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Nvidia doesn't market the RTX 4060 Ti as a 4K gaming solution, not even the 16GB model. That's because performance really isn't sufficient. But if you want proof that 16GB is better than 8GB while using the same GPU? Well, we finally have some good news.
Hoorah! Look at that gap! The 4060 Ti 16GB can now spread its VRAM-laden wings and soar to a whopping 5% lead over the 8GB card. Even better, both models have dropped to just under 30 fps average across our test suite. (That's all sarcasm, if it's not clear.)
It would be interesting to see what a wider memory interface would have done for the 4060 Ti, but that obviously didn't happen. What we do know is that even the RX 6800 now pulls ahead of the 4060 Ti 16GB by 5%, the 6800 XT increases the lead to 22%, and if you want to stick with Nvidia GPUs, the RTX 4070 delivers 36% more performance overall. So, 12GB with more compute and a 192-bit interface beats 16GB with less compute and a 128-bit interface. None of that should be a surprise.
There's no good way around this. The 4060 Ti doesn't have the raw compute or memory bandwidth to really handle 4K gaming on recent releases. It's fractionally faster than the RTX 3070, at least, as that GPU also has to try and survive with 8GB of VRAM, but the one place where the extra memory helps most (in gaming, at least) is the place where the GPU proves inadequate.
For our rasterization suite, other than the increasing leads delivered by the AMD GPUs — the RX 6750 XT now manages to match the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB while costing about $150 less — the extra memory still didn't help much in most of these games, at the chosen settings. Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5, and Watch Dogs Legion are the only three games that showed even slightly more than the margin of error (3% or less) gains from the doubled VRAM.
Though I will say, Far Cry 6, in particular, can have wild swings in benchmark performance at 4K ultra on cards with 8GB. It's consistently inconsistent at these unless you have 10GB or more VRAM. We had runs of around 10 fps, runs of around 20 fps, and occasional runs of the indicated 52 fps. Which is "correct?" All of them, but other GPUs with 8GB don't seem to have these issues (for example, Intel's Arc A750, usually runs about the same, even at 4K). It's probably due to the DX12 memory management, where the code doesn't always work well at these settings.
The RX 6800 XT now delivers 41% higher rasterization performance, if you're keeping score. About half of the games can break 60 fps on that GPU at 4K, while only one game (Forza) gets there, barely, on the 4060 Ti 16GB. The RX 6800 lead likewise grows, this time to 22%. And if you look to the RTX 4070, it's 36% faster now — 12GB is generally still sufficient for 4K, in other words.
4K ultra with ray tracing generally isn't viable on any of these GPUs. Even the RTX 4070 only averaged 25 fps, with two games squeaking past the 30 fps mark. The 4060 Ti 16GB flounders along at 19 fps, 9% faster than the 8GB cards at 17 fps. AMD's alternatives are equally bad choices, with 15 fps from the 6800 and 18 fps from the 6800 XT.
4K resolution gaming, on mainstream to high-end GPUs, with all the ray tracing effects enabled? Yeah, this is prime upscaling territory. DLSS, FSR2, and XeSS aren't just nice extras if you want 4K output (potentially with artifacts). But honestly, if you're not pixel peeping, you can do Performance mode 4x upscaling (from 1080p) and generally be happy. That's the only way consoles generally manage 4K output, and even then, they're often targeting 30 fps rather than 60 fps.
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