Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti review – is it worth it?

Last Updated on April 4, 2024

If you’re a little cash-strapped but don’t want to miss out on the advancements brought about by Ada architecture then the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB can be considered not only one of the best budget graphics cards, but one of the best GPUs overall. Continue reading to find out exactly why we’re confident in our decision. The cliff notes are as follows – if you want an affordable and high-quality way to play 1080p and 1440p with some room for the future, then this card ticks all the right boxes.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti price

The Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti is available in two configurations which have two respective price points. The mainstream Ada GPU starts at $399 for the 8GB variant and $499 for the 16GB version which doubles the VRAM. This is consistent with the MSRP of the previous generation graphics card, the RTX 3060 Ti, so Nvidia can be commended for not hiking the prices up with the bump up in architecture.

However, this is just a starting point for the Founders Edition model, if you’re eyeing up a partner card you may be paying more as a result. For example, One of our review units is the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4060 Ti OC which is available for $439.99, so $40 more than MSRP with the ability to overclock which we’ll touch on later. Similar can be said of the Zotac Gaming RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge OC Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse version for $437.99. The latter of which we’ll focus on in this review.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti key specs

In terms of its specs, the RTX 4060 Ti is built on the AD106 graphics processor and features a total of 4,352 CUDA cores with 8GB GDDR6 memory capacity on a 128-bit memory bus width. There’s a total of 136 texture mapping units and 48 ROPs. It has a bandwidth of 288GB/sec with a base clock speed of 2,310 MHz and a boost clock speed of 2,535 MHz. There is 18 Gbps effective memory, and it’s all powered by either a 16-pin power connector or a standard 8-pin as with our Zotac review unit.

What may also change depending on your version of the card is its physical size. Nvidia’s Founders Edition model measures 9.6 x 3.9 inches (LxW) with a weight of 2.25 lbs. It’s a dual-slot card so shouldn’t take up much room inside even cramped PC cases. In contrast, the Zotac Gaming RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge OC variant is a little more compact at just 8.9 x 4.9 (LxW) being slightly shorter but a little wider with a 2.2 slot size.

Power requirements are also pretty conservative as you can tell from the requirements of a single 8-pin connector. Nvidia recommends a minimum total system power of at least 550W, so you won’t necessarily need the best PSU for gaming here. We recommend at least a 600W brick just to give yourself overhead for the future, especially if you’re planning on keeping the card overclocked at a baseline.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti key design

The design of the RTX 4060 Ti will largely vary by manufacturer, and going off our Zotac Gaming RTX 4060 Ti Twin Edge OC unit, it’s clear to see the focus has been on power efficiency. The card itself is a dual-fan setup that includes a reinforced metal backplate protecting the PCB and connects with the standard PCIe 16x port. There’s a total of three DisplayPort 1.4 and a single HDMI 2.1 port so you should be all good connecting to some of the best gaming monitors.

It’s a remarkably well-built graphics card with a thick heatsink, sleek rounded edges, and a premium feel, and that’s good considering that you’re able to overclock the card passed what the original model can do. The RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition version is capable of a 2,535 MHz boost clock, but the Zotac model furthers this to 2,550 MHz for a slight edge, albeit one that may mean an extra frame here or there.

Speaking to the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse branding, this is likely to be a key selling point. Your extra $40 over the FE model gets you a magnetic backplate featuring Miles Morales, Miguel O’Hara, and Gwen Stacy. There are also emblem badges that can go over the logos for a splash of color, as well as decals for your PC case and even a themed tote bag. If you’re a fan of the movies and want unique-looking gear in your machine.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti gaming benchmarks

As far as the gaming performance goes, the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti excels across the board in 1080p and 1440p with some impressive figures, especially for the sub-$400 price point. As you can see below from the testing conducted by BGFG’s Sebastian Kozlowski, the graphics card had absolutely no problems chewing through some demanding software with minimal roadblocks. For the highest frame rates you’re going to want to stick with Full HD, but Quad HD is no slouch either.

Games	Average FPS (FHD / QHD)
Assassin’s Creed Mirage	109 / 80
CS2	265 / 165
Cyberpunk 2077	86 / 51
Doom Eternal	226 / 188
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora	69 / 52
The Finals	182 / 106
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	157 / 98
F1 23	81 / 57

Keep in mind that this isn’t the card you’ll want if 4K is something you’re aspiring to do. Instead, we recommend the RTX 4070 Super as it has a lot more under the hood. We benched many games in 2160p to test the absolute limits of the RTX 4060 Ti, but it’s not where this GPU excels. The framerates are largely playable, 30fps or above in most cases, but it’s consistent.

Games	Average FPS (4K)
Assassin’s Creed Mirage	45
CS2	78
Cyberpunk 2077	21
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora	41
The Finals	47
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	29
F1 23	30

We’ve opted to show you native gaming performance instead of DLSS-powered upscaled so you can get a feel for its actual power. While the Tensor cores can produce vastly improved framerates through Frame Generation, it’s not the most accurate depiction, as some games still don’t support this tech as standard. For this reason, we haven’t tested ray tracing as while the third generation RT cores and no doubt impressive, they seriously hinder native performance.

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti synthetic benchmarks

Synthetic scores are strong for the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, however, it does start to slow the limits of what 8GB VRAM capacity can do when compared to a high capacity such as the 16GB version. If you’re looking at getting a video card for productivity, you may want the version for $100 more that has double the memory pool. Here’s how our 8GB review unit did in industry-standard tests.

Software	Score
3DMark Fire Strike Ultra	7,273
3DMark Time Spy Extreme	6,174
3DMark Port Royal	8,017
Blender 4.0 Monster	1,978.1
Blender 4.0 Junkshop	892.1
Blender 4.0 Classroom	1,010.7

Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti encoding benchmarks

Encoding times are pretty impressive with the RTX 4060 Ti, which can be evidenced in HandBrake’s Tears of Steel 4K render and Cinebench r24. Rates are quick in various resolutions as you can see below:

Software	Score / Time
Cinebench r24	12,063
Fast 1080p30 (HandBrake)	02:05
H.264 MKV 4K60 (HandBrake)	04:20
H.265 MKV 4K60 (HandBrake)	15:40
H.265 HVENC 4K (HandBrake)	01:57

Conclusion

In terms of how it competes with AMD, we recommend checking out our dedicated RTX 4060 Ti vs AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT feature, which deep dives into the performance. However, there’s little debate about the upgrades ushered in by Ada Lovelace architecture even with a smaller memory bandwidth than what we typically see from the best graphics cards. This is partially due to the smaller 192-bit memory bus when compared to the 256-bit of RDNA 3 architecture.

For the best experience, you’re going to want to pair this GPU with one of the best CPUs for gaming that has a high amount of L3 cache and good multiprocessors for single-core and multi-core tasks. This can mean an AMD Ryzen chip or one of the latest Intel processors on the LGA 1700 socket, and you should check your mobo’s compatibility with this GPU to ensure you won’t need an upgrade.

Is the RTX 4060 Ti worth it?

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is an excellent graphics card for 1080p and 1440p with some good entry-level performance in 4K if you can smartly utilize DLSS 3 Frame Generation. Considering the value for money at the sub-$300 price tag, even with 8GB VRAM, you should be very happy with what this video card can do with the latest and most demanding PC games.

Copy by Aleksha McLoughlin ; Testing by Sebastian Kozlowski