In a stunt that evokes memories of the glory days of SLI setups, Asus has found an altogether unexpected way to showcase the capabilities of its new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card. While the performance of the device isn’t anything out of the ordinary, it separates itself from the pack with the addition of an M.2 slot that can be used for SSDs and wholly unnecessary additional pixel pushers too.
The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is widely understood to be the worst of Nvidia’s current generation graphics cards, but this Dual model from Asus could invite welcome innovation into the space. After all, even the most powerful pixel pushers struggle to satiate the PCIe Express lanes they populate on our motherboards.
We could soon be installing the best SSDs into the back of our graphics cards, if a recent demonstration by Asus offers us a glimpse into the future. Posting to Bilbili (via WCCF Tech), Asus general manager, Tony Yu, shared footage of him plugging a Samsung 990 Pro into the back of the new Dual card.
This is made possible as the RTX 4060 Ti only uses eight of the sixteen PCIe lanes available to it, allowing the M.2 NVMe drive to populate an additional four. So, in theory, you could plug in two to completely saturate the slot. Better still, it doesn’t appear to affect performance or negatively impact thermals either.
Taking things one step further, just for fun, Yu plugged in a GeForce RTX 4090 into the RTX 4060 Ti, via a PCIe riser cable. This, of course, isn’t at all practical, but is a cool demonstration of what’s possible by the addition of the slot. Even if it does cost a little extra, with this version of the Asus Dual card costing $100-$150 more than the normal model.
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