NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition 8 GB Review with 160 and 175 Watt power limit plus OC

1 - Introduction, technical data and technology 2 - The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE in detail 3 - Test System in the igor'sLAB MIFCOM-PC 4 - Teardown: PCB, components and cooler 5 - Gaming performance FHD (1920 x 1080) 6 - Gaming performance WQHD (2560 x 1440) 7 - Gaming performance DLSS vs. DLSS3 vs. FSR 8 - Latencies and DLSS 3.0 9 - Details: Power consumption and load balancing 10 - Load peaks, capping and PSU recommendation 11 - Temperatures, clock rate and thermal imaging 12 - Fan curves, noise level and audio samples 13 - Summary and conclusion

Summary

Of course, an assessment is always subjective and the price will certainly have to play a role. But to put it emotionless: You almost get the gaming performance of a GeForce RTX 3070 with 75 watts less power consumption. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, which costs 439 Euros (RRP), also just undercuts the RTX 3070 with a current street price of 450 Euros. Whereas the RTX 3070 had an MSRP of 499 Euros at that time.

The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is at least 9 percentage points faster than the RTX 3060 Ti 12 GB and it needs 60 watts less than the predecessor. Which brings us to the demand that the cards should not only be faster, but also more efficient. This is exactly the case here. You save over 30 percent in electrical energy and are at least 9 percent above the performance of the old card, which had an RRP of 399 euro at the time, but currently costs at least 415 euro. Thus, inflation also has an impact. However, this makes the old card completely obsolete. And there is somehow a monetary standstill.

The 160 watts are easily enough to play reasonably well, of course depending on the game and resolution. That is the good side. However, the up to 15 watts more of an overclockable card are quite well invested money, because the roughly 9 percent more energy can also be converted into a bit more FPS in some situations, such as DLSS, when the tensor cores are also fully utilized and the RT cores are also fully working. The biggest gain of the energetic feeding, however, is the smoother scrolling that becomes noticeable. On the other hand, the advantage turns out to be much smaller in terms of pure raster performance. However, the effects of the higher power consumption are also more noticeable in the Min FPS than in the pure average and that’s where it gets interesting again.

Because the efficiency observations also show us that the efficiency does not drop noticeably in the higher power limit and that it is possible to stay very close to the efficiency of the already very frugal GeForce RTX 4070:

The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is thus an excellent card in Full HD when it comes to higher frame rates and also still reasonably well suited for WQHD. However, you will have to think about smart upscaling in Ultra HD at the latest, because it gets a bit tighter in places in QHD without DLSS. NVIDIA can definitely use its advantages here, which DLSS 2.x also offers purely optically. However, if a game supports DLSS 3.0 and you would be stuck in the unplayable FPS range without Super Sampling, then this can even be the ultimate lifeline for playability. You can’t improve the latencies with this (they stay the same), but not every genre is as latency-bound as various shooters.

Thus, you get all the advantages of the Ada architecture starting at 439 Euros (MSRP cards) and could be quite satisfied with that in the context of the current price spiral, if it weren’t for the memory expansion and the narrow memory interface, which I had already noted with the GeForce RTX 4070. Yes, it might still be enough for WQHD, but games like TLOU unfortunately show us that resources are used more and more wastefully and the memory could be full faster than you can say pug. Even if the large cache can cushion some things smartly, it will not always be enough. But you can currently still get along very well with it under WQHD.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE 8GB

The cooler is very good in the context of the TBP, but the board as such is rather only average, because especially the cheap voltage converters are a bit disappointing. Especially since another phase could have been implemented directly and without layout changes. But somewhere had to be saved, even if it was only a DrMOS, a coil and up to 2 cup capacitors. The possible 2 USD per card is always worth it. There’s no need to write anything about the 12VHPWR connection, we’ve already gone through that enough, you really don’t need it here. Ok, for that there are the board partner cards.

Conclusion

The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti with the AD104-351 is a cleverly placed card in the lower mid-range that doesn’t have to fear any direct rivals from AMD in this generation, which is unfortunately also noticeable in the price. In terms of efficiency, NVIDIA once again sets standards that AMD really has to be measured against. If and when the RX 7700 series will come and if we will see 16 GB or 12 GB memory expansion again, that is still up in the stars. But gamers live in the here and now and there are simply no alternatives at the moment if you want the complete feature set including high-quality super sampling and AI. Because the Radeon RX 7600, which will be launched tomorrow, should be significantly slower (if the performance rumors are true)

Except for the outdated Display Port connector and the meager 8 GB memory expansion, I hardly see any drawbacks that would speak against this card in the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. Except for the price, but that is unfortunately exactly where the comparable offers are. Thus, the big miracle is once again missing. New costs almost as much as old and you have to look for the added value at the socket and can at least be happy about a bit more performance. That is something in today’s times, since the demands on sensations have already been reduced. The bottom line is that it fits and if the street prices come into play even more, it will even be considerably cheaper.

The graphics card was provided by NVIDIA for this test. The only condition was the compliance with the lock period, no influence or compensation took place.