In late May, NVIDIA released the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB. Besides the $400 RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB, there will be a 16 GB version ($500), which launches this week, 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 eight 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.

Colorful's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Ultra W Duo OC is a factory overclocked custom-design variant with a triple-slot, dual-fan cooling solution. The biggest highlight of the card is the white color theme, no doubt. Colorful came up with something beyond "just white." The paint on the cooler changes color depending on the viewing angle, and the company carefully sprinkled on colorful highlights—I like it. What doesn't convince me is their dual BIOS approach. By default, out of the box, the card runs at 2535 MHz Boost, which matches the NVIDIA reference clocks. Pretty unexpected for an "OC" card. In order to actually get an OC, you have to press the "Turbo" button, which activates the second BIOS, which runs at a higher clock speed of 2580 MHz. That's the only difference between both BIOSes, exact same fan settings and everything. That makes me wonder, why hide it behind a button press? There is no tradeoff here. The card runs slightly faster, with the same temperatures and noise levels. That's why all performance testing in this review is done with the Turbo BIOS activated. The factory OC is rated for 2580 MHz, or +45 MHz (+1.7%). This turns into 2% 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 the older RTX 2080 Ti. The gen-over-gen performance improvement of the Colorful RTX 4060 Ti is only 14%, 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 launches this week and gives people a chance to put their money where their mouth is. I'm definitely looking forward to testing the 16 GB version, but I doubt the performance differences can justify spending an extra $100.

Colorful's cooler is quite short with just 24 cm, which ensures it will fit into all cases. We have seen dual-slot RTX 4060 Ti cards, the Colorful 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 66°C, the noise levels are a tad bit high with 36 dBA. Don't get me wrong, the card is not "loud," but it will be clearly noticeable during gaming while other RTX 4060 Ti cards tested so far will be hard to make out when installed in a case with active cooling. It seems that Colorful wanted to reach temperatures similar to the NVIDIA Founders Edition (64°C), so they ended up compromising on fan noise. I feel that allowing slightly higher temperatures would have resulted in a much quieter experience. Our normalized apples-to-apples cooler comparison test reveals that the cooler on the card is fairly weak, 7°C warmer than the FE at the same power and noise levels. As mentioned before, a dual BIOS is available, but unlike other vendors it's not used for a "quiet" mode, but only to increase the clock speeds by 45 MHz. What I do like is that the BIOS switch is easy to use, and can be toggled without opening your case. Just like all other recent graphics card releases, the Colorful 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. While Colorful runs at the same 160 W default power limit as other cards, their manual adjustment range is slightly higher than the Founders Edition, up to 182 W.

Finding Colorful's graphics cards is not easy in the West. They are readily available in Asia though, I found the Ultra W OC listed in several stores for around $420, which is a small $20 increase over the NVIDIA MSRP. Given the performance characteristics and thermals I find it hard to justify even that small increase, considering MSRP cards offer better coolers and noise levels. In recent weeks we've even seen the RTX 4060 Ti drop below MSRP, to around $380 on some models. On the other hand, Colorful's Ultra W has a unique feature—its white design. If you are working on a white build, then the card is definitely an option to achieve your color theme.

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.