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The Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060 Ti is the latest in the Ada Lovelace lineup. It's the next-gen equivalent to the very popular RTX 3060 Ti and brings support for all new technologies like DLSS 3, frame generation, path-tracing capabilities, improved RT and CUDA cores, and more. However, Nvidia is offering the card at the same price as the last-gen counterpart: $399. This makes it a solid option to consider.
The RTX 4060 Ti comes in two variants this time: the 8 GB and the 16 GB. The extra eight gigabytes will cost you an extra $100. The costlier variant will launch later this year in July. For now, we are looking at the 8 GB model of the same, which was launched on May 25.
Nvidia was kind enough to send over a Zotac Twin Edge model of its latest pixel-pusher. In this article, we will run the GPU through its paces, compare it to its last-gen counterparts, and find out whether it's worth the cash.
The Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti is bringing top-tier performance to budget gamers
Pre-delivery
Like the last three generations, Nvidia is marketing the RTX 4060 Ti for 1080p gaming at the highest settings. This time, the company has added DLSS 3.0 and frame generation that multiplies the framerate by a factor of 2 to 5. Add to that, there have been massive improvements to the power and thermal efficiency of the overall design, thanks to the improved Ada Lovelace architecture.
The advertised specifications of the 4060 Ti and its Ampere and Turing counterparts are as follows. The new GPU is way more powerful as compared to the older equivalents.
The RTX 3060 Ti continues to be a solid video card for 1080p gaming. It can play every latest title at the highest settings without dropping a single frame. Thus, the on-paper specifications of the improved 4060 Ti genuinely excite us.
Compared to the last-gen, the price hasn't gone up either. Instead, the card is about 30% more power-efficient while gaming, and the number is higher during idling and video playback. However, the 4060 Ti still packs 8 GB VRAM, which might be a problem a year or so down the line.
Fortunately, Nvidia also offers a 16 GB variant. However, that card charges $100 more for $20 of memory and won't launch until July.
Unboxing
The Zotac RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge follows the same unboxing pattern as previous cards in the lineup. Other than the GPU, we get some paperwork and a Ztorm figurine in the box.
Overall, the unboxing experience didn't come with some bells and whistles. It's the standard run-of-the-mill packaging you would expect from a budget GPU.
A closer look at the Zotac Twin Edge card
The Zotac Twin Edge model is a dual-fan design. It is at the bottom of the stack of Zotac's 4060 Ti offerings and will be available at $399 MSRP.
Design language
The card is almost identical to the RTX 4070 Twin Edge we reviewed a while ago. The 4060 Ti's cooler is a carryover of the higher-end card. The only notable visual difference is the Zotac branding on the two fans of the newer GPU.
With the RTX 40 series, the add-in card GPU maker has changed the design to match the aesthetic of the other cards in the lineup. However, the design DNA remains the same as the older GPUs. In the picture above, we can see the design language of the Twin Edge models from the RTX 20 and RTX 30 series.
Instead of the all-black design of the previous cards, the new Twin Edge models employ a black and light grey duotone color scheme that makes the card color neutral. It will be a decent fit with all PC builds out there.
Heatsink design and fan placement
The Twin Edge card is a traditional open-air design like all other GPUs launched with the same name. It packs a 52-fin aluminum heatsink and is cooled by four electroplated copper heatsinks inside. We saw a similar design on the higher-end RTX 4070 card as well. However, the overall heatsink mass of the lower-end 4060 Ti is slightly lower since the GPU inside is comparatively easier to cool.
Like the higher-end 4070 Twin Edge, it is paired with two high-quality 90mm fans on the rear that push air into it. Each of the fans is rated for a massive 4300 RPM and should be enough to keep the graphics card under optimal temperatures.
Case compatibility
Much like the RTX 4070 Twin Edge we reviewed previously, the 4060 Ti Twin Edge is a practical design. The card doesn't take up more than two slots in a gaming PC and is 225.5mm long and 123.2mm wide. Thus, it should fit in almost every case out there.
The GPU is powered by a single 8-pin ATX 2.0 power connector. Thus, users don't have to rely on 12VHPWR adapters or a new PCIe 5.0 power supply to run it at its full potential.
Test bench
The RTX 4060 Ti was tested on the same system as the 4070. The detailed specifications are listed below:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG X670E-E Gaming WiFi
- RAM: Kingston Fury Beast RGB 2x 16 GB DDR5-6000
- Cooler: DeepCool LT720 360mm high-performance liquid cooler
- Graphics card: Zotac RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge
- SSD: Gigabyte Aorus NVMe 1 TB PCIe Gen 4
- PSU: Corsair RM1000e 1000W fully modular
- Case: Open-air test bench
Performance tests
We thoroughly tested the RTX 4060 Ti in both synthetic benchmarks and video games. The performance marks are rather interesting.
