NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card review

NVIDIA is having a rather rough start to Gen 40. Between skyrocketing prices and the endless debate over VRAM size, the 4090, 4080, 4070 Ti, and 4070 cards aren’t necessarily the most obvious choice this year. And yet: the new DLSS3 technology continues to convince more and more players and developers for the sake of the fluidity of the experience. If NVIDIA is always betting more on software evolution reinforced by numerous accelerators, what happens when we come to its most accessible range for gamers? It was in search of the answer to this question that we tested on the RTX 4060 Ti.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Features

NVIDIA continues to bet on increasing the size of its L2 cache rather than the size of its VRAM. This is why the memory bus is “limited” to 128 bits: since the GPU accesses VRAM less regularly and finds its information faster within the 32 MB L2 cache here, the effective speed of the product is equivalent to the previous generation .

Test conditions

Our test machine for the RTX 4060 Ti is as follows:

• Case: Corsair A4000D Airflow
• Display: ROG Strix XG27UQR
• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• Cooling: ROG Ryujin II 360
• Motherboard: ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming Wi-Fi
• RAM: 32 GB DDR5-6000 XPG Launch RGB
• Power supply: ROG Thor 1000W Platinum II
• SSD: Western Digital BLACK SN850X 1TB

Our measurements were made on the card set by default, on a system that does not benefit from any overclocking.

We were able to observe a maximum consumption of 161 W launched at full power, for a minimum consumption in idle of only 8 W. Moreover, the maximum heating recorded was 68°C, for a temperature at rest of only 34°C . It’s absolutely excellent. Only squeaky point: the insistence on the 12-pin connector from NVIDIA, despite the fact that the Founders Edition card actually only uses a classic 8pin. The manufacturer provides the adapter, which seems useless here.

Our reference games:

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Star Wars Jedi Survivor
• Valorant

Cyberpunk 2077 is quite simply the Crysis of our generation. On the other hand, Flight Simulator has almost the same status, except that it is also a very processor-intensive game. Miles Morales and his open world is a good representative of the typical game of the current generation, even if this one also needs a powerful processor. On this test, we also chose to highlight two titles under Unreal Engine 4: Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars Jedi Survivor. The reason is that the dialogue over the past few months in the graphics card world revolves around these end-of-engine life titles, so we wanted to be able to see how they performed on the next-gen card. Finally, Valorant brings up the rear as an esports title.

Our 1080p performance metrics

NVIDIA considers this new graphics card to be one of its line-up that will offer more than 100 FPS on average on the vast majority of games at 1080p. Measurements that can obviously be found if we base ourselves on the use of the frame generation of its DLSS3 technology, which doubles the FPS thanks to 280 OFA dedicated to these calculations integrated into the RTX 4060 Ti.

We can indeed find these 100 FPS on average (or very close) on Cyberpunk 2077, whether it is to remain a simple Ultra mode or to push ray-tracing to Ultra by activating DLSS3. Even without its contribution, Flight Simulator maintains a very good average 77 FPS. But even more interesting, we can see that despite the lack of NVIDIA certification, Jedi Survivor achieves an average of 94 FPS using the FSR2 in performance mode. Unsurprisingly, Valorant offers us average FPS ready for competition, regardless of the desired target definition.

We are here in the waters of what the RTX 3070 offered in its day.

Our 1440p performance metrics

Even if NVIDIA mainly highlights its 4070 for the 1440p definition, nothing prevents this 4060 Ti from reaching it with still very convincing framerates.

Again, with a lot of DLSS3, we can reach 100 FPS on Cyberpunk 2077 without any worries. Even pushed to the limit with ray-tracing activated, Hogwarts Legacy arrives at around 80 FPS on average, a more than solid score. And finally, Jedi Survivor also goes up to 80 FPS with ray-tracing activated. These last two titles are important, since their PC versions are known to be… rather broken. Something that we could easily notice on Hogwarts Legacy, since the use of ray-tracing creates a bug in the display of textures that load and unload regularly within 10 meters of us. A bug that we hope will be fixed in the future by the developers.

Facing the Radeon RX 6750 XT OC

In the price category targeted by the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti in the 8 GB version, i.e. 439 euros (399 dollars) we find nowadays the Radeon RX 6750 XT which oscillates between 400 and 470 euros for purchase nowadays (compared to 549 dollars when it comes out). A card that competed with the RTX 3070 of its time. We will therefore compare the card to a factory overclocked Sapphire model, which has 12 GB of GDDR6.

What we can mostly see is that on in-house engines that care less about consoles, as is the case with Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 4060 Ti easily overtakes the RX 6750 XT as soon as ray-tracing is activated. Ironically, despite its 12 GB of RAM, the RX 6750 XT achieves roughly the same score as the RTX 4060 Ti at 1440p and Ultra, a score that is exploded at 1080p.

Don’t think these metrics say it all. On games designed primarily for consoles, such as Hogwarts Legacy or Miles Morales, the RDNA2 architecture of the RX 6750 XT knows how to hold its own.

We still see a certain superiority of the NVIDIA card on ray-tracing, particularly on Hogwarts Legacy, but the red team seems to have particularly focused on optimizing its drivers for Miles Morales which takes 20 more average FPS in 1080p without ray tracing.

But there again, being part of the red stable does not mean being treated better than the others. The case of Jedi Survivor is surprising since the latter makes a lot of its proximity to AMD. In fact, the RTX 4060 Ti delivers better performance throughout, even when using the brand’s signature FSR2.

Considering these measurements, we would hardly recommend buying the 16 GB version of the RTX 4060 Ti, since the additional 4 GB of the RX 6750 XT is not particularly useful to it even on games that are supposed to be more favorable to it. How difficult it is to recommend the RX 6750 XT considering that the latter requires two PCIe 8 and 6 pin power supplies and consumes up to 210W.

In creative uses

Let’s not forget NVIDIA’s stranglehold on the creative segment either. On Blender, which tends to favor the green team, let’s remember, the conclusion is unanimous: the RTX 4060 Ti is more than superior.

Video rendering is however rather neutral ground, on which the RTX 4060 Ti excels once again. On a typical H.264 render of an hour and 5 minute podcast episode, we have a five minute faster render using the hardware acceleration of the RTX 4060 Ti. The RX 6750 XT, in our configuration under the AMD umbrella, uses both CPU and GPU, and still can’t beat that. But above all, the RX 6750 XT is not compatible with AV1 encoding.

Conclusion