In late May, NVIDIA released the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB. Besides the $400 RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB, there is a 16 GB version ($500), which we reviewed in July, and the RTX 4060 non-Ti 8 GB ($300), which launched a few weeks ago (our reviews). For the RTX 4060 Ti, I've now published nine reviews.

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is based on the NVIDIA AD106 graphics processor, which also powers several laptop GPU models—for desktop it's the first and only release so far. RTX 4070 non-Ti and RTX 4070 Ti are both based on AD104, RTX 4060 non-Ti uses AD107. As expected, RTX 4060 series cards are built using the NVIDIA Ada architecture, which not only brings improvements to efficiency and ray tracing, but also comes with the DLSS 3 Frame Generation feature, which is a game changer, especially in the lower-end segments, where reaching decent FPS matters more than anything else.

The ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Dual OC is a factory overclocked custom-design variant with a triple-slot, dual-fan cooling solution and factory overclock. While other vendors charge extra for such features, the ASUS Dual OC comes at NVIDIA MSRP of $400, which makes it a tempting offer. Out of the box the card ticks at a rated boost clock of 2565 MHz, which is a small 30 MHz clock increase over the Founders Edition frequency of 2535 MHz, or +1.2%. This turns into 1% performance improvement at 1080p—not much—other custom designs aren't doing much better either, but that's just how OC SKUs work these days.

Averaged over the 25 games in our test suite, at 1080p resolution, the RTX 4060 Ti is able to match last-generation's RTX 3070 and beat the older RTX 2080 Ti by a small margin. The gen-over-gen performance improvement of the ASUS RTX 4060 Ti is only 12%, which is much less than what we've seen on the higher-end GeForce 40 cards. Compared to AMD's offerings, the RTX 4060 Ti can beat the RX 6700 XT by 10%, even though that card has 12 GB VRAM. The Radeon RX 7600, Red Team's "x60" offering, is even 30% behind. With these performance numbers, the RTX 4060 Ti can easily reach over 60 FPS in all but the most demanding games at 1080p with maximized settings. Actually, the RTX 4060 Ti will capably run many games at 1440p, too, especially if you're willing to lower a few settings here and there.

As expected, ray tracing performance of RTX 4060 Ti is clearly better than its AMD counterparts. With RT enabled, the RTX 4060 Ti matches the Radeon RX 6800 XT, which is positioned roughly two tiers above it. AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT is a whopping 30% slower. Still, I'm not sure if ray tracing really matters in this segment. The technology comes with a big performance hit that I find difficult to justify, especially when you're already fighting to stay above 60 FPS in heated battles.

Probably the most important selling point for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is support for DLSS 3 Frame Generation. The algorithm takes two frames, measures how things have moved in those two frames and calculates an intermediate frame in which these things moved only half the distance. While this approach is definitely not problem-free, especially when pixel-peeping at stills or slowed down video, in real-time it's nearly impossible to notice any difference. As you run at higher FPS and resolution it becomes even more difficult, because the deltas between each frame are getting smaller and smaller. Being able to double your FPS is a huge capability, because it means you can enable ray tracing for free, or game at higher resolutions. Of course you are limited to games with DLSS 3 support, of which there are currently around 40, mostly AAA titles, but not every title will support it. AMD doesn't have anything similar, they announced that FSR 3 exists last year and since then we haven't seen a single demo, with no updates at Computex either.

