt.
We have not heard of any rumors regarding an RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 desktop GPU, so performance estimations and GPU specs remain a complete mystery at this time. Only the laptop versions of these GPUs have launched - which you can read about here.
However, based on current rumors of the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070, we shouldn't expect these desktop GPUs to be that fast. The estimated specs of the RTX 4070 show us that the CUDA core count will match the previous generation RTX 3070, while also including a memory reduction from a 256-bit wide bus to 192-bit. The 4060 Ti is even worse, with fewer CUDA cores than its 3060 Ti predecessor and a bus width limited to just 128-bits wide. But at the very least, the 4060 Ti is rumored to have a 160W TDP, so it will be very power efficient.
If this says anything, it seems Nvidia is focusing more on saving power than anything else for its mid-range cards, leaving the Ada Lovelace architecture and its higher clock speeds as the only method to increase GPU performance. This leads us to believe we will see the same trend follow the RTX 4060 and RTX 4050. But these are just estimations at this time, and we don't actually know how Ada Lovelace will scale at lower core counts and power limitations.
Who knows - If Nvidia can pull off 3090 Ti gaming at 250W as it did with the RTX 4080, the RTX 4050 could turn into a "GTX 750 Ti" successor, with really good performance under a 75W envelope.
