Rumor mill: Nvidia is rumored to be preparing the launch of a new graphics card. Sadly, it isn't one of the RTX 4000 series; it's a GTX 1630, the first GTX card to carry the xx30 designation. If the rumor, and it is just a rumor, proves true, it would be the company's first new GTX 16-series in three years.

According to VideoCardz, the GeForce GTX 1630 will replace the six-year-old GTX 1050 Ti. That means it would be the cheapest desktop graphics card to come from Nvidia in years. Its entry-level 3000-series product, the RTX 3050, has a $249 MSRP but the model closest to that price on Newegg is $329.

The appeal of a GTX 1630 could be its low selling point. It's expected to be less than $190, the current price of the GTX 1650. The card is also predicted to use the TU117 Turing-era GPU and have a TDP of under 75W, along with new GDDR6 memory. As with the GTX 1650, don't be surprised to see Nvidia launch several models of the GTX 1630 with different specs.

If the GTX 1630 is around $190 or under, that will put it up against AMD's RX 6500 XT and RX 6400, two cards we rated poorly due to their PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, no hardware encoding, and no AV1 decode. Nvidia could do well if the GTX 1630 addresses these shortcomings.

The availability and prices of graphics cards are improving drastically—just look at AMD's latest RDNA 2 offerings—and low-priced cards have long been the most popular with gamers. The GTX 1060 has been the number one card among Steam survey participants for over four years, and its position could soon be threatened by the GTX 1650, which was the second best-performing card last month. Nvidia will be hoping a GTX 1630 can imitate this success.