GeForce RTX 4060 is coming in July, $299 price, specs, and performance revealed

NVIDIA has confirmed that the GeForce RTX 3060 successor, the GeForce RTX 4060, is coming in July, though with pricing starting from USD 299. That's right, a price lower than the previous generation's equivalent GPU. Yep, the GeForce RTX 4060 launch price is lower than the RTX 3060's USD 329 and the RTX 2060's USD 349 - a first for the GeForce RTX 40 Series, and great news for mainstream GPU pricing going forward.

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GeForce RTX 4060 performance will take full advantage of DLSS 3, image credit: NVIDIA.

As far as performance goes, NVIDIA has showcased 1080p benchmark results for the RTX 4060 and what to expect - with the RTX 4060 delivering a 1.2X increase (20%) in rasterized performance over the RTX 3060 and a 1.6X increase (60%) over the RTX 2060 on average.

As part of the GeForce RTX 40 Series, the RTX 4060 will benefit from new RTX technologies like DLSS 3 and Frame Generation, which sees these performance increase numbers jump to 1.7X when compared to the RTX 3060 and 2.3X when compared to the RTX 2060. DLSS and DLSS 3 adoption has seen astronomical growth in recent years, so the addition of Frame Generation to a mainstream GPU is impressive to see.

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GeForce RTX 4060 specs versus the RTX 3060, image credit: NVIDIA.

As part of the presentation that also went in-depth on the upcoming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, NVIDIA noted that the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4060 are positioned as 1080p gaming GPUs. Citing the latest Steam Hardware Survey results for April 2023, NVIDIA pointed out that four out of five of the most popular graphics cards are 60 Class GPUs from the GeForce line-up - which includes models like the GeForce GTX 1060, RTX 2060, and RTX 3060. And with that, 77% of PC gamers play at a resolution of 1080p or less.

The GeForce RTX 4060 looks extremely impressive with its TGP of only 115W - with NVIDIA adding that average power draw when gaming is only 110W for the RTX 4060. Compared to the RTX 3060, this means better in-game performance using roughly 35% less power.

As per the specs supplied (which don't list CUDA Core and Tensor Core counts), we can see that the RTX 4060 offers an increase in raw performance across rasterization, ray-tracing, and AI over the RTX 3060 - even though that card features 12GB of VRAM. An increase in L2 Cache to 24MB compared to the 3MB found on the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 leads to better memory performance for rendering, ray-tracing, and AI features like DLSS 3 Frame Generation.

According to the specs, the RTX 4060 decreases memory bandwidth to 272 GB/s compared to the 360 GB/s of the RTX 3060. Still, according to NVIDIA, the bump in L2 Cache keeps more tasks directly on the GPU side, leading to an "effective" memory bandwidth of 453 GB/s.

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GeForce RTX 4060 benchmarks showcasing average FPS, image credit: NVIDIA.

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GeForce RTX 4060 benchmarks showcasing 1% low FPS, image credit: NVIDIA.

NVIDIA showcased two benchmark slides featuring games with DLSS 3 enabled and those without Frame Generation running at 1080p. Due to the 8GB of VRAM limitation, two titles were run using 'High' presets instead of max settings - A Plague Tale: Requiem and Resident Evil 4 Remake.

The second slide shows the 1% low FPS performance of the same titles, which is great to see - as it means an overall smoother experience compared to previous-gen cards.

The GeForce RTX 3060 is currently one of the most popular GPUs on the market in terms of share and sales. With this announcement, the GeForce RTX 4060 has every chance to follow suit - especially with the USD 299 price point, and modern Ada Lovelace features like DLSS 3 and AV1 encoding.