Nvidia’s RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is officially on shelves. Despite this, it’s not looking like great value for users: here’s why.
The RTX 4060 Ti was released back in May, and with it came some praise for its efficiency, but one major thing was holding the GPU back: its VRAM capacity. This is something that has affected all of the mid-range RTX 40-series stack. In our review, we called the 8GB 4060 Ti a “GPU built on compromise”, and this could also extend to the quietly-released 16GB model of the card.
In a deck presented by Nvidia to Dexerto at the announcement of the RTX 4060 series, we were also shown a comparison of preliminary benchmarks between the $399 8GB model, and the $499 16GB model.
In the two slides comparing the GPUs to previous-generation models, you can observe that while the 16GB variant is slightly faster, the difference in pricing makes the marginal performance gains questionable for the $100 markup.
There are no 4060 Ti 16GB reviews
Nvidia has not seeded press samples of the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB model. What this means for consumers is that the company is attempting to launch a card that it knows will not receive good critical reception.
If you circle this back to the marginal performance gains we saw presented by Nvidia, it just shows that the 4060 Ti 16GB might be a poor value at $499, a golden number for many prospective GPU buyers.
More VRAM alone does not solve every issue
There’s no doubt that the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB is a compromised card. While the performance on offer will be enough for many at 1080p, we have to ask the question, when will “budget” GPUs be ready to take on higher resolutions?
Well, it won’t be with either variant of the RTX 4060 Ti, whose 128-bit memory bus width is fairly limited, and the die cutdown of the GPU itself shows that throwing more memory at the problem might not be the answer if they are still running with the same speeds.
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Are the 40-series die cutdowns too aggressive?
Nvidia’s RTX 40-series cut down their dies a step further than the company would usually, meaning that every GPU in the stack from the RTX 4090 down is using a slightly more cut-down variant of the cards than they usually would in previous generations.
We would say that this is most felt in the RTX 4070 series and below. While the cards can offer good performance when paired with other features like DLSS 3. For the RTX 4060 in particular, it does not seem like it should have that “60” moniker at all.
We previously saw this behavior from Team Green when they attempted to launch a 4080 12GB, which eventually got rebadged into an RTX 4070 Ti. While there were some nuances to that situation, the proposed 4080 12GB was in fact using a completely different die to the 4080.
Clearly seeing this error, Nvidia quickly relaunched the card as the 4070 Ti. But, it seems to have stuck to its guns with the aggressive die cutdowns.
A refresh might be the way to go
This is not the first time an Nvidia generation has kind of launched sideways, the 20-series was also not met with a stellar reception back when it was unveiled. But, many qualms about that generation’s release were quelled by the refreshed variants of each card.
If Nvidia wants to recapture some goodwill, then releasing a refreshed lineup of the RTX 40-series GPUs might be the best way to go.
Until then, as we have not received any RTX 4060 Ti 16GB models for testing, we can’t outright recommend it. Though, signs point toward the GPU not being quite as good as its price tag implies.