Synthetic benchmarks
In 3DMark Fire Strike, the 4060 Ti pulled off a massive score of over 30,000 points. The card is only barely faster than the last-gen RTX 3070 in DirectX 11 performance and about 20% slower than the RTX 4070.
A similar trend continues in Fire Strike Extreme, where the 4060 Ti came out to be about 20% slower than the higher-end 70-class equivalent. The GPU also loses to the last-gen RTX 3080 Ti by about 21% in pure DirectX 11 rasterization performance.
Time Spy is a test of DirectX 12 performance. The RTX 4060 Ti, interestingly, falls behind the last-gen RTX 3070, which takes a slight 1% lead. The 4070 and the 3080 Ti still manage to be about 20% faster than this GPU. However, the new 4060 Ti is about 25% faster than the 3060 Ti and almost 62.5% faster than the RTX 2060 from 2018.
In Time Spy Extreme, a similar trend continues as the 4060 Ti pulls off a score of 6,007 points. We have recently added this test to our benchmarks suite and hence the hardware library is rather small.
The Blender benchmark is a test of rendering prowess. The scores in it reflect the performance that 3D professionals and artists can expect while using this freeware or other similar software like Maya, Unreal Engine, Unity 3D, and more.
The 4060 Ti is way more powerful than its last-gen counterparts. But, as observed before, it is about 28.4% slower than the 4070. The extra VRAM and cores of the higher-end card might come in handy for professionals.
One of the biggest improvements of the new Ada Lovelace cards is their ray-tracing performance; the Port Royal benchmark accurately measures this.
The RTX 4060 Ti is about 30% more powerful than the last-gen 3060 Ti in ray tracing-heavy workloads. The difference is more than 100% when compared to the first budget GPU with ray-tracing capabilities, the RTX 2060.
Speed Way is the latest gaming-focused benchmark from 3DMark and it measures DirectX 12 Ultimate performance. Our hardware library for this benchmark is smaller than the other tests since it is a new release. However, the RTX 4060 Ti demonstrated a 135% improvement over the 2060 but continues its ~20% trail behind the 4070.
Unigine Superposition is a solid real-world test of gaming performance. In this benchmark, the 4060 Ti demonstrated its rendering prowess. However, the card is about as powerful as the high-end RTX 2080 Super and the last-gen RTX 3060 Ti in all three scenarios, with the Turing card taking a slight lead in the 8K Optimized test.
Gaming benchmarks: 1080p rasterization performance
Nvidia is marketing and selling the RTX 4060 Ti as a premium 1080p gaming GPU. Like the last-gen 3060 Ti, gamers should be able to crank up all the settings to the absolute maximum while maintaining a steady 60 FPS. Let's test the latest Team Green offering in a bunch of video games to see what the GPU has to offer.
Disclaimer: Recording takes away 4-5 FPS.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a DirectX 9-based game and we should be able to record the performance of the latest graphics in legacy APIs with this test.
Interestingly, the newer RTX 3060 Ti and 4060 Ti aren't much faster than the RTX 2060. We recorded a meager 5% performance bump from the 3060 Ti and a 17% bump from 2060 in average framerate with minor bumps to 1% and 0.1% low numbers. All graphics cards run the GPU at over 400 FPS when paired with a decent mid-range CPU.
Thus, competitive gamers who play titles like League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike, and Valorant at 1080p have no reason to buy the latest GPU from Nvidia.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is a much more intense competitive title and the 4060 Ti shows off its true power in this game. MWII is based on DirectX 12, which can fully utilize the new Ada Lovelace technologies.
We recorded a massive 63% performance improvement over the last-gen RTX 3060 Ti and a 161% increase over the RTX 2060's performance marks.
A similar trend is seen in Shadow of the Tomb Raider but the performance improvements aren't as high as Call of Duty. The newer 4060 Ti is about 47% faster than the 3060 Ti and 82% faster than the 2060 in pure rasterization performance.
In A Plague Tale Requiem, the 4060 Ti is about 16% faster than the last-gen RTX 3060 Ti and 86% faster than the RTX 2060. The performance improvements are all over the place and largely depend on the game that the cards are being tested in.
In Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2, the 4060 Ti delivered about 35% more performance than the last-gen 3060 Ti. With the latest Chapter 4 update and Unreal Engine 5 integration, the RTX 2060 can no longer maintain a 30+ FPS experience at the highest settings. In our testing, we found the card to be about 110% slower than the new 4060 Ti.
The RTX 4060 Ti is about 45% faster than the 3060 Ti in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p. It delivers a solid 90+ FPS experience in the game without ray tracing and upscaling. The new GPU is also about 126% faster than the RTX 2060.
