The second last NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU has arrived. The company still have one more up its sleeve in July which is the RTX 4060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM. I have already reviewed the 4060 Ti with 8GB of VRAM, you can catch up on that review here. In what seems like a tradition now, Gigabyte sent over the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC for me to test out. The card aims to provide 1080p gaming with games maxing out graphics and performance. For the most part, it achieves that.
What is good about this card is that it successfully replaces the 3060. It is also quite an approachable card for the masses seen as so many gamers out there still play at 1080p. So it offers the latest DLSS 3 tech, has some decent performance and will definitely be a great addition to those who are looking for a 1080p card.
The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC comes in slightly overclocked compared to other units on the market. The reference RTX 4060 includes a core clock of 2460MHz while this GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC sits at 2550MHz. When it comes to the technical aspects of the card, you can expect 3072 CUDA Cores, 24 RT cores, 96 Tensor cores, 96 TMUs, and 48 ROPs.
The big issue on the RTX 4060 is its 128-bit memory bus and 8GB of VRAM. Both of which aren’t great by today’s standards. I kind of feel like NVIDIA should be making these cards with the same core clocks and CUDA cores while delivering 16GB of RAM across the board. It just makes sense.
But 8GB of RAM is something we have been complaining about for some time now. Even when the 3060 Ti was around, it was nudging the limit so to see a new card an entire year later come with the same amount of RAM is problematic. I can’t help but fear that NVIDIA’s RTX 5060 will just do the same thing again.
The card has also been designed to use much less power while performing better than the RTX 3060. The card is rated at 450W but the PCIE pins only support up to 225W. General gaming will also see much lower watts of power while performing better than the 3060. I usually got 115W during typical gaming but more on that later on.
The card Gigabyte sent me was the OC model and it looks very much the same as other OC GPUs from the brand. It comes with the same incredible Windforce cooling which has proved to be effective in the past. This OC model packs three 80mm fans and is combined together with the screen cooling to cool things cool under pressure. The only RGB on this model is found on the Gigabyte logo and you can tweak it in the Gigabyte Control Centre.
There isn’t much to say about the design here. People who hate the GPU adapters on the larger cards will rejoice that Gigabyte doesn’t include it here. You can just use a simple 8-pin PCI-E connector to power this unit. It also isn’t remotely huge and heavy so this is great news for those with compact cases. It comes in at 281 x 114 and is 40mm thick. It also weighs 590 grams. On the back, you’ll find 2 DisplayPort 1.4 ports and 2 HDMI 2.1 ports.
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Performance
I tested a number of games during my time with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC. Games which included DLSS 3 as well as other non-DLSS 3 titles. The results definitely show that this card was made for 1080p gaming. Most games excelled at over 60FPS at 1080p. Increasing the resolution up to 1440p would still run these quite smoothly but there is definitely a limit to how this card can perform.
You can get away with 4K gaming but you have to look at much older, less-demanding titles. Anything like A Plague Tale: Requiem, Cyberpunk 2077 and other later games simply didn’t perform at a playable state on the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC. You can, however, enable DLSS 3 Frame Generation to improve this slightly. Here are some tests.
On the cooling front, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 holds up quite well. The card never surpassed 75C during heavy tests. The fan noise never exceeded 36 dBA either. This was at the max RPM of 2965 which isn’t even the max speed of the fans. This is definitely a quiet and cool GPU.
The RTX 4060 is definitely a powerful card but you have to compare this GPU to what it aims to beat. For the most part, this card does come out better than the 3060 and of course, the 2060. However, it doesn’t manage to surpass the RTX 3060 Ti which is a concern. If you look at the performance, the 3060 Ti is still roughly 8 – 10% better. So unless you’re making use of the DLSS 3 performance here, this card is a hard sell.
The 8-10% performance might also be the breaking point between you running a game successfully at 1440p instead of 1080p so that is another factor to consider.
Raytracing is another bummer here on this card. Being the weakest 40-Series card on the market now, it simply can’t provide the same performance for raytracing that makes it a selling point. If the card can’t get to 60FPS without RT, it definitely isn’t going to get there with it enabled.
The 8GB of RAM might also be an issue. I am not guaranteeing it will be but it might. There are gamers out there that don’t need 16GB but in some cases, more so than often, you’ll face memory bandwidth issues on the GPU. We do have the 4060 Ti 16GB GPU releasing in July so after that, we’ll finally be able to line these 4060 cards up and decide what wins. But keep in mind that it won’t provide a huge jump between the 4060 Ti 8GB.
The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 does offer some great value for those looking at 1080p gaming though. Even with its shortfalls. For just over $300 or R9.999, it isn’t a bad investment. But you need to be aware of the limitations and performance. This is a 1080p card and nothing more.
You can find out more about the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming OC here.
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4060 Review
Summary
The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 is a good 1080p card but it doesn’t manage to beat the RTX 3060 Ti. The GPU’s limited memory and bandwidth might also be an issue.
