Nvidia’s 60-class products regularly top Steam hardware surveys as the most popular graphics cards, often the “go-to” product for mainstream gamers, where the green team usually dominates, even if competitors’ products are just as good or even better. At level 60, the power of the GeForce brand comes into play, and it’s fair to say that Nvidia already offers some great GPUs. The GTX 1060 is still hugely popular, while the previous-gen RTX 3060 is currently the cheapest GPU you can buy with 12GB of VRAM — an increasingly important spec point. You can think of the RTX 4060 as roughly equivalent to the older RTX 2070 Super ($499 2019 product), so it’s generally faster than the 3060, but it only comes with 8GB of RAM.
This is obviously a challenge for the new card and even though its MSRP is actually lower than its predecessor, the problem is that the discount means the RTX 3060 can be a lot cheaper and in some cases offer superior value for money, sold out Immediately. . The fact that VRAM is becoming so important that Nvidia cutting it down for the third generation is questionable. It’s a shame because the inherent strengths of the Ada Lovelace architecture are all right on the RTX 4060, especially with DLSS 3, we’ve seen nothing else on this £289/$299 product Similar feats of gaming that are impossible to achieve.
So to put that into perspective, in the video below you’ll see that Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode can be played at full 1080p on an RTX 4060 at 1080p resolution with frame rates in the 50-70fps range, The average frame rate was 58fps. The RT Overdrive optimization mode has a slight impact on quality, increasing the frame rate by 36% to consistently stay above 60 fps. If this is the future of graphics (as Nvidia hopes it is), the RTX 4060 will democratize that experience.
| RTX 4080 16GB | RTX 4070 Ti 12GB | RTX 4070 12GB | RTX 4060 8GB | RTX 4060 8GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| processor | AD103 | AD104 | AD104 | AD106 | AD107 |
| transistor | 45.9B | 35.8B | 35.8B | 22.9B | 18.9B |
| Die size | 379 square millimeters | 295 square millimeters | 295 square millimeters | 190 square millimeters | 146 square millimeters |
| CUDA color | 9728 | 7680 | 5888 | 4352 | 3072 |
| boost clock | 2.51GHz | 2.61GHz | 2.48GHz | 2.54GHz | 2.46GHz |
| memory interface | 256 bits | 192 bits | 192 bits | 128 bits | 128 bits |
| memory bandwidth | 717GB/sec | 504GB/sec | 504GB/sec | 288GB/sec | 272GB/sec |
| Three Gorges Project | 320W | 285W | 200W | 160W | 115W |
| power supply recommendation | 750W | 700W | 650W | 550W | 550W |
| power cable | 3x 8 pins | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 2x 8-pin | 1 x 8-pin |
| basic price | $1199/£1199 | $799/£799 | $599/£589 | $399/£389 | $299/£289 |
| release date | November 16, 2022 | January 5, 2023 | April 13, 2023 | May 23, 2023 | June 29, 2023 |
Elsewhere, the fact that you’re getting roughly the same performance as (or in many cases better than) the RTX 2070 Super is unlikely to be recognized by many other outlets, but it’s important to Digital Foundry because This is the current reference point for console equivalent GPUs in our target PC graphics space. Taking into account the maximum setting benchmarks, introducing optimized settings and DLSS, Nvidia believes that a leading 1080p GPU can actually be transformed into a console-like “4K” performer.
That’s surprisingly impressive considering the pared-down specs here. The RTX 3060’s 3,584 CUDA cores gave way to 3,072 in its successor, while the 192-bit memory interface fell back to a 128-bit bus, limiting the amount of addressable VRAM that could come with the new card. 12GB for the RTX 3060 seemed ridiculously high at launch, but at a time when 6GB was the only viable alternative, it was the right choice. The options on the 128-bit interface are 8GB and 16GB – and the need to bring in the RTX 4060 at a reasonable price means 8GB is the only real option. Either way, we’re looking at reduced specs compared to the previous generation – which is never a good thing, especially now that many important AAA PC launches look noticeably worse on 8GB cards.
As far as the specific GPU we’re reviewing today, there’s no reference model for the RTX 4060. Instead, Nvidia offers the MSI Ventus design, which is a small, basic, full-featured GPU without any bells and whistles – just the way I like it for a budget GPU. There’s no need for a high-end cooler with a card that only maxes out at 115W, and power is provided via an eight-pin PCIe input. Again, there is no need for any special PSU connectors here. Cool, quiet, basic but functional with no real downsides. It’s pure entry-level and gets the job done pretty well. As far as I can tell, the card runs within the reference specs, but according to the power consumption table below, the peak power draw is around 127W as measured using the Nvidia PCAT hardware interposer located between the motherboard’s PCIe slot and the GPU.
| GeForce RTX 4060 | GeForce RTX 3060 | Radeon RX 7600 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control, 1080p, High RT | 51fps/124W – 2.43 joules per frame | 46fps/150W – 3.26 joules per frame | 42fps/161W – 3.83 joules per frame |
| Dying Light 2, 1080p, High RT | 47fps/125W – 2.65 joules per frame | 39fps/162W – 4.15 joules per frame | 36fps/158W – 4.39 joules per frame |
| Forza Horizon 5, 1080p, Ultra, RT Off, 4x MSAA | 112fps/101W – 0.96 joules per frame | 76fps/113W – 1.49 joules per frame | 124fps/158W – 1.66 joules per frame |
| Hitman 3, 1440p, max, RT off | 112fps/122W – 1.10 joules per frame | 103fps/175W – 1.70 joules per frame | 124fps/161W – 1.30 joules per frame |
Compared to all competitors, the efficiency of the RTX 4060 is simply phenomenal. In our RT tests, the RTX 3060 required 34% and 57% more power per frame than the RTX 4060 in Control and Dying Light 2, respectively. The RX 7600 increased those numbers to 58% and 66%, respectively.
In Forza Horizon 5 and Hitman 3, we focused on rasterization performance for games supporting the Ada Lovelace architecture (FH5), while IO Interactive’s epic games consistently performed strongly on AMD. In FH5 and Hitman, the RTX 3060 required 55% and 54% more power per frame than the RTX 4060, respectively. These numbers change to 73% and 17% respectively on the RX 7600. Considering how well Forza Horizon 5 ran on the RTX 40 Series, Hitman’s 17% score might be more indicative of raster efficiency. Even so, no matter which way you slice it, the RTX 4060 delivers amazing results on a meager power budget.
After the preliminaries, it’s time to see how the game went. As usual, for benchmarking purposes we used a Core i9 13900K with 6000MT/s GSkill DDR5 running on an ASUS ROG Maximus Hero Z690 motherboard. That’s completely overkill for such a GPU, so on the last page – actually in the video above – you’ll see actual tests based on optimized settings for a Core i5 12400F system with 3200MT/s DDR4, I We found this to be a good match for the capabilities of the RTX 4060 and all of the other budget-oriented GPUs benchmarked in this post.
Nvidia RTX 4060 Analysis
- introduce [This Page]
- RT Benchmarks: Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Control
- RT Benchmarks: Hitman 3, Metro Exodus Enhanced, F1 22
- RT/DLSS/FSR2/DLSS3 Benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, Forza Horizon 5
- Gaming Benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 22, Forza Horizon 5
- Gaming Benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, The Return
- Conclusions and Recommendations
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