"Final words and conclusion" as expected 🙂 At first i didn't believe you actually reviewed this card but it was fun reading the article. thank you.

Idk why i though drive could maybe overheat when card is under load but thats not the case.

What a frustrating product. Sure, I get how most of the lanes go to waste on a GPU, but the fact that the GPU core doesn't directly access to the NVMe while also needing a board with bifurcation support makes this seem rather moot. I'd really like to see the on-board storage act as a platform-agnostic alternative to DirectStorage. Have it act as a cache for asset data, or a cache for compiled shaders. Y'know, stuff that actually demands PCIe bandwidth. I'm not sure if you can do a x12/x4 configuration, but even a x8/x8 would be perfectly fine since as long as you're on gen 4.0 or newer, x8 lanes should keep up with DRAM. In instances where you're out of VRAM, on-card storage should more than double the performance of reloading asset data. This is because not only are you reading from your system disk and the on-card disk simultaneously, but the on-card disk won't be held back by DRAM bandwidth or the much longer path the data has to take from the system disk. This is the sort of thing where a 4080 could be a 10GB card and still keep up. Oh yeah, and GPUs like this really need to stop being called 2-slot. It's 2.5. As someone with an ITX case, it's getting really annoying trying to find something that will actually fit in it because companies keep lying about the size of their products.

Asus is not sure about the M.2 generation on their own homepage, so this is going to be interesting to see what it turns out to be in the end. https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/graphics-cards/dual/dual-rtx4060ti-8g-ssd/ "The built-in M.2 slot boasts PCIe Gen 5 speeds and effectively dissipates heat to the card's heatsink for cooler temperatures." "The ASUS Dual GeForce RTX™ 4060 Ti SSD graphics card takes compact gaming power and combines it with an all-new feature: a PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot integrated into the backside of the card, offering massive bandwidth for high-performance NVMe storage." "The backside of this graphics card integrates an M.2 slot capable of PCIe 5.0 speeds, for high-performance NVMe storage devices up to 80 mm long—and the SSD transfers heat directly to the card’s own heatsink using a thermal pad, resulting in a highly compact and tidy solution." EDIT: The motherboard compatibility list only mentions gen4, gen5 is not mentioned at all. When trying to download the quickstart guide I get a 404 file not found. FOR THOSE WHO DARE

schmidtbag:

What a frustrating product. Sure, I get how most of the lanes go to waste on a GPU, but the fact that the GPU core doesn't directly access to the NVMe while also needing a board with bifurcation support makes this seem rather moot. I'd really like to see the on-board storage act as a platform-agnostic alternative to DirectStorage. Have it act as a cache for asset data, or a cache for compiled shaders. Y'know, stuff that actually demands PCIe bandwidth.

100% agreed!! This card is a super smart design but with poor execution. I imagine that Hilbert's issues were BIOS related and I would see, if the format takes off, Asus fixing it. Anyway, I suspect that Nvidia has a say in the Direct Storage idea. That would also need driver development as well - probably more on Nvidia's side. Such a missed opportunity.

Lebon30:

100% agreed!! I imagine that Hilbert's issues were BIOS related and I would see, if the format takes off, Asus fixing it.

No, I genuinely believe these are hardware restrictions.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

We review the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti SSD OC Edition, a graphics card, a unique offering that incorporates an M.2 SSD slot. Designed with small form factor systems in mind, this card enables system builders to access a full-bandwidth M.2 slot for additional storage without the need for a second PCIe slot. Read the article here

A nice idea for using the leftover PCIe lane of the GPU in X8 X4 and X2... But they need to dig more the concept.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

No, I genuinely believe these are hardware restrictions.

Then, saying that the nvme SSD is pcie gen5 is kinda misleading...

M.2 Gen 5 might never be possible because the GPU part is Gen 4 and it will probably drag the 16X slot down to Gen 4 speeds, unless expensive PCI converter chips are used on the board.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

No, I genuinely believe these are hardware restrictions.

Hilbert did they reply back to you about the SSD problems? They have not replied to me yet, but hopefully you have better channels and a bit more power being a reviewer instead of a regular user like me. EDIT: Thanks for the reply Hilbert. I got a reply from Asus today confirming that it is gen 5, the homepage still shows M.2 Gen 5 and M.2 Gen 4 multiple places on the page and the DUAL-RTX4060TI-(O)8G-SSD Quick Start Guide download link on the Asus homepage (I reported broken 1 week ago) still does not work. I am not able to find anyone having success with bifucation between generations of PCI-X, I am sure it will work if the GPU is disabled in the bios, so the only thing running is the SSD, but that is a very expensive SSD cooler then.

TLD LARS:

Hilbert did they reply back to you about the SSD problems? They have not replied to me yet, but hopefully you have better channels and a bit more power being a reviewer instead of a regular user like me.

Still awaiting a new BIOS that should fix a thing or two. But it's silent on the ASUS side.