The developers behind Yuzu, a free and open-source Nintendo Switch emulator, have shared a new progress report that accuses the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (8 GB) of being a disappointing graphics card, one that delivers worse performance than its predecessor in the realm of Switch emulation. Yuzu pointed out how the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (8 GB) only has a 128-bit wide memory bus and GDDR6 memory, while the GeForce RX 3060 Ti features a 256-bit memory interface width and the option for GDDR6X memory. The Yuzu emulator has been popular for its ability to run Nintendo’s newest games on PC, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which launched on May 12, 2023, for $69.99.
From a Yuzu post:
We don’t understand what kind of decisions NVIDIA took when deciding the Ada Lovelace GeForce product stack, but it has been nothing but mistakes. The RTX 4060 Ti 8GB with only a 128-bit wide memory bus and GDDR6 VRAM is a serious downgrade for emulation when compared to its predecessor, the 256-bit wide equipped RTX 3060 Ti. You will be getting slower performance in Switch emulation if you get the newer product. We have no choice but to advise users to stick to Ampere products if possible, or aim higher in the product stack if you have to get a 4000 series card for some reason (DLSS3 or AV1 encoding), which is clearly what NVIDIA is aiming for.
The argument in favour of Ada is the increased cache size, which RDNA2 confirmed in the past helps with performance substantially, but it also has a silent warning no review mentions: if you saturate the cache, you’re left with the performance of a 128-bit wide card, and it’s very easy to saturate the cache when using the resolution scaler — just 2X is enough to tank performance.
Spending 400 USD on a card that has terrible performance outside of 1X scaling is, in our opinion, a terrible investment, and should be avoided entirely. We hope the 16GB version at least comes equipped with GDDR6X VRAM, which would increase the available bandwidth and provide an actual improvement in performance for this kind of workload.