In late May, NVIDIA launched their GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB, I still have three more cards in the review pipeline. This review covers the Galax RTX 4060 Ti EX White, which is a factory overclocked variant with a white color theme that still sells at NVIDIA MSRP of $400. The GeForce RTX 4060 family consists of several models. Besides the $400 RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB, there will be a 16 GB version ($500, launches in July) and the RTX 4060 non-Ti 8 GB ($300), which launches next week.

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 release. RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti are both based on AD104. As expected, RTX 4060 uses the NVIDIA Ada architecture, which not only brings improvements to efficiency and ray tracing, it 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 Galax GeForce RTX 4060 Ti EX White comes with a factory overclock of 105 MHz rated boost, or 4%, which is medium-sized and a bit lower than the OC on the MSI Gaming X Trio (+135 MHz), but slightly higher than the one on the ASUS TUF (+90 MHz). At the end of the day there is not a lot of performance difference between these cards, and the gains over the NVIDIA reference design are small, too. In our testing, on average at 1080p, we found the Galax EX just 1% ahead of the NVIDIA 4060 Ti Founders Edition. 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 Galax RTX 4060 Ti EX 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 6600 XT, Red Team's "x60" offering, is even 38% behind. AMD's new Radeon RX 7600, which also launched last month, is 25% slower than the RTX 4060 Ti—definitely not in the same league. 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 in July 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.

With the EX White, Galax has engineered a great-looking card that stands out thanks to its white color theme. While temperatures are very low with just 64°C, noise levels are the highest of all the seven RTX 4060 Ti models that I've tested so far. With 36.4 dBA the card is not "loud," but it will be well audible under full load inside your case. Most other RTX 4060 Ti variants that I've tested come with very quiet fan settings of under 30 dBA. I'm not sure why Galax picked such a high fan speed, considering the low temperatures. It seems they wanted to match the Founders Edition temperatures, but had to compromise on noise levels to achieve that goal. I feel like a more balanced approach, allowing slightly higher temperatures, would have been better. Our apples-to-apples cooler comparison test reveals that the cooler on the Galax card is one of the weaker models in our test group. Compared to the Founders Edition it'll run roughly 5°C warmer at the same noise levels and heat load. This doesn't have to be a dealbreaker. The PNY RTX 4060 Ti has an even weaker cooler than the Galax EX White, yet runs much quieter and the temperatures are still perfectly safe. Just like all other recent GPU releases, the RTX 4060 Ti EX 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 Galax 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 180 W.

According to Galax, the RTX 4060 Ti EX White will retail at NVIDIA MSRP of $400—no price increase. I really like that. While others are charging extra for their custom designs, especially if they have factory overclocks, Galax does the right thing. I've always found it problematic to justify spending more for a factory overclock which gives you single-digit performance gains, especially when looking at it from a mathematical perspective. As our numbers show, the Galax cooler is a weaker design than some other more-premium cards, but it seems that Galax understands that, and prices their offering accordingly. This makes the RTX 4060 Ti Ex White a good choice if you want the cheapest RTX 4060 Ti and aren't looking for an over-the-top custom design with tons of bells and whistles. While the card isn't loud, it is louder than other models that we've tested, so if you are sensitive to noise, then it might be worth spending a few dollars more on one of these models.

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. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 non-Ti is launching next week, at a price point of $300, which should be interesting, too.