Nvidia didn’t send out any review units for the new 16GB variant RTX 4060 Ti graphics card, which hit the streets today. It’s a move that indicates a lack of confidence in the product, and one that used to get The Wagging Finger of Shame on Siskel and Ebert. But if you absolutely must get a mediocre, overpriced graphics card with a limited bus interface, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is now available to purchase, starting at around the $500 mark. Newegg has listings up for Gigabyte, MSI, and Zotac variants — there is no Founder’s Edition for this card.
Why should you avoid the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB? Well, broadly for the same reason that you shouldn’t buy the standard 8GB model, either. The performance for the $400 version of this card is a disappointment in comparison to the last-gen RTX 3060 Ti, restricting you to 1080p graphics for most recent high-end games, even with Nvidia goodies like DLSS 3 support. One of the chief issues is that the memory bus is just 128 bits, half as wide as last-gen, capping performance even on a more powerful graphics processor. The 16GB variant does nothing to address this issue — it simply doubles the VRAM capacity. So even with more generous memory, the card will start to bog down at 1440p and higher…which isn’t really acceptable for a $500 card in The Year of Our Lord 2023.
Depending on your build and the games you play, you might even be better off with the nearly three-year-old RTX 3070, which currently has a street price at about the same range. And if that’s not an indictment, I don’t know what is.
That doesn’t mean that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is worthless, either in the original 8GB version or this new 16GB model. Those new DLSS 3 software tricks are impressive, and it’s made big strides in power efficiency over the previous generation. But it does mean you should avoid paying the full retail price for them, and wait for its actual price to come more in line with its position in the market. At the $500 level, we’d recommend stepping over the aisle to the AMD Radeon RX 6800 with its better 1440p performance, or you can save some dough with the Radeon RX 6700 XT or Intel Arc A770 at around the $350 mark.
To see all your best options at every price level, be sure to check out the best graphics cards on the market for 2023.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.