Nvidia’s upcoming GeForce RTX 4060 aims to compete with the best graphics cards for gaming. However, if the rumored specs are accurate, the GeForce RTX 4060 could disappoint many gamers.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX x060 Tier graphics cards have always been popular with budget gamers.up to date Steam Hardware Survey (opens in new tab) You can prove your statement. The last three generations of GeForce RTX x060 series models are among the top 10 most used graphics cards on Steam. The GeForce GTX 1060 and GeForce RTX 2060 are currently his second and his fourth most popular graphics cards, with the GeForce RTX 3060 his sixth. The Ada Lovelace architecture offers a significant upgrade over Ampere, but the GeForce RTX 4060’s potential specs look disappointing.
According to hardware leaker kopite7kimi (opens in new tab)The GeForce RTX 4060 will reportedly use AD107 silicon. This is a die we already know because Nvidia uses it for the company’s mobile his GeForce RTX 4060 and GeForce RTX 4050 SKUs. Yes, barring any changes, it looks like the GeForce RTX 4060 uses a die that’s tailored for mobile graphics cards.
The GeForce RTX 4060 seems to adopt a PG190 PCB centered around the AD107-400-A1. In other words, an Ada-powered graphics card uses 3,072 CUDA cores, 96 Tensor cores, and 24 RT cores. The previous generation GeForce RTX 3060 has 3,584 CUDA cores, 17% more than the GeForce RTX 4060. Of course, both use different architectures.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 specs
| graphics card | GeForce RTX 4060* | GeForce RTX 3060 |
|---|---|---|
| architecture | AD107 | GA106 |
| process technology | TSMC 4N | Samsung 8N |
| Transistor (billion) | ? | 12 |
| Die size (mm²) | 146 | 276 |
| SMS | twenty four | 28 |
| GPU core | 3,072 | 3,584 |
| Tensor cores | 96 | 112 |
| RT core | twenty four | 28 |
| Base clock (MHz) | ? | 1,320 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | ? | 1,777 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 18 | 15 |
| VRAM | 8GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 |
| VRAM bus width | ? | 192 |
| ROP | 32 | 48 |
| TMU | 96 | 112 |
| TFLOPs FP32 (Boost) | ? | 12.7 |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | ? | 360 |
| TGP (Watts) | 115 | 170 |
| release date | 2023 | 2021 |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
The GeForce RTX 4060 may come with 8 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory. The memory module is reportedly faster as the regular GeForce RTX 3060 uses 15 Gbps modules. However, the GeForce RTX 3060 has 12GB, apparently 50% more than the GeForce RTX 4060. Hogwarts Legacywhich can devour VRAM.
The leaker didn’t share the GeForce RTX 4060’s memory interface, but there aren’t too many to choose from. The GeForce RTX 4060 is unlikely to retain the 192-bit memory bus that has been standard since the GTX 1060. That means the GeForce RTX 4060 may only offer up to 288 GB/s of bandwidth, compared to the GeForce RTX 3060.
The GeForce RTX 4060 will receive an L2 cache upgrade due to the Ada Lovelace architecture. The hardware leaker has the GeForce RTX 4060 equipped with 24MB of L2 cache, which is 700% larger than that of the GeForce RTX 3060. Comparing the GeForce RTX 4060 to other Ada-based SKUs launched, it has half the L2 cache. GeForce RTX 4070 Ti’s. Considering other Ada GPUs have up to 8MB of L2 cache per 32-bit interface, the RTX 4060 also looks like it’s slashed in that area.
Nvidia’s decision to go with mobile silicon may have been to lower the power requirements of the GeForce RTX 4060. Kopite7kimi believes the GeForce RTX 4060’s TDP will be his 115W. This is crazy because the GeForce RTX 4060 will be almost on par with his GeForce GTX 1660 (120W) in terms of TDP. For comparison, even the GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile (120W) consumes more power. The GeForce RTX 3060 is rated at 170W, so the GeForce RTX 4060 has a 32% lower TDP.
All in all, if the leaks are correct, the RTX 4060 is shaping up to be a pretty weird solution. The lack of VRAM certainly proves limiting, and the L2 cache can make up for the loss of bandwidth, but it still feels like a lesser upgrade than other models. The same is true for Ti. Only time will tell how the RTX 4060 really stacks up and how much it will cost.
