ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 EVO OC, DUAL-RTX4060-O8G-EVO, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP, retail

Intels Grafikkarten der Battlemage-Serie alias Arc B580 und B570 verlieren auf kleineren/älteren CPUs mehr Leistung als die direkten Konkurrenten GeForce RTX 4060 und Radeon RX 7600 XT, das haben „CPU-Overhead-Tests“ auf AMD Ryzen gezeigt. Dieser Test mit Intel-Core-CPUs von 4 bis 24 Kernen bestätigt die Probleme.

Nachdem die GeForce RTX 4060 bereits vor einigen Wochen angekündigt wurde, schauen wir uns heute die ersten MSRP-Modelle an. Diese sollen zur unverbindlichen Preisempfehlung von 329 Euro auf den Markt kommen, allerdings hat NVIDIA dieses Mal keine Founders Edition, um diese Preisvorgabe auch besser durchzusetzen. Wo sich die GeForce RTX 4060 in der Rohleistung positioniert, ob 8 GB hier ausreichend sind und was die Karte sonst noch so zu bieten hat, klären wir im nun folgenden Test.

The DUAL GeForce RTX 4060 OC edition is priced 100% at Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP), offering performance within a margin of 1-2% compared to reference. Exhibiting okay performance primarily in the 1920x1080 resolution range, the ASUS DUAL GeForce RTX 4060 positions itself as a viable choice for users seeking a balance between aesthetic appeal and low acoustics. While it may not be the fastest graphics card available, ASUS offers room for some tweaking, including an option to enhance the power limiter, thereby increasing the clock speed to approximately 2.9-3.0 GHz. When combined with GDDR6 memory operating at 17 Gbps with the potential to overclock to 20 Gbps, the ASUS DUAL GeForce RTX 4060 presents very decent tweakability. As a Full HD card, the card works out well. But as an upgrade the 4060 series remains to be a hard sell. The new 4060 8GB is an entry-level to mainstream card. NVIDIA, however, barely gave it enough shading horsepower and leans too much on dependencies like DLSS3 and Frame generation. While we like these technologies, DLSS does not work out well, specifically in 1920x1080 and lower as the engine learns and upsamples from lower resolution content (less data to work with). That will inevitably degrade image quality. Frame generation we like very much, but here again the choice in 8GB is a inadequate one, considering frame generation will at away in that graphics memory budget as well, leaving even less to work with. To compensate for that and when factoring in the narrow 128-bit wide memory bus, NVIDIA added 24MB of cache. That cache works out great until it dries out and cache misses kick in. Then the card will drop down in performance big time and things become a stuttery mess. If this card would have been $199 then these would have been acceptable compromises; however, at $299, my eyebrowes frown a bit. I mentioned this before; we raise concerns as to what is happening with the PC Gaming graphics card market, as graphics cards (and PC components) are getting too expensive. Loads of end-users will flee towards consoles ar streaming services, so defacto, this market is slowly destroying itself. Ultimately, the GeForce 4060 delivers just enough performance to justify Full HD gaming. The DUAL GeForce RTX 4060 OC edition also delivers acceptable overclocking performance in a compact form factor. The design of the card emphasizes thermal efficiency and relatively low noise output. We're not sure what the actual street price for this model will become yet but ASUS reassured us this product will be based on MSRP making it the best of the 4060 pack, but even $299 might limit the market reach of this product.

Like any new graphics card, where you fit in the target audience is very important as to how useful this particular card will be to you. With the price point and level of performance on the RTX 4060 that's not the matter of a moment to work out. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the majority of other cards Nvidia have with a 4000 tag. The RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 are easy enough to delineate; regardless of what you currently own they'll be a stunning upgrade if you can afford them. The RTX 4070 Ti fits in that meaty mid-market segment, perfect for those without unlimited funds who still want to be able to play all the latest titles with everything cranked up. Then we come to the RTX 4060 Ti, a recent release which is aimed at those of you who largely game at 1080P, and here there is enough performance, particularly in DLSS supported titles, to make it a suitable upgrade for those with limited funds and older cards.

Averaged over the 25 games in our freshly updated H2 2023 test suite, at 1080p, we find the RTX 4060 just 4% ahead of the recently-launched AMD Radeon RX 7600. This means that RTX 4060 isn't able to beat last generation's RTX 3060 Ti, which remains 10% faster. The gen-over-gen performance gain is only 20%, at least more than what we saw with RTX 4060 Ti vs RTX 3060 Ti. Compared to the RTX 4060 Ti, the performance difference is 20%. AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB is 13% faster than the 4060, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is 10% slower. NVIDIA's aging RTX 2080 offers roughly the same performance as the RTX 4060, and the gap to the four year old Radeon RX 5700 XT is 20%. Intel's Arc A770 is within 5% of the RTX 4060, the A750 is 12% behind—not much. If Intel can bring their pricing down, they could steal some sales from NVIDIA and AMD in this segment. With these performance levels, RTX 4060 is a solid choice for gaming at Full HD—you'll be getting 60+ FPS in nearly all titles at maximum settings. Gaming at 1440p is in reach at decent FPS rates, too, but you'll have to reduce settings in some games, or enable upscaling with DLSS/FSR.