Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB review: the disappointment is real

Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Returnal.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on 25 May 2023

Our rasterisation benchmarks come to a conclusion on this final page of tests. In terms of the titles we've got lined up for you, we have a triad of very different games and engines on display. Hitman 3's Glacier engine is super-performant without RT enabled, while the remaining games are very modern: Asobo's graphically stunning A Plague Tale: Requiem and Sony's impressive port of Returnal.

Once again, if you're jumping straight to this page without looking at prior results, we should stress that our benchmarking system offers a number of ways to get to the data you want, the presentation varying according to the device you're using. You'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is an interactive bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Hitman 3

Bearing in mind that Hitman 3 can hit a fairly consistent 60 frames per second on the Xbox Series X - which is, in turn, broadly comparable to RTX 2070 Super - it's no surprise to see that the latest generation of GPUs blitz this game, even maxed out.

Unlike the RT benchmark, the scores are unchanged on other cards compared to prior testing and here we find the RTX 4060 Ti a reasonable 16 percent ahead of RTX 3060 Ti and just lurking in the shadows of the 3070. That being the case, the RX 6700 XT can't quite beat the 4060 Ti on this one, though it pushes ahead at 1080p, where remarkably, I found the 3060 Ti to match the new card.

There's a 2.2x performance upgrade vs the GTX 1070 but a 54 percentage point lead against RTX 2060 Super does not excite.

Hitman, Ultra, TAA

A Plague Tale: Requiem

The recent patch for this game included a range of optimisations and performance improvements, but interestingly, the ultra setting delivered a circa 10 percentage point hit on performance across all tested cards. However, the end result at 1440p is not a great look for the 4060 Ti, which only delivers a five percent lead over its predecessor with RTX 3070 10 points to the better.

The RTX 4060 Ti fares a touch better at 1080p but not to any degree that'll make you want to actually buy the card, and again, a 50 percentage point lead over the RTX 2060 Super is 'not great'. This is a lovely game and it does play well on the RTX 4060 Ti - and yes, it has DLSS 3 - so there is that, at least.

A Plague Tale Requiem, Ultra Settings

Returnal

Finally, the ignominy comes to a conclusion with Housemarque and Climax's port of the incredible Returnal, one of the greatest games you can play on PlayStation 5. To be fair, the performance delta between RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 is tight to begin with, so when the RTX 4060 Ti slots in between at 1440p, it makes sense. That being said, a four percentage point advantage over the RTX 3060 Ti basically means that you wouldn't really notice the difference playing one after the other. The situation improves a touch at 1080p and gets worse a bit at 4K.

Again, there's a 2x performance boost over GTX 1070, while the 45 percent boost from the RTX 2070 is a letdown - so the gen-on-gen-on-gen improvements are hardly overwhelming and we really would hope to see relative value, and relative gains across the generations improve on the lower-end cards in line with the more expensive ones, but that's just not happening.