A similar trend continues in Returnal. The RTX 2060 keeps up pretty well in the game as compared to Fortnite and Cyberpunk. The 4060 Ti delivered almost 100 FPS in this title with every setting cranked up to the absolute maximum.
With the next-gen update, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has gotten way more demanding. However, for the new RTX 4060 Ti, the game is a cakewalk even at the Ultra+ settings. Both the RTX 3060 Ti and the 2060 are over 50% slower than the new 60-class GPU in the market.
Far Cry 6 is a new addition to our test suite and, thus, the hardware library is still pretty small. However, we recorded a solid 50% performance improvement from the RTX 2060 and almost no difference between the 4060 Ti and the 4070.
Across all the games we tested, the 4060 Ti is about 35% faster than the last-gen 3060 Ti. This is a solid improvement provided that power draw levels have gone down.
Gaming benchmarks: 1080p ray tracing performance
One of the main highlights of the new Ada Lovelace cards is their competence in ray tracing heavy workloads. The 3rd generation RT cores are a solid improvement over the 2nd gen ray tracing hardware that powers the 30 series cards.
Disclaimer: Recording takes away 4-5 FPS.
Portal with RTX is almost unplayable with the older 60-class video cards. With the RTX 2060, the game was a slideshow. However, the new RTX 4060 Ti ran the title at a stable 30 FPS without major frame drops.
Gains in F1 22 aren't all that impressive, with the new 4060 Ti delivering just 9 more frames on average with no improvements to the 1% and 0.1% low numbers. The RTX 4070 delivers way more performance than this high-end 60-class offering. The new GPU, however, is a solid upgrade over the 2060.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the new Ada Lovelace card pulls a solid lead over the 3060 Ti. The card delivered 57% more performance than the Ampere GPU and about 104% more performance than the 2060 at the highest settings.
The RTX 2060 continues to be a decent GPU for gaming at FHD, however, the solid performance improvements the 4060 Ti has made can be a decent reason to upgrade to the latest budget graphics card.
A similar story continues in Far Cry 6 with ray tracing as the RTX 4060 Ti managed almost 53% more frames than the RTX 2060 from five years ago. The framerate that the 2060 delivered is still pretty impressive for an aging budget GPU.
In Fortnite, however, the 2060 falters. The last-gen 3060 Ti seems to be a decent enough upgrade over the Turing card as it delivers nearly twice the framerate. However, the new 4060 Ti doesn't improve the average framerate by a whole lot.
What the Ada Lovelace card does improve are the 1% and 0.1% low numbers. The RTX 4060 Ti delivers a much smoother experience that is pretty necessary for a competitive title like Fortnite. Thus, we recommend the new card to all Fortnite fans out there.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the 8 GB VRAM of the 4060 Ti and the 3060 Ti turns out to be a severe problem in maintaining smooth gameplay. While the newer 60-class GPUs deliver way higher average FPS than the 2060, the 1% and 0.1% low numbers suffer badly.
The RTX 4070 12 GB delivers a way smoother experience in the game. Thus, we recommend gamers with the 4060 Ti crank down the settings a bit to reduce the load on the VRAM.
A similar story is seen in Returnal where the 6 GB memory buffer of the 2060 harms the 1% and 0.1% low numbers. Luckily, 8 GB of VRAM is enough in this title as the 4060 Ti can deliver a relatively smooth performance without breaking a sweat.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is very demanding with ray tracing turned on. However, the 4060 Ti handled the game like a champ and delivered a stable 40 FPS experience with a couple of frame drops here and there. This performance is very impressive for a budget 60-class graphics card.
Gaming benchmarks: 1080p path-tracing performance
Path tracing is a relatively new technology that won't become mainstream any time soon. As of now, only Cyberpunk 2077 supports it.
Disclaimer: Recording takes away 4-5 FPS.
Nvidia recommends at least an RTX 3090 for a decent 1080p 30 FPS experience with path tracing turned on. Thus, we weren't surprised by the fact that the RTX 4060 Ti can't manage even 20 FPS with the technology turned on. Gamers with the 4060 Ti will have to rely on some form of upscaling to add some frames back to the game.
Gaming benchmarks: 1080p DLSS 3.0 performance
The RTX 4060 Ti is currently the cheapest graphics card in the market to support DLSS 3. The new technology brings improved upscaling and support for AI frame-generation to a budget audience. Nvidia has called DLSS 3 the "frame multiplier" and it is the single biggest selling point of the new 60-class GPU.
For all the tests below, DLSS Super Resolution will be set to Performance and frame generation will be turned on.
Disclaimer: Recording takes away 4-5 FPS.
