INNO3D RTX 4060 Graphics Card Review

How Much Does it Cost?

Amazingly, these new cards are launching at just $299, or about £280 here in the UK. That’s impressive, as the last time I saw a GPU price begin with a two, it was two thousand… Now, obviously, I’m not going to be throwing my RTX 4090 on eBay and trading in for an RTX 4060, but let’s not beat around the bush here, yes it’s the budget model and the performance isn’t bleeding edge stuff, but it’s also the cheapest card too, and quite simply, that’s the reason it’ll sell. If you’re looking to upgrade from the old GTX class cards from 5 to 7 years ago, this is a no-brainer right now. The elite gamers who live in the comments sections, and the armchair experts on reddit will scoff, but the Steam Survey will be full of these soon enough as it’s a good card with a specific intention, out with the old, in with the new.

Overview

When it comes to performance, the RTX 4060 is unsurprisingly the slowest card in the RTX 4000 series lineup, as Nvidia tend to start with the flagship and then work down the range. It scored 5370 in 3DMark, which is actually not that bad though, and about 18% below that of the RTX 4060 Ti but also remarkably similar to the RTX 2080 which scored 5566. This can also be seen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, one of many examples, with the RTX 4060 scoring 95, 63 and 36 FPS at 1080p, 1440p and 4K respectively, pretty much identical to the RTX 2080 which scored 92, 64, and 40 FPS; the 2080 was a £749 card when it launched five years ago.

It’s clear to me that the RTX 4060 is what I would call “enough” graphics card for modern PC gaming. It’ll play all the latest games with 60+ FPS at full HD, albeit in our testing it exceeded that easily enough, and even at 1440p, it holds its own, but really I think unless you’re playing easy-to-run games such as some of the F2P fodder, this card is strongest with a high refresh rate Full HD monitor. When you can get a 24″ FHD 144hz gaming monitor for about £130 these days, some great competitive gaming experiences can clearly be had for not a lot of money.

I know the experts will be in the comments waggling fingers about VRAM or how you can get a second-hand card for something less, but honestly, it’s just ignoring the fact that the performance is clearly just fine on this card, that people like new stuff with a warranty, and that it’s just nice to have nice things that are new and shiny. At this price range, it’s a competent card that’ll get the budget gamers another 5+ years of affordable gaming joy. If you’ve been waiting for a reasonably priced card to replace your GTX 1000 series, it may not be the perfect graphics card, but this is it right now.

The RTX 3060 Ti largely performed about the same, if not a fraction better, but it uses more power, generates a little more heat, and doesn’t come with the 3rd Gen RT Cores and 4th Gen Tensor Cores, which clearly bring their own advantages in terms of ray tracing and DLSS 3.0 too, despite the cards costing broadly the same.

Should I Buy One?

Reliable performance and sensible prices abound. This card launches cheaper than the GTX 1060 did, at least when you adjust for inflation as £239 in 2016 money is now £306 in today’s market… yikes. If the Steam Hardware Survey has taught us anything it’s that the xx60 cards sell by the truckload and I see no reason why this new one will be an exception. Given nearly 65% of Steam users still game at 1920 x 1080, the RTX 4060 is more than enough for most gamers. Decent rasterisation performance, DLSS, AV1 and other modern technologies all make it a nice upgrade for those on older hardware, but likely an ill investment for those wanting to replace cards from the last year or two.