Conclusion
In today’s overclocking review, we took the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition that was recently released and overclocked it as much as we could. In doing so, we found out the general performance uplift you should expect with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE from overclocking. We tested at 1080p, with and without Ray Tracing as well as 1440p to see the performance uplift across the board in many games.
If you are unfamiliar with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE was released in May of 2023 geared as a 1080p video card for an MSRP of $399 for the 8GB model. Here’s a brief run-down of the specs. the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti utilizes 3 Graphics Processing Clusters, 17 Texture Processing Clusters, and 34 Streaming Multiprocessors. What this means is that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti has 4,352 CUDA Cores, 136 Texture Units, 48 ROPs, 136 (4th Gen) Tensor Cores, and 34 (3rd Gen) RT Cores. It will have a Base Clock of 2310MHz and a Boost Clock of 2535MHz. Memory consists of 8GB of GDDR6 at 18GHz on a 128-bit memory bus. This provides 288GB/s of actual memory bandwidth. It has 32MB of L2 cache. The TGP is 160W.
Performance Summary
Starting off in Returnal at 1080p and EPIC game settings, we saw that overclocking the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti FE improved performance by 6%. This brought performance up to 105FPS, and the game was playable at 1080p. In The Callisto Protocol at 1080p and the highest game settings overclocking the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti improved performance also by 6% which brought it near 100FPS. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare II we saw a smaller increase in performance with overclocking, just 4% which did not equate to anything real-world for performance. In Chernobylite Enhanced Edition overclocking the RTX 4060 Ti saw just a 5% performance increase. In Dying Light 2 the RTX 4060 Ti gained 8% with overclocking, which was the highest at 1080p. Finally, in Cyberpunk 2077 the RTX 4060 Ti gained 7% with overclocking.
Looking at 1080p with Ray Tracing, in Returnal we experienced a 6% performance uplift from overclocking the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti. In The Callisto Protocol we experienced one of the largest differences with overclocking, gaining 15% more performance from overclocking the RTX 4060 Ti with Ray Tracing. It seems overclocking really boosted Ray Tracing performance in this game. In Chernobylite Enhanced Edition we saw an 8% performance advantage from overclocking. In Dying Light 2 there was a 6% advantage from overclocking, and Cyberpunk 2077 saw a respectable 10% performance advantage from overclocking.
Looking at 1440p performance, in Returnal overclocking the RTX 4060 Ti improved performance by 8%, so this was higher than the 1080p performance advantage. We also saw a bigger advantage at 1440p in The Callisto Protocol with a 15% performance advantage from overclocking, this was better than at 1080p. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare II we saw a 5% performance advantage from overclocking. In Chernobylite Enhanced Edition there was a 7% performance advantage with overclocking the RTX 4060 Ti. In Dying Light 2 there was a 10% advantage from overclocking, which was higher than at 1080p. In Cyberpunk 2077 there was an 8% advantage from overclocking.
We also saw the performance advantage versus the previous generation GeForce RTX 3060 Ti widen a bit more when overclocking was considered. One of the complaints with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti was that it only offered a ~10% advantage, on average, over the RTX 3060 Ti. When you overclock the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti we start to see a more respectable advantage over the RTX 3060 Ti.
At 1080p In Returnal and The Callisto Protocol there was a 14% performance uplift versus the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, but in Call of Duty Modern Warfare II there was a 26% performance uplift. In Chernobylite there was a 24% performance uplift, in Dying Light 2 there was a 12% bump, and in Cyberpunk 2077 there was a 16% uplift from the RTX 3060 Ti. One of the biggest differences was at 1080p with Ray Tracing, where the overclocked RTX 4060 Ti was 31% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti in The Callisto Protocol and 37% faster in Chernobylite Enhanced Edition.
At 1440p in Returnal the overclocked RTX 4060 Ti was 13% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti and in The Callisto Protocol it was 22% faster, which is higher than it was at 1080p. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare II the overclocked RTX 4060 Ti was 27% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti and in Chernobylite it was 18% faster. In Cyberpunk 2077 the overclocked RTX 4060 Ti was 17% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti.
Final Points
At the onset of this review, we offered concern about bandwidth constraints on GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, and if overclocking can help overcome some of that. In our testing, we found that overclocking resulted in higher performance advantages at 1440p, and Ray Tracing, showing that as the demand increases for bandwidth, overclocking can offer a higher performance uplift. Some of the largest performance advantages from overclocking were at 1080p with Ray Tracing, or 1440p where bandwidth matters most. But it also has to be said that at 1080p, there were some rather small performance advantages, under 10% from overclocking, so it depends on the game and resolution and settings.
The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition already runs a very high GPU Boost clock by default, taking it well over the official frequency. This doesn’t leave a whole lot of headroom, but there is still a decent amount of GPU frequency. We can imagine that custom add-in-board cards with beefed-up power, cooling, and potentially power limits and voltage could easily hit 3GHz all day long, and that will really help the RTX 4060 Ti. In addition, memory overclocking is very important for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti’s performance, and we got a pretty good overclock. We could even see some custom cards hitting 21GHz on memory, so compared to the default 18GHz that’s a very decent bump on bandwidth that will make a difference.
Overclocking the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is a pretty painless endeavor, that can be a lot of fun for enthusiasts. Overclocking the RTX 4060 Ti puts it in a better place, compared to the uplift from the previous generation GeForce RTX 3060 Ti that may be worth it, especially with the new features it has.