The GeForce RTX 4090 is the halo card. It's the one that serves as the high-water mark for where the current video card technology can go. The price is ridiculously high but somewhat acceptable, as no one expects the average person to grab one. The GeForce RTX 4080 was the high-end card that did very well in 4K but was hampered by the four-figure price tag, one that has barely budged once AMD came out with its flagship at roughly the same price but not exactly at the same performance level. The RTX 4070 Ti and 4070 punched well enough in 1440p and 4K in some cases, but the prices were still deemed too high, with AMD's only viable answer coming from its last-generation stuff that competed well — to a point. While this was interesting, the real fight was going to happen one tier below, as that has been the mainstream battleground for the past few years. With AMD still silent on further offerings in this area for this generation, Nvidia continues to roll on with the RTX 4060 Ti, a card we now have for review. For the first time this generation, it comes in at the same price as its predecessor.

Before moving on to the rest of the review for this card, we need to drop some information about two other cards Nvidia had mentioned during the latest press briefing. The first card is the 16GB variation of the 4060 Ti, which comes in at an MSRP of $499 sometime in July. We've seen the company try to pull off this kind of stunt before when the RTX 4080 was initially revealed with two different memory configurations, but the only differences between this and the 8GB variant are the RAM and price. The chipset, memory bandwidth, and everything else remains the same, which has the potential for market confusion for those expecting one variation of the card. Depending on the results of the benchmarks with this card, it'll be interesting to see how well those extra 8GB of VRAM will help. The other card mentioned that's also coming in July is the RTX 4060, which only has one model at 8GB. Again, depending on the results of the benchmarks here, there might be a case for that card being the budget leader, since it'll launch at $299.

We received the Founder's Edition version of the card and, for the most part, it looks exactly like all of Nvidia's cards in terms of design. The materials are the same, as are the fan designs, but the weight is much lighter than the 4090/4080 due to the two-slot design. This is a card with 8GB of VRAM, and it still contains the 12V connector that Nvidia has been using for two generations. Interestingly, the adapter only uses one 8-pin connector, and the third-party cards are said to be using that standard 8-pin connector versus the 12V, so those who don't want to deal with extra connection points might want to go with a different manufacturer instead of Nvidia.

For testing, we're using the same PC rig as before. We're using a Ryzen 7 5800x processor with an AIO cooler and stock speeds and 32GB of DDR4 RAM rated at 3600Mhz. The motherboard is the MSI MPG B550 with the latest BIOS used and Resizable BAR enabled, and the OS is Windows 11 22H2 with the latest patches installed. The driver is 531.93, which is currently in beta but planned to be released alongside this card. Thanks to the marketing of the card, all benchmarks are done on 1080p with max settings if possible, but 1440p is also used since the 3060 Ti was capable of hitting that just fine. Games were tested on both native resolution and DLSS, with the frame generation technology of DLSS being used when present. Due to time constraints, the pool of games being tested is smaller than expected, but hopefully this can also act as supplemental numbers for other reviews to paint a better picture of the card.

We'll start with 3DMark, our only synthetic program that covers a good range. With the Fire Strike test that emphasizes DX11, the overall numbers are pretty good for a card in this range. 1080p gets 29473, 1440p gets 14854, and 4K gets 7407. Jump to Time Spy, the DX12 test, and the 1440p score is 12997 while the 4K score is 6092. Port Royale is the ray tracing test at 1440p, and the score there is 8049. We also tried the new Speed Way ray tracing test, and the numbers are exactly the same as Port Royale, making it one we might not use again since it seems to provide nothing different.

Moving on to the Port Royale DLSS tests, the results show that the card is already very capable at 1080p. Native rendering gets to 62fps, but you'll hit 99fps using DLSS. At 1440p, things get interesting, as the native resolution hits 37fps. DLSS gets to 63fps, and using frame generation from DLSS3 nets you 89fps. While using the card for 4K should only be done if you're willing to drop things to medium settings or below, DLSS3 shows that the card can make something respectable with 53fps. Take away frame generation, and it hits 32fps while going native clocks in at 17fps.

For games, we'll start with Forza Horizon 5. Unlike past tests, this is a little different, as the game has some ray tracing present on your car in races as well as the latest iteration of DLSS. At 1080p with ray tracing off, native resolution produces 83fps, DLSS raises that to 92fps, and DLSS3 frame generation boosts it to 127fps. Turn on ray tracing, and the numbers are only slightly lower than expected. Native resolution gets 76fps, DLSS gets 86fps, and it's 125fps for DLSS3 frame generation. Bump up the resolution to 1440p, and the story changes a little bit. With ray tracing off, native resolution hits 81fps, DLSS also hits 81fps, and a bump only happens with DLSS3 frame generation to 88fps. Ray tracing activated drops the numbers a bit, with native resolution hitting 76fps, DLSS hitting 76fps, and DLSS3 hitting 85fps. In all cases, the 1% lows weren't that far behind from the averages unless you use DLSS3, where the averages double those 1% low figures in the chart.

The lack of any real number change might be a result of maxed-out settings and only 8GB of VRAM. The benchmark had brief appearances of a pop-up message stating that VRAM was too low, and this resulted in frame rates refusing to go higher. That is perhaps the one sobering thing about this card, as we're starting to get into games that want more than 8GB of VRAM if you aren't paying attention to the settings. The Last of Us: Part 1 is a good example, as the latest patch still produces a bit of stutter when moving unless you have a card with more than 8GB or simply turn down a bunch of settings to medium or low. Other PC ports of big games have started to become VRAM-hungry and pitching fits when the memory isn't there, so that is something to keep in mind if you aren't cognizant of tweaking hardware settings for the game.

