The next king of budget PC gaming?

It seems like there’s a new GPU coming out every other month and well, that’s because there is. Nvidia have unveiled 3 new graphics cards in their 4060 series family, with the RTX 4060 TI 8GB having just been released and the other two coming out in July.

Today we’re going to take a look at the new RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and see how it performs in our new budget friendly Reign gaming PCs. If you read our previous blog post on the RTX 4070 Ti then you’ll be familiar with the games we’re using in our benchmarks, and that’s also a handy reference to compare these new cards against.

Also, wait… 3 new 4060 cards? Yeah, that’s right! For a long time Nvidia series cards usually came in pairs of two - kind of like Siths. You’d have a 60, 70 and 80 series card and then the equivalent Ti version of that card. Nvidia however, have recently started making extra versions of these cards with different VRAM sizes.

First of all, we had the RTX 4080 that came in two flavours, 12GB and 16GB, which was a little controversial to say the least. The 12GB version was effectively 30% slower than the 16GB version, but with both graphics cards sharing the same name, it was quite easy for consumers to buy the wrong version of the card than intended. In fact, there was so much backlash from this, that Nvidia “unlaunched” the 12GB version.

So it does a seem a bit surprising that Nvidia is going down this route again, this time with the recently released RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and the RTX 4060 TI 16GB coming out in July. There will also be the base 4060 as always, but no details on the VRAM for that GPU have emerged yet.

Anyway, let’s take a peek at the specs and get to the results.

Reign Scout Extreme MKIV
•    Intel Core i5-13400F CPU
•    Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti 8GB
•    Corsair 16GB DDR4 Memory

Reign Scout Elite MKIV
•    AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
•    Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti 8GB
•    Corsair 16GB DDR4 Memory

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Not too bad! Seeing this card push past 60 FPS at 4K is a nice surprise, but a welcome one. I think it’s fair to say that the IW engine running Modern Warfare II is extremely optimised, but if this is your main game then you won’t really need much else to have an enjoyable experience.

The interesting thing to note about these results, however, is that the Intel Core i5-13400F does push noticeable more frames per second at lower resolutions, which kind of evens out at 4K. So, if you’re playing at 1080, you may want to opt for the Reign Scout Extreme MKIV for a bit more performance.

Total War: Warhammer III

So here we have some results which are a bit more even, with only the Intel Core i5-13400F having marginally higher scores than the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 – and this is why Total War: Warhammer III is such a good game to benchmark these systems, as it tends to show the raw performance of PC hardware.

Again though, performance isn’t too bad up to 1440, with both systems hitting over 60 FPS, though you’ll definitely want something a bit more powerful if you’re hoping to play at 4K, unless you turn down those graphics.

Cyberpunk 2077

Now this is where we start to see the compromise. If you’re hoping for the best-looking graphics and smooth gameplay on Cyberpunk 2077 at anything more than 1080, this isn’t the graphics card for you. In all fairness though, the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB does handle this game maxed out at 1080 with ray tracing, which previous gen, high-end graphics cards have struggled with.

I think if you turned off ray tracing and made use of DLSS 3, then Cyberpunk 2077 would easily be playable at 1440 and possibly 4K. You’re sacrificing some graphical quality, but even then, this game still looks gorgeous with lower graphic settings.

Far Cry 6

Just like we saw with Modern Warfare II, it looks like the Intel i5-13400F pulls ahead of the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 at lower resolutions, and then evens out at 4K. This typically happens when the CPU is the limiting factor in a game’s performance, which is a lot more obvious at lower resolutions.

Though even at 4K, both gaming PCs can handle Far Cry 6 quite easily. You may get a bit of a slowdown at if a lot of things are happening on screen at once, but in general it should be a comfortable experience playing this game even at 4K.

Conclusion

So, is this the best budget card for PC gaming? At around £380 of the time of writing, they’re certainly on the lower end of pricing for the 40 series cards, although some would argue that’s still too much. You also must keep in mind that these cards have 8GB of VRAM, which might not be enough to play some recently released games (looking at you, Resident Evil 4).

At the end of the day, it really depends on what you’re intending to play. The RTX 4060 Ti 8GB should be able to handle anything at 1080 and even 1440 most of the time, with some games even playable at 4K. It’s an ideal choice for a lot of esports titles, which are usually optimised and mostly played at 1080 and 1440. You could also go without ray tracing and make use of DLSS 3 in some titles to boost that performance even higher, but you’re still limited by the VRAM.

Though if you’re really on a budget, then the RTX 4060 will be releasing next month which may be a good option, and of course we’ll cover that too.