In Portal with RTX, the RTX 4060 Ti recorded a 164% performance improvement with DLSS 3 upscaling and frame generation turned on. This gain is lower than the 207% performance improvement logged on the 4070, thanks to the lower Tensor core count of the 60-class GPU.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the framerate jumped by a massive 171% with DLSS 3 turned on. The gains, again, are lower than the numbers logged with the RTX 4070.
DLSS makes path-tracing mode playable on both the RTX 4060 Ti and the 4070 with a stable 60+ FPS experience. However, the 1% and 0.1% low numbers on the 4060 Ti were too poor to deliver a smooth experience. In addition, the visual hit with rendering the game at half the native resolution is too substantial to play with the latest lighting technologies in the market.
In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we logged a substantial 126% performance gain that pushed the framerate to over 100 FPS on average. However, the significant visual quality hit with DLSS set to Performance can be quite bothering. We recommend gamers either set DLSS Super Resolution to Quality or not use it at all.
A similar trend is seen in A Plague Tale: Requiem as well. The game already runs at over 60 FPS without upscaling. Thus, we don't believe relying on DLSS 3 would be necessary for a story-driven slow-paced title like this.
Gaming benchmarks: 1080p DLSS 2.0 performance
Alongside the newer DLSS 3, the RTX 4060 Ti also packs support for DLSS 2. The older technology is now bundled with over 500 games, making it the more popular upscaling choice that players will come across. In our testing, the technology delivered about 20-30% more performance with upscaling set to Performance. This is pretty standard for last-gen DLSS technology.
Disclaimer: Recording takes away 4-5 FPS
Power consumption
Nvidia has focused on power efficiency with its latest Ada Lovelace video cards. The new RTX 4060 TI is rated for just 160 W, down from the 200 W TDP of the RTX 3060 Ti. The card doesn't boost beyond this number under full load.
Below is the power draw characteristic of the 4060 Ti when stressed with Furmark at 1080p.
Thermal efficiency
We didn't expect the Twin Edge card to be very thermally efficient. The GPU is based on a dual-fan design and doesn't pack of ton heatsink mass inside to keep the card very cool even under full load.
However, the heat sink design is adequate and should get the job done. In our testing, we recorded a rather unique characteristic in which the temperatures followed a rough sinusoidal pattern. The temperatures hit a maximum of 71°C at first only to cool down to about 68°C and then rose to 69°C before cooling down to 68°C again. The differences aren't that much and could be a result of fan speeds.
Overall, a temperature of about 70 degrees isn't bad for a dual-fan budget design and should keep the GPU running at peak performance without issues.
Clock speeds
The unit we are currently reviewing has a boost clock of 2535 MHz, which is the same as the RTX 4060 Ti's advertised maximum turbo speed. Do note that Zotac also sells an OC variant of this GPU, which can boost to 2565 MHz. However, the factory overclocked variant is only available in white.
In our testing, the RTX 4060 Ti only boosted to 2535 MHz for about a second or two and then slowed down to about 2250 MHz and maintained that clock speed for the remainder of the Furmark stress test.
The detailed memory clock and video clock characteristics of the RTX 4060 Ti is as follows:
Cooling fans
The Zotac Twin Edge RTX 4060 Ti packs two heavy-duty cooling fans. They are capable of rotating at up to 4300 RPM, but the GPU didn't push them past the 51% mark even under full load. However, the fans can get a bit loud even at 1800 RPM.
Value and conclusion
The RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB is now available for purchase starting at $399. The single biggest complaint with this card is its limited VRAM. Although most games these days don't have major problems with an 8 GB memory buffer, it will become an alarming issue within a year.
Nvidia is combating this issue with two major arguments. The first is the support for DLSS 3 on the RTX 4060 Ti. Although the technology can add a ton of frames back to a game, it's worth noting that the library of titles that supports the latest technology is still pretty small.
On the other hand, Nvidia has made it clear that players with 60-class GPUs like the RTX 4060 Ti are ready to drop some settings if that gives them higher framerates. While this might be true, this doesn't justify the $399 price tag of the new GPU. Gamers can also drop some settings on their older 3060 Ti, which is selling for dirt cheap in the used market these days.
Thus, unless you are coming from a GTX 1060 or an RTX 2060, the RTX 4060 Ti won't give you a much better experience. If you, however, want to upgrade from an older RTX 3060 Ti, skip this new 60-class GPU and at least opt for the much more powerful RTX 4070.
Zotac Geforce RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge OC
The RTX 4060 Ti is a great video card but it's riddled with a few issues (Image via Sportskeeda)
Product: Zotac Geforce RTX 4060 Ti (Provided by Nvidia)
Release date: May 25, 2023
Size: 225.5mm x 123.2mm x 40.1mm
Boost clock: 2,535 MHz
Display ports: 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
Power draw: 160W
