The latest on the rumor mill is that NVIDIA will take a different approach for the current generation. Sources close to Videocardz and Expreview reveal that GeForce GTX 1160 (or GTX 1060 Ti) is in the works alongside the upcoming RTX 2060.

In fact, the rumors claim that both GPUs will launch in January. The difference between the two models is obvious: one is primed for ray tracing and the other is not. RTX 2060 is based on the TU-106-200 GPU, whereas GTX 1160 would feature TU-116 GPU. Although the two GPUs share the same Turing name, TU-116 will lack RT cores that disables GTX 1160 to have ray tracing compatibility.

With that said, it does not make sense to us why NVIDIA would choose to go such lengths to introduce a separate piece of silicon for a GPU that’s not ideal for ray-traced gaming to begin with. The RTX 2070 barely manages to provide an ideal gaming experience with ray tracing turned on. Both x60 GPUs will sit as mid-range offerings in NVIDIA’s GeForce stack.

Furthermore, it might have arguably been a better approach to just switch the prefix from “RTX” to “GTX” for the non-RT x60 GPU instead of building a completely separate series. GTX 1160 sounds confusingly like something NVIDIA did for the OEMs with GTX 800 series – a rebrand series of GTX 700 which never made it to desktops.

Author: Jawwad Iqbal

Having written on tech for years now, Jawwad Iqbal took his passion for sharing news and opinions with the inception of Hardware Blitz. He holds a firm view that quality content drives long-term success.