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti comes with a 8 GB VRAM buffer—same as last generation's RTX 3060 Ti. There have been heated discussions claiming that 8 GB is already "obsolete," I've even seen people say that about 12 GB. While it would be nice of course to have more VRAM on the RTX 4060 Ti, for the vast majority of games, especially at resolutions like 1080p, having more VRAM will make exactly zero difference. In our test suite not a single game shows any performance penalty for RTX 4060 Ti vs cards with more VRAM (at 1080p). New games like Resident Evil, Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us and Jedi Survivor do allocate a lot of VRAM, which doesn't mean all that data actually gets used. No doubt, you can find edge cases where 8 GB will not be enough, but for thousands of games it will be a complete non-issue, and I think it's not unreasonable for buyers in this price-sensitive segment to to set textures to High instead of Ultra, for two or three titles. If you still want more memory, then NVIDIA has you covered. The RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB launched last month, we've tested it, and the performance gains are in no way big enough to justify a $100 price increase. No doubt, you can find scenarios where the extra VRAM helps, but these are rare enough that spending +25% more makes no sense.

The ASUS is quite short with just 23 cm, which ensures it will fit into all cases. We have seen dual-slot RTX 4060 Ti cards, the ASUS card is triple-slot, which should be no problem, because multi-GPU setups have been dead for many years, especially in this performance range. While temperatures are certainly good with just 64°C, the noise levels are just "alright" with 34 dBA. It seems the engineers wanted to match the temperatures of the Founders Edition, and had to compromise on noise levels to achieve that goal—the Founders Edition is considerably quieter at 29 dBA. While the ASUS Dual isn't "loud" by any means, it's not as quiet as many other options available. I feel that allowing slightly higher temperatures would have resulted in a much quieter experience. On the ASUS RTX 4060 non-Ti Dual, they installed a dual BIOS feature, with a quiet BIOS that really made a nice difference. No idea why that feature isn't included on the Ti. Our normalized apples-to-apples cooler comparison test reveals that the cooler on the card is slightly weaker than the FE, by around 2°C at the same power and noise levels. Add the lower efficiency due to the factory OC on top, and you know why the cooler ends up louder than the FE. Just like all other recent graphics card releases, the ASUS RTX 4060 Ti will stop its fans in idle, desktop work, internet browsing and light gaming.

NVIDIA made big improvements to energy efficiency with their previous GeForce 40 cards, and the RTX 4060 Ti is no exception. With just 160 W, the power supply requirements are minimal, any beige OEM PSU will be able to drive the RTX 4060 Ti just fine, so upgraders can just plop in a new graphics card and they're good to go. Performance per watt is among the best we've ever seen, similar to RTX 4070, slightly better than RTX 4070 Ti and Radeon RX 7900 XTX; only the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are even more energy-efficient. ASUS runs at the same 160 W default power limit as other cards, and the manual adjustment range pretty much matches the Founders Edition (176 W vs 175 W on the FE). This is actually a good thing, some value-oriented cards have their power limits locked.

The ASUS RTX 4060 Ti Dual OC can be found easily for $400, which matches the baseline MSRP set by NVIDIA. This is a good thing, as it makes the card a good choice for people who just want a decent card at the absolutely lowest price. The NVIDIA Founders Edition is a strong alternative, but that's not available in every country and tends to sell out quickly. If you are in the market for a RTX 4060 Ti, then do consider the ASUS Dual.

Generally speaking, RTX 4060 Ti at $400 is fairly expensive. This high GPU pricing will drive more gamers away from the PC platform, to the various game consoles that are similarly priced and will give you a perfectly crafted first-class experience that works on your 4K TV, without any issues like shader compilation, stuttering and other QA troubles. For GeForce 40 series cards, NVIDIA's force multiplier is DLSS 3, which offers a tremendous performance benefit in supported games. Features like AV1 video encode/decode and (lack of) DisplayPort 2.0 seem irrelevant in this segment, at least in my opinion. Strong competition comes from the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT, which sells for $320, with only slightly less performance. While that option has a 12 GB framebuffer, it lacks DLSS 3 and has weaker ray tracing performance. I don't think I'd buy a $400 RTX 3070, or a $320 RTX 3060 Ti—I'd rather have DLSS 3. If you can find a great deal on a used card, maybe consider that. If you can live with quite a bit less performance, but a more attractive price point of $270, then the Radeon RX 7600 could be an option.