Specs overview
The card is expected to use a cut-down TU117-150 GPU. This is the same GPU that powers the GTX 1650 and 1650 Super. As the name suggests, the GTX 1630 is part of the 16-series of budget GPUs from NVIDIA. Reports suggest that it’s very similar to the GTX 1650 and should essentially be looked at as a cut-down version of that graphics card. Not only do they use the exact same GPU, it’s said that AIBs and manufacturers are recycling designs from their GTX 1650 models for the GTX 1630, which means the same variant of these two GPUs should look alike. It also shares an identical power requirement to the GTX 1650, at 75W. So you wouldn’t need external power connectors to juice (most versions of) the card. There are some differences in memory, however. Despite carrying the same 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM, the memory is spread across a 64-bit wide bus interface on the GTX 1630, compared to the 128-bit bus on the GTX 1650. That should knock down the overall memory bandwidth of the card significantly. But, the actual speed of the memory modules is still the same at 12Gbps for the newcomer. While cores aren’t cut exactly in half like the memory bus, they’re still a big step down at 512 CUDA Cores vs 896 on the 1650. In fact, the GTX 1630 has less cores, and a worse memory bus than the GTX 1050 Ti, the card it intends to replace. Anyways, specs aside, the card has been rumored to launch on several different dates, all of whom have passed by now because the GTX 1630 has been subjected to numerous delays.
GTX 1630 launching this June
The card was originally supposed to launch last month, on May 31st. It then got delayed to mid-June to be released on June 15th. As we inched closer to that date, a new update surfaced saying that the GPU has been delayed once again, this time indefinitely. The leaked embargo schedule showed the release date as “to be determined” (TBD) which certainly wasn’t a good sign. Now, a new leak has come forward, courtesy of ITHome, which claims a new launch date for the GTX 1630. Over on the Chinese Board Channels forum, a notice from graphics card manufacturer COLORFUL was posted, allegedly giving away the release date of the GTX 1630. As you can see, the notice above clearly mentions that official sales will be going live starting June 28th. One important thing to keep in mind is that right after this phrase, the notice says that this date is still subject to change from NVIDIA. If nothing goes wrong then hopefully this is it and the GTX 1630 is launching on June 28th, 2022. According to some Chinese retailers, initial shipments of the GTX 1630 are already on their way and arriving very soon. That would certainly fit in line with the leaked 28th June date, that’s 4 days from now. The price is expected to be around 1000 RMB, or $150 USD after conversion. Whether this card will be scalped on day one or not remains to be seen.
