Should you buy RTX 4060 laptops or wait for RTX 5060?

Picture of Gigabyte G5 with RTX 4060
Gigabyte G5 with RTX 4060 (Image via jarrod'sTech/YouTube)

The Nvidia RTX 4060 laptops are selling quite well and offer a satisfactory gaming experience. They can run most modern titles perfectly fine at 1080p at Very High/Ultra settings. Aside from its specifications, the RTX 4060 GPU comes with technologies like DLSS, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction that can further enhance your gaming experience.

Laptops that have this card can be ideal for you if you don't already have a decent gaming computer. There's no reason to wait for the RTX 5060 to release when this GPU can run your favorite games without presenting any problems.

That said, if you already have a decent gaming laptop and are considering getting another one, it's better to wait for the RTX 5060, which should be launched in 2025. This article will tell you why RTX 4060 laptops are good enough for gaming.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinions.


Nvidia RTX 5060 Laptop GPU: Expected specs and features

Nvidia 5000 series "Blackwell" architecture (Image via Nvidia)
Nvidia 5000 series "Blackwell" architecture (Image via Nvidia)

The upcoming Nvidia RTX 5060 will be based on the Blackwell architecture, bringing performance improvements in rasterization and ray tracing.

Moore's Law is Dead, a popular leaker who got some leaks about RDNA2 right, has provided some interesting information. According to them, the upcoming lower-end Nvidia chips like the RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 will retain the same VRAM capacity as the RTX 4000 series GPUs. This means the RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 could have 8GB and 6GB VRAM, respectively.

This leak is certainly disappointing for some people who were expecting Nvidia to increase the VRAM capacity of the upcoming cards. VRAM issues have become common in the last few years, and games like The Last of Us: Part 1, The Talos Principle II, and others don't run very well on 8GB VRAM GPUs at the highest settings.

Not a lot of information on the RTX 5060 is available at this time because we are still a year away from its launch. It's true that Nvidia is launching the RTX 5000 series later this year, but that would just be its flagship GPUs, the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080.

The company's mid-range and lower-end cards are released 6 - 10 months after the launch of its premium ones. So, the RTX 5060 is probably coming out between April and July 2025.


How does the Nvidia RTX 4060 fare in 2024?

Specs

ASUS Zephyrus G14 internal hardware (Image via Jarrod'sTech/YouTube)
ASUS Zephyrus G14 internal hardware (Image via Jarrod'sTech/YouTube)

Here are the specs of the Nvidia RTX 4060 laptop version:

SpecificationsDetails
Shader cores3072
RT cores24
TMUs96
ROPs48
Base clocks1545 MHz
Boost clocks1890 MHz
VRAM capacity8GB
VRAM bus width128-bit
VRAM bandwidth256 GB/s
Manufacturing node5nm

Performance

Witcher 3 Next-Gen running on RTX 4060 delivering 66 FPS on average (Image via PC Support & Gaming Test channel/YouTube)
Witcher 3 Next-Gen running on RTX 4060 delivering 66 FPS on average (Image via PC Support & Gaming Test channel/YouTube)

The RTX 4060 laptop version is a very capable GPU and comes with 8GB of VRAM. The laptop RTX 4060 outperformed the laptop RTX 3060 in almost every game. It has enough performance to fulfill all your gaming needs, but words alone won't prove it. So, it's time we put the RTX 4060 laptops to the test and saw how it performed in modern games.

The RTX 4060 mobile GPU used for this benchmark test had 140W of power, so there was no power throttling. As such, the card had no issue providing the highest FPS possible. All the games mentioned below were run at 1080p at Very High/Ultra settings.

Note: The FPS numbers were provided by a YouTube channel called PC Support & Gaming Test.

GamesPerformance
Valorant470 FPS
God of War67 FPS
GTA V139 FPS
Forza Horizon 597 FPS
A Plague Tale: Requiem45 FPS
Elden Ring60 FPS
Dying Light 2: Stay Human76 FPS
Cyberpunk 207771 FPS
Far Cry 699 FPS
The Witcher 3: Next-Gen67 FPS

From the benchmarks, it is clear that the RTX 4060 laptops can easily run almost any modern game at 60+ FPS on average. It is capable of doing well in future releases as well. The only game that scored below 60 FPS in our test was A Plague Tale: Requiem, but in this game, you can enable DLSS and boost your FPS to 60.


Should you buy RTX 4060 laptops or wait for RTX 5060?

If you want to play and enjoy your favorite games, RTX 4060 laptops will comfortably let you do that. It can provide 60+ FPS in almost all modern games at Very High/Ultra settings, so waiting for the 5060 seems unnecessary. If you want to wait for the RTX 5060, hoping that it will have more VRAM, then you might be disappointed.

The latest leaks suggest it will have the same VRAM as the RTX 4060, so that leaves very little reason to justify postponing your purchase. But if you already have a decent laptop with RTX 3070 or even an RTX 3060, then it could be okay to wait.

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Edited by Soumyadyuti Ghosh
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