Nvidia RTX 4060 vs RTX 3060 vs RTX 2060: How do the 60-class GPUs compare?

The RTX 4060 is finally official, and it will be available for purchase later this summer. Nvidia is wildly chasing efficiency and relevance with this GPU rather than simply boosting the specs to make it a faster pixel pusher. The on-paper specs and improvements in performance, coupled with a killer $299 price tag, make it the cheapest 60-class GPU to be launched in the last five years.

However, the last-gen counterparts can be found quite cheap these days. Especially on websites like Craigslist and eBay, we found second-hand listings for as low as $210 for the RTX 3060. The Turing variant is available for around $150.

So, is the latest and greatest from Team Green worth the extra cash? Although benchmarks and reviews aren't out yet, we can make some solid conclusions based on the charts showcased by Nvidia at the launch event.

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The RTX 4060 might seem like an iterative update to the last-gen card

Nvidia did a bunch of cost cuttings to ensure the RTX 4060 makes perfect sense for budget gamers. The on-paper specs haven't been massively boosted, which shouldn't make the rasterization performance of the upcoming 60-class cards much better than the last gen.

Instead, what Nvidia has focused on is ray tracing and DLSS performance. The RT core performance has been boosted to 35 TFLOPs, up from the 25 TFLOPs of the last-gen RTX 3060. This can largely be attributed to the improved 3rd gen RT core architecture.

Similarly, the 4th gen Tensor cores contribute to a 2x improvement in AI acceleration workloads like DLSS 3.0 frame generation and super-resolution.

	RTX 4060	RTX 3060	RTX 2060
Shaders	15 TFLOPs	13 TFLOPs	7 TFLOPs
RT cores	35 TFLOPs 3rd gen	25 TFLOPs 2nd gen	20 TFLOPs 1st gen
Tensor cores	242 TFLOPs 4th gen	102 TFLOPs 3rd gen	52 TFLOPs 2nd gen
DLSS	3.0	2.1	2.1
NV Encoder	8th gen with AV1	7th gen	7th gen
Frame buffer	8 GB	12 GB	6 GB
Memory subsystem	24MB L2 272 GB/s (453 GB/s effective)	3MB L2 360 GB/s	3MB L2 336 GB/s
Average gaming power	110W	170W	138W
Video playback power	11W	13W	14W
Idle power	7W	8W	8W
TGP	115W	170W	160W
Starting price	$299	$329	$349

All of these improvements should theoretically improve the performance by heaps.

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Performance differences

The RTX 4060 will deliver huge performance improvements thanks to DLSS 3 (Image via Nvidia)

Nvidia is targeting about 70% performance improvement with the latest Ada Lovelace-fueled 60-class performance GPU from Nvidia. The upcoming card will be about 230% faster than the five-year-old RTX 2060.

Across multiple video games, we see a solid improvement in framerates. Nvidia didn't unveil the exact numbers achieved in the titles, which makes it a bit difficult to process the information displayed in the charts.

It is also worth noting that these numbers were derived with DLSS turned on. The company didn't showcase the improvements in pure rasterization performance. We'll have to wait for reviews and benchmarks to get more information on the same.

The Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060 offers solid performance in video games (Image via Nvidia)

The RTX 4060 continued similar improvements in the 1% low metrics as well. The higher numbers ensure a more stable experience and fewer frame drops.

Comparison of 1% low FPS metrics in video games (Image via Nvidia)

Overall, the upcoming card seems to be quite promising. However, it won't hit shelves until July 2023. Although the gains with DLSS 3.0 turned on are pretty impressive, we are more interested in finding out how much the raw rendering prowess has improved this gen.