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In theory, the move to 1440p ultra should help the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti to strut its stuff. Except, it still has that 128-bit memory interface, which means maybe there's not as much strutting to be had. Let's start with the high-level overview.
Hrmph. So much for the benefits of 16GB, right? Except, it's more a case of there not being much benefit in our particular suite of benchmarks. There are some instances where the 16GB card clearly beats the 8GB model, but when you average that out across 15 games, it's not as visible.
Overall, then, the 16GB and 8GB 4060 Ti are still tied. Interestingly, the RTX 3070 goes from being just slightly behind the 4060 Ti to just slightly ahead. They're still tied, but that does show that the 128-bit interface isn't helping. Less cache with a 256-bit interface, even when paired with an older architecture that offers 10% lower theoretical compute, clearly indicates raw memory bandwidth is at least partially to blame for the lackluster performance.
Against AMD, things are also worse. While the 4060 Ti (both variants) and the 6800 are basically still tied, there's an overall swing again from the 6800 being a couple of percent slower to now being a couple of percent faster. And Nvidia certainly gets help from the ray tracing results, which means there are cases where the 6800 offers a lot better performance at 1440p in rasterization games. The 6800 XT meanwhile improves from a 13% lead at 1080p ultra to a 19% lead at 1440p ultra.
Rasterization performance still looks basically the same when comparing the 8GB and 16GB models — even the 1% low average fps doesn't really differ much. The 16GB 4060 Ti was slower in a few tests and slightly faster in others, leading to a 0.1% difference in overall performance for the nine rasterization games. For the 1% lows, the 16GB does manage a 2.2% overall lead, mostly thanks to a few games in our suite that benefited from the extra VRAM.
Forza Horizon 5 and Horizon Zero Dawn both had 4–5 percent higher minimum (1% low) fps, while the biggest swing was in Watch Dogs Legion, where the 16GB card had 12% higher minimum fps. All of those games were still hanging out above 60 fps average performance, while the minimum fps in Watch Dogs Legion went from 52 to 58 fps — which means it was still dropping below 60 fps on occasion, and for fixed refresh rate displays, you'd want a bit more muscle.
While on the subject of Nvidia GPUs, let's also mention the RTX 4070 here. Its 12GB of VRAM on a 192-bit interface, coupled with higher compute performance, ends up being a far better option unless VRAM capacity is your sole goal. Even at 1080p, it's around 20–30 percent faster than the 4060 Ti 16GB. If you're even considering spending $100 extra to go from 8GB to 16GB with an otherwise equivalent GPU, you'd be much better off forking over another $100 to go from the 16GB card to the RTX 4070. Or alternatively, look to the AMD GPUs.
At 1440p ultra, the RX 6800 XT and RTX 4070 are basically tied in rasterization performance, and both are over 30% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti 16TGB. If you want an Nvidia GPU, paying more for the 4070 still represents the better choice: 32% more performance for 20% more money. If you're open to AMD, you can get 36% more performance at 1440p while only paying about 4% extra (at current prices).
Among the individual games, the AMD 6800 XT ranges from being 13% faster (Warhammer 3) to as much as 60% faster (Borderlands 3). Those are the bookends, but for rasterization games, AMD consistently offers 30% or more performance (outside of Warhammer 3, the only exception in our testing). Having lots of VRAM, a big L3 cache, and a 256-bit interface helps quite a bit, in other words.
Ray tracing at 1440p ultra still favors Nvidia over AMD, however, if that's important to you. It's a relatively slim advantage when looking at the 4060 Ti and 6800 XT, still skewed by Minecraft, where Nvidia holds a 27% lead. Otherwise, you get a generally superior experience from AMD — slightly slower in some games, but faster in others.
Of course, there's still the question of power use, and there's no getting around the fact that the 6800 XT uses quite a bit more power than the 4060 Ti 16GB — roughly 100W more. And there's also still DLSS upscaling and Frame Generation to consider. Still, the 4060 Ti 16GB costs too much for the amount of performance you get.
Again, looking at the previous generation RTX 3070, there's been no gain in performance per dollar at 1440p, whether in ray tracing or rasterization. Frame Generation can help, but it's by no means a panacea. If you already have a mid-tier 30-series GPU and don't want to move up to the more expensive 40-series models, this looks like yet another good generation to sit out.
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