Nvidia’s RTX 4050 has been spotted, or at least the packaging for the GPU was purportedly sighted, at a Galax event – though as you might imagine, this doubtless isn’t what it seems, and we should be staggering under the weight of the salt that needs to be applied to this particular ‘leak’.
The sighting of a Galax RTX 4050 box occurred at an event where the graphics card maker was launching its RTX 4090 models – the flagship being the only next-gen Lovelace GPU which is actually on sale right now – as reported by Wccftech (opens in new tab) (and first flagged up on Reddit (opens in new tab)).
And it has caused some folks to get excited that maybe, just maybe, the RTX 4050 is somehow on the horizon. But we very, very much doubt it.
With leaks like these, of course there’s always the possibility that the photo is faked, but in this case, it seems like it’s probably real – or at least the image could be, but not the box itself. By which we mean this is most likely a mock-up box made by Galax to fill out the display stand at the launch event over in the Philippines, or that seems the most likely explanation, anyway (if the pic isn’t a fake).
Analysis: None of this makes much sense
If you look closely, there’s some tape over the front of the box where it should say ‘RTX 4050’ to match the other logos visible, so in all likelihood, this hasn’t been changed (and just taped over – it’s this element which makes it seem less likely that the photo is a fake, at least to us).
But as mentioned, this surely is not a sign that the RTX 4050 is in any way imminent, and that graphics card makers are already producing packaging for it. More likely this is a Galax employee being mischievous – or it’s a mistake, pure and simple (somehow) – or the company is just filling out its stand with other possible Lovelace products (though why the firm didn’t use an RTX 4080 box is a fair question to ask in that case).
Clearly, though, a real RTX 4050 box would definitely not be the same (massive) size as the hefty carton required to shroud the RTX 4090 flagship GPU. And so this is just as clearly an RTX 4090 box which has had the text messed with (in real life, or by someone in Photoshop). VideoCardz (opens in new tab) further reports on this and claims that it managed to get confirmation that the box in question was indeed present at this Galax launch event, by the way.
We have not heard anything at all on the rumor mill about the RTX 4050, and if it was anywhere near arriving, we surely would’ve been getting bits of speculation piped down the grapevine by now. Indeed, we’ve heard precious little about the RTX 4060 either, all of which suggests that any remotely wallet-friendly Lovelace GPU is still some way off, and the RTX 4050 is very likely still a long old distance away.
Although some witty folks have suggested this could be the new incarnation and name for the RTX 4080 12GB, which was recently canceled (or ‘unlaunched’, ahem) by Nvidia following a negative reaction to that particular model. In all seriousness, presumably that 4080 variant is destined to become either the RTX 4070 or probably more likely the 4070 Ti (or Super), though whichever way Nvidia goes with the renaming, it’s likely to get messy (not for the first time).
