Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 vs RTX 3060 review: higher frame-rates, less VRAM

RT benchmarks: Hitman 3, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, F1 22.

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Published on June 29, 2023

A trio of excellent ray tracing titles are put through their paces in this second battery of RT testing. Hitman 3 looks great even without RT, but IO Interactive pushes realism to the next level with a range of ultra-demanding ray tracing features. Meanwhile, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition remains the first - and only - triple-A gaming experience to be released requiring a GPU capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing. F1 22 is an interesting example of a fully-featured RT game that perhaps doesn't benefit from all of those effects, especially when it's so brutally fast from a rasterisation perspective.

To reiterate if you're jumping straight to this page without looking at prior results, 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

Hitman 3 seemed to enjoy a massive boost to RT performance recently, necessitating a complete rebench of the game on all GPUs - which is always fun. It's also another title where Intel Arc produces some exceptional results, with the A750 in particular bringing the value. That's now a £230/$250 GPU and it's still managing to deliver slightly more performance than the new RTX 4060, though the new Nvidia card does manage to deliver a 25 percentage point boost up against the RX 7600 (though again, Nvidia's offering is more expensive).

An 11 to 12 percentage point increase up against the RTX 3060, while having a third of the memory lopped off isn't a particularly compelling result for the new Nvidia card here - while a 46 percent increase over the RTX 2060 after five years isn't particularly great, even though (once again), we're still ahead of 2070 Super performance. On top of that, frame generation is supported, which isn't the case on any other competing offering.

Hitman, Ultra, Full RT

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

4A Games' revised version of its excellent action adventure shooter remains the only triple-A title that demands the use of a graphics card that allows for the use of hardware-accelerated ray tracing and it's a game where - once again - Intel Arc truly shines. You need an RTX 4060 Ti to deliver Intel-beating performance on this one, but the RTX 4060 still performs OK here, inching ahead of the 2070 Super once again and offering a 20 percent lead over the RTX 3060.

This makes the generational leap up against the RTX 2060 revert to circa 80 percent, which is definitely a game-changing experience - and it's also possible to experience the game in a totally different way on the new card. So, for example, at ultra settings with tessellation and Nvidia features disabled, DLSS performance mode actually offers 4K gaming at 60fps, with just mild dips into the 50s on the heaviest content.

Metro Exodus Enhanced, Extreme, Ultra RT, Nvidia Features Off

F1 22

We're running the Codemasters racer fully maxed at its ultra high setting for this one, with the full complement of RT features engaged - though it's fair to say that their impact in improving the visuals is difficult to spot in the thick of the race. The 4060 isn't going to challenging RTX 3060 Ti any time soon, but it's still beating the 2070 Super and delivers a 16 percentage point lead over the RTX 3060.

Results are definitely tightly grouped on this one though, as we're still only looking at a 46 percent boost for the RTX 4060 over RTX 2060, while the 12 point lead over AMD's much cheaper RX 7600 shows how little there is in it across all the main contenders in this line-up. The exception there is Intel Arc, which is definitely off pace.