NVIDIA Teases Performance Of $299 GeForce RTX 4060 As Launch Looms

With less than a week to go before the official launch of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, the PR machine has kicked into action with a new blog post. The moderately lengthy post has a number of interesting charts and comparisons showcasing the RTX 4060's abilities vs the RTX 3060, RTX 2060 and GTX 1060, so it is well worth a look. Before we go on, though, you should be aware that NVIDIA's position is that "for gamers playing on previous-gen GPUs, the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture at the heart of the GeForce RTX 4060 delivers a massive upgrade."

NVIDIA's performance charts and figures would like to bamboozle you with the RTX 4060's performance using DLSS3 turned on. This latest iteration of the now familiar upscaling technology includes frame generation - something that NVIDIA has locked to Ada Lovelace and future GPUs. You can read more about DLSS3 in previous articles here on HotHardware, including our reviews of cards like the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4060 Ti.

Thankfully, NVIDIA has broken out some of its results without DLSS3 frame generation being turned on. This is good for people who mainly play titles without this tech, are happy with their FPS without the tech, or perhaps don't like something about DLSS3. With that out of the way, let us start leafing through the tables…

You can see the quite astronomical benefits of the RTX 4060 over its predecessors with frame generation technology in the chart above, highlighted in green. However, the RTX 3060 isn't that far behind the new Ada Lovelace GPU in games that don't support DLSS3. We will also draw your attention to the poor result of the GTX 1060, which doesn't support any version of DLSS (but users might toggle on AMD FSR versions, where available).

For some more granular games performance results, NVIDIA has kindly shared the above chart, mixing games with and without DLSS3 support. You will observe the GeForce RTX 4060's lead is much more modest in the lower portion of the chart 'Games Without AI Frame Gen'.

At the time of writing, over 310 games and apps support DLSS technologies, but only 50 of them support DLSS3. Going forward, we assume new titles will generally release with DLSS3, but remember that older gen NVIDIA cards can still make use of DLSS2 upscaling efficiencies in games marketed as DLSS3 compatible.

Some readers will be impressed by the RTX 4060 in the above comparisons, others might be ambivalent or even disappointed by the upcoming $299 mass-market Ada Lovelace card. However, one area where it seems to be a long way ahead of its predecessors is in power consumption. NVIDIA says that, on average in gaming, the RTX 4060 will consume 110W, which is considerably lower than the consumption of an RTX 3060. It asserts that in Germany, for example, "a gamer playing 20 hours a week could save up to $132 in energy costs over the course of 4 years, when upgrading from an RTX 3060 to an RTX 4060." In the US, the 4-year savings would be nearer to $57 thanks to cheaper energy, the green team estimates.