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Nvidia reveal the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 – here’s everything you need to knowThe 8GB RTX 4060 Ti launches first at £389 / $399
The 8GB RTX 4060 Ti launches first at £389 / $399
Image credit:Nvidia
Image credit:Nvidia
Hey hey, we’re finally getting some real mid-rangers in the RTX 40 series, as Nvidia have announced the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060GPUs. These will finally bring Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, complete with improvedray tracingperformance andDLSS 3support, beneath the £400 mark.
In fact, there will be two versions of the RTX 4060 Ti, with the 8GB VRAM edition getting a confirmed released date of May 24th. That’s ahead of a 16GB variant coming sometime in July. The RTX 4060 will launch in the same month as the latter, completing the replacement of theRTX 3060 TiandRTX 3060– still two of the previous generation’sbest graphics cards.
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I’ll be getting my hands on an 8GB RTX 4060 Ti next week for some reviewing funtimes. For now, here’s everything we know about the new GPUs, including the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060’s specs and what to expect from their gaming performance.
Image credit:Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060: price
The RTX 4060’s starting price will actually be a little lower than that of the RTX 3060 and even theRTX 2060. It’ll be £289 / $299, though there’s no such luck for the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti, which will launch at $499. I’ll put UK pricing here once Nvidia confirms it.
Image credit:Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060: release date
As with the pricing, we only know the 8GB RTX 4060 Ti’s release date for sure. That’s launching in mere days, on Wednesday May 24th.
As for the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti and the RTX 4060, we’ll have to wait for a specific date, but Nvidia has confirmed they’ll both be out in July. These won’t have Founders Editions, so it’ll be partner cards all the way down.
Image credit:Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060: specs and performance
Following on from the RTX 4070,RTX 4070 Ti, and indeed every other GPU in the current GeForce lineup, the RTX 4060 family comes packing 3rd gen RT cores and 4th gen Tensor cores. These should provide a boost to ray tracing performance and AI-powered features, including DLSS 3. Between the two RTX 4060 Ti versions, it looks like the amount of VRAM is the only technical difference; the memory bandwidth stays the same, as does the newly (and massively) upsized L2 cache.
Speaking of memory, the RTX 4060 Ti’s 288GB/s and the RTX 4060’s 272MB/s of bandwidth would initially appear as downgrades from the RTX 3060 Ti’s 448GB/s and the RTX 3060’s 360GB/s. Nvidia, though, say that the much fatter L2 cache on these 40 series GPUs keeps overall memory performance up to speed regardless. In the new subsystem design, the L1 cache can supposedly grab data from the L2 cache more reliably, saving the need to take longer trips into the main VRAM. On paper, this means the memory is no slower than the previous generation, while sucking up less power to run.
We’ll see how it fares in practice, but it does indeed look like the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 are considerably more energy efficient. Especially the RTX 4060, which slices total graphics power from 170W on the RTX 3060 all the way down to 115W. Could be a contender, if you’re concerned about running costs as well as the initial outlay.
Gaming performance, on the other hand, might represent a smaller step forward. At least in most games, which don’t include DLSS 3 support. According to Nvidia’s own benchmarks, the RTX 4060 Ti is looking at an average 1.15x the performance of the RTX 3060 Ti and 1.6x the performance of theRTX 2060 Superin games where DLSS 3’s frame generation isn’t available. The RTX 4060, meanwhile, promises just 1.2x the performance of the RTX 3060, as well as 1.6x the performance of the RTX 2060.
Behold:graphs.
Image credit:Nvidia
Click to embiggen. |Image credit:Nvidia
Independent benchmarks will paint a wider picture, but on this evidence the new GPUs are unlikely to make very compelling upgrades if you already own an equivalent RTX 30 series card. The exception might be if you play a lot of DLSS 3-ready games, where you should see far greater gains with AI frame generation switched on.
Image credit:Nvidia
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060: features
Did I mention these cards work with DLSS 3? The latest and greatest version of Nvidia’s upscaler remains an RTX 40 series exclusive, so the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 will replace the RTX 4070 as the cheapest means to get your hands on DLSS 3 and its smoothness-enhancing frame generation tool.
One concern I have is that to get the best (well, fastest) results, frame generation needs to be used in tandem with DLSS upscaling, which isn’t always the best idea at 1080p: themonitorresolution at which the RTX 3060, especially, aims to do battle. This involves rendering the game at a lower resolution then cunningly piecing the image back up to native-level sharpness, but when 1080p is the starting point, the render resolution drops so low that even DLSS can struggle to upscale it back to native-like quality. But then, the potential frames-per-second improvement looks so massive on Nvidia’s graphs that it might be worth taking the hit.
Other features include support for AV1 encoding, which is very much the next big thing in high-quality, low-data livestreaming, and of course ray tracing support. The RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 will also have full compatibility with RTX Remix, the set of game modding tools responsible for the super-shinyPortal with RTX.
