Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 vs RTX 3060 review: higher frame-rate, less VRAM

Regularly topping Steam hardware surveys as the most popular graphics cards, Nvidia’s 60-class products are often the ‘go to’ product for mainstream gamers, with the green team often dominating, even with rival products can be as good or better. . In the 60-class, the power of the GeForce brand stands alone and to be fair, Nvidia has delivered some excellent GPUs. The GTX 1060 is still popular, while the last-gen’s 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 broadly the same as the old RTX 2070 Super – a $499 product in 2019 – so it’s generally faster than the 3060, but it ships with just 8GB of RAM.

That’s clearly a challenge for the new card, even if its suggested retail price is actually lower than its predecessor, the issue that discounting means the RTX 3060 could be cheaper – and capable of high price versus performance ratios in some situations while stocks last. . The fact is that VRAM is becoming more important and Nvidia cutting it by a third gen-on-gen is problematic. That’s a shame because the inherent advantages of the Ada Lovelace architecture are there and right in the RTX 4060 and, in the particular case of DLSS 3, we’re seeing gaming gains in this £289/$299 product like no other obtainable near.

So, to illustrate, in the video below, you can see that Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode is fully playable at 1080p on the RTX 4060 at 1080p resolution with frame-rates in the 50-70fps range with an average which is 58fps. Take a small quality hit with the RT Overdrive optimization mode and it increases the frame-rate by 36 percent, keeping you north of 60fps at all times. If this is the future of graphics – as Nvidia hopes – the RTX 4060 democratizes that experience.

	RTX 4080 16GB	RTX 4070 Ti 12GB	RTX 4070 12GB	RTX 4060 The 8GB	RTX 4060 8GB
Processor	AD103	AD104	AD104	AD106	AD107
Transistors	45.9B	35.8B	35.8B	22.9B	18.9B
Die Size	379mm²	295mm²	295mm²	190mm²	146mm²
CUDA Colors	9728	7680	5888	4352	3072
Boost the Clock	2.51GHz	2.61GHz	2.48GHz	2.54GHz	2.46GHz
Memory Interface	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Memory Bandwidth	717GB/s	504GB/s	504GB/s	288GB/s	272GB/s
TGP	320W	285W	200W	160W	115W
PSU recommendation	750W	700W	650W	550W	550W
PSU cables	3x 8-pin	2x 8-pin	2x 8-pin	2x 8-pin	1x 8-pin
Base Price	$1199/£1199	$799/£799	$599/£589	$399/£389	$299/£289
Release Date	November 16, 2022	January 5th, 2023	April 13th, 2023	May 23rd, 2023	June 29, 2023

Elsewhere, the fact that you get performance in line with – or better than, in many cases – the RTX 2070 Super is unlikely to be a fact picked up by many other outlets, but it is important to Digital Foundry because that’s our current reference point for a console-equivalent GPU in the PC graphics space. Factor in the maxed out benchmark settings, bring in the optimized settings and DLSS and what Nvidia considers a top class 1080p GPU actually becomes a console-like ‘4K’ performer.

That’s surprisingly impressive considering the cut-back detail here. The RTX 3060’s 3584 CUDA core gives way to just the 3072 in its successor, while the 192-bit memory interface reverts to a 128-bit bus, limiting the amount of addressable VRAM the new card can ship. The RTX 3060’s 12GB seemed like a lot at launch, but it was the right call at a time when 6GB was the only available alternative. The options on a 128-bit interface are 8GB and 16GB – and the need to bring the RTX 4060 to a reasonable price point means that 8GB is the only real option. Either way, we’re looking at spec reductions compared to the last-gen product – and that’s not a good thing, especially these days when so many mainstream triple-A PC launches look worse than 8GB cards.

In terms of the specific GPU we’re reviewing today, there is no reference model for the RTX 4060. Instead, Nvidia has provided the MSI Ventus design, which is a small, basic, functional GPU with no bells and whistles – exactly the way I like it for budget GPUs. There is no need for high-end coolers with a card that reaches only 115W, and power is provided through an eight-pin PCIe input. Again, no need for any weird PSU connectors here. Cool, quiet, basic but fully functional with no real downsides. It’s purely entry-level and does the job well. I’m told this card is running on spec, but according to the power consumption tables below, the peak power draw is in the region of 127W based on measurements using Nvidia’s PCAT hardware interposer which is between PCIe slot on the motherboard 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

The performance of the RTX 4060 compared to all competitors is extraordinary. In our RT tests, the RTX 3060 required 34 percent and 57 percent more power per frame to match the RTX 4060 in Control and Dying Light 2 respectively. Those numbers rise to 58 percent and 66 percent respectively on the RX 7600.

With Forza Horizon 5 and Hitman 3, we focus on rasterised performance in a title that favors the Ada Lovelace (FH5) architecture, while IO Interactive’s epic always performs strongly on AMD. The RTX 3060 requires 55 percent and 54 percent more power per frame than the RTX 4060 in FH5 and Hitman respectively. Those numbers jump to 73 percent and 17 percent respectively on the RX 7600. That 17 percent mark there for Hitman is perhaps more indicative of raster efficiency bearing in mind how well Forza Horizon 5 runs on RTX 40-series. However, any way you slice it, the RTX 4060 achieves impressive results with a minimal power budget.

With the preliminaries out of the way, it’s time to check out the game’s performance. As usual, for benchmark purposes, we’re using a Core i9 13900K paired with 6000MT/s GSkill DDR5, running an Asus ROG Maximus Hero Z690 motherboard. This is total overkill for a GPU like this, so on the last page – and indeed in the video above – you can see the actual test with optimized settings based on a Core i5 12400F system with 3200MT/ s DDR4, which I found to be a good match for the capabilities of the RTX 4060 – and indeed every other budget-oriented GPU benchmarked in this segment.

Nvidia RTX 4060 review

• Introduction [This Page]
• RT benchmarks: Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Control
• RT benchmarks: Hitman 3, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, F1 22
• RT/DLSS/FSR2/DLSS3 benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, Forza Horizon 5
• Game benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 22, Forza Horizon 5
• Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Returnal
• Conclusions and recommendations

To view this content please enable targeting cookies.

Manage cookie settings