Last week, MSI organized a stream during which they tested the performance of the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB. From their results, we could conclude that 16 GB was useless, worse, the card was a very slight behind its 8 GB counterpart.
In the meantime, Hardware Unboxed was able to purchase a card, enabling them to test and compare it with the 8GB version. So, is doubling the memory capacity really so pointless?
Is the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB really that useless?
As a reminder, this 16 GB version offers nothing more than the 8 GB model, apart from double the VRAM. The GPU configuration remains identical, while power consumption increases very slightly due to the increase in memory. Oh, and the bill is $100, that much at least.
As far as results are concerned, our colleagues report performance gains, some of them massive. This simply depends on the game and its ability to consume VRAM. On games like Cyberpunk 2077, for example, the difference between the two cards is minimal. The same goes for A Plague Tale: Requiem without Ray Tracing, where the figures are very close, and so on.
However, as soon as you increase VRAM saturation, things change completely. For example, on Resident Evil 4 Remake, at 1080p, maximum detail, the 16 GB version clearly stands out. Here, the main thing to remember is the stuterring that is very present when you only have 8 GB of memory. In the sequence shown by our colleagues, we can see that the 1% low falls to 4 FPS!
The same is true of The Callisto Protocol, where the 1% low falls to a very low level, but not the only one. Yes, on this game, the framerate is sometimes almost divided by 5!
And on A Plague Tale: Requiem, the situation is the same with Ray Tracing, which tends to drastically increase the amount of memory used. As a result, the difference between the two cards is truly significant, and you’ll find yourself playing in slide mode with an 8 GB card, depending on the scene.
In itself, offering an RTX 4060 Ti with 16 GB of memory isn’t an outlier. Depending on the scenario, this will enable you to enjoy your games in ultra where 8 GB VRAM just won’t cut it. What is, however, is the €500 claimed by NVIDIA! It’s bad enough that the 4060 Ti 8GB wasn’t the most convincing of cards, but now we’re shooting the ambulance.