Continuing with the benchmarks, we have Fortnite, a game that is difficult to benchmark since matches are always different. The game seems to change up things almost weekly, and the replays are only slightly more reliable than benchmarking live matches. Still, we include it since it remains one of the few examples of a game running on Unreal Engine 5 that uses the company's Lumen ray tracing technology. At 1080p with ray tracing off, the game hits 133fps and 136fps with DLSS on. Turn on ray tracing, and native resolution drops to 67fps but greatly improves to 91fps with DLSS on. Things get strange at 1440p, though. With ray tracing off, native resolution reached 119fps, but DLSS got 106fps. Ray tracing activated got 75fps at native resolution and 68fps with DLSS. Again, it's strange, and we have no idea why this is happening.

Diablo 4 is currently under review, and while we can't talk about the game, we can report on performance. For some reason, the build we have doesn't let us change resolutions without changing the monitor resolution beforehand, but based on these numbers, the 4060 Ti should have no problem with the game at any resolution. At 1440p, native resolution reached a whopping 139fps on average. DLSS activated boosted the game to 184fps, but spotty online connectivity during these tests caused the DLSS3 numbers to only reach 171fps. The lows in the chart are a result of the game being online all the time and reacting to network fluctuations, but it is reassuring to know that the game is coded well enough to run on high refresh rates with this card.

The nature of the Forspoken benchmarks doesn't give us reliable lows, especially with the game still suffering from stutters. Still, the averages are quite good. At 1080p with ray tracing off, native rendering gets 88fps while DLSS hits 108. Turning on ray tracing sees native rendering hit 71fps and get boosted to 90fps with DLSS on. At 1440p with ray tracing off, the game hits 66fps but bounces to 87fps with DLSS. Turn on ray tracing, and the frame rate drops to 50fps but comes back to very playable levels at 71fps with DLSS turned on.

Redfall remains in bad shape due to constant traversal stutters, which also cause some interesting numbers to appear in the benchmarking. It doesn't help that there's some randomization with enemy placement and time of day, so trying to get a like-for-like scenario is impossible. At 1080p, native rendering hits 70fps while DLSS hits 69fps. Only DLSS3 sees any real improvements, as the frame rate hits 130fps. The situation is the same at 1440p, as native rendering hits 66 and DLSS gets you to 62. Once again, DLSS3 really boosts things, as the frame rate now hits 110fps.

The Callisto Protocol is an interesting game title this batch, since it doesn't feature DLSS at all. It does have FSR 2.1, which can be used on all video cards, so this makes for a good test. At 1080p with ray tracing off, the game natively hits 88fps but jumps to 101fps with FSR 2.1 on. Turn on ray tracing, and native resolution drops to 57fps but gets boosted a bit by FSR with 61fps. At 1440p with ray tracing off, the card still does well, as native resolution hits 66fps, and turning on FSR nets you 82fps. With ray tracing on, native resolution hits 46fps while FSR gets it shy of 60fps, hitting 57fps instead.

Despite The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt being an old title, the changes that came with the big DirectX 12 update make it a viable taxing game again. At 1080p, native resolution hits 79fps with DLSS bringing that up to 97fps and DLSS3 frame generation wildly increasing that to 147fps. Turn ray tracing on, and native resolution drops to 43fps. DLSS helps it a bit to 55fps, but DLSS3 saves it by hitting 89fps. At 1440p, this starts to really tax the 4060 Ti. With ray tracing off, native resolution hits 51fps, while DLSS brings it back to 72fps and DLSS3 hits a nice 98fps. Turn on ray tracing, and you'll really want DLSS active, as native resolution only hits 29fps. You get to 42fps with DLSS and a much more playable 63fps with DLSS3.

The final game we're looking at in this truncated review is Returnal, which performs fairly nicely on the PC but still has issues where you'll get half-second stutters when transitioning from area to area. The lows for 1080p hover in the low 30fps range, but the averages with and without ray tracing at 1080p are 80fps and 90fps, respectively. DLSS boosts this to 97fps and 102fps for both ray tracing modes, but frame generation via DLSS3 boosts those averages significantly to 137fps and 142fps. The story is similar at 1440p. With ray tracing off, native resolution hits 69fps, DLSS hits 86, fps, and DLSS3 frame generation hits 105fps. Turn on ray tracing, and the numbers hit 55fps native, 77fps with DLSS, and 99 with DLSS3 frame generation.

The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB version finds itself in an interesting position. If you're the type of player who likes to max things out in most games at 1080p, then the card performs very well at 1080p with and without ray tracing. DLSS comes into play only if you really want high frame rates without lowering anything. At 1440p, the card punches above its weight, as it delivers very good performance all around, but DLSS becomes something you'll turn on more at this stage if you want everything marked at their highest levels. At the same time, with more games coming out that are built specifically for the PS5/Xbox Series X/S generation, the 8GB version is better suited for those who don't mind lowering some settings or relying more on DLSS3 for certain games if they don't feel like waiting another month for the 16GB version to drop.

Score: 8.0/10