Nvidia reveal the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 – here’s everything you need to know

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 4060 GPUs. These will finally bring Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, complete with improved ray tracing performance and DLSS 3 support, 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 the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060 – still two of the previous generation’s best graphics cards.

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.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060: price

Let’s start with the money talk, since these GPUs are supplanting arguably the best-value cards of the RTX 30 series. And there’s good news in that regard, as the 8GB version of the RTX 4060 Ti breaks the 40 series’ streak of adding hefty premiums over their predecessors. The Founders Edition will cost £389 / $399, matching the US launch price of the RTX 3060 Ti and adding a relatively reserved £20 in the UK. Expect AIB graphics cards to cost more, in exchange for bonuses like factory overclocks and upgraded coolers, but as a starting price that doesn’t sound too shabby. The next-cheapest RTX 40 series card, the RTX 4070, is a mile up at £589 / $599.

The RTX 4060's starting price will actually be a little lower than that of the RTX 3060 and even the RTX 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.

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.

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 the RTX 2060 Super in 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.

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.

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: the monitor resolution 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-shiny Portal with RTX.