NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16G

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is a mid-range desktop GPU which is manufactured in a 5 nm process at TSMC. The manufacturer thus rounds off its current Ada-Lovelace lineup further in the direction of the mid-range. The AD106 is used as the chip. It combines 4,352 CUDA cores with 8 GB GDDR6. An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti with 16 GB VRAM is supposed to follow later. The memory interface is 128 bits, which results in a memory bandwidth of only 288 GB/s.

Features

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is not deprived of the features that have already arrived with the high-end models of the Ada-Lovelace generation, such as DLSS 3.0 with frame generation. Thus, the new mid-range clearly stands out from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and can gain a significant advantage in games that offer these features. 

Performance

Without DLSS, the performance of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is about 10% better than that of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Compared to AMD, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti positions itself exactly between an AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT and an AMD Radeon RX 6800, although AMD has a small advantage here with the larger VRAM when it goes beyond 1080p. However, this is not the intended goal of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, as this is rather a graphics card for the 1,080p gaming range.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU or 3080 Mobile (for laptops, GN20-E7) is the fastest graphics card for notebooks in early 2021. It is based on the GA104-775-A1 Ampere chip and offers 8 or 16 GB GDDR6 graphics memory with a 256 Bit memory bus. It supports PCIe 4.0 and will be available in different variants from 80 - 150 Watt (TGP) (80, 90, 115, 125, 135, 145 and 150+ Watt). As package the notebook graphic card uses GB5-256 and the chip size is 40x40mm. The GPU supports eDP 1.4b to connect the internal monitor.

There is no more Max-Q variant (formerly used for the low power variants) but every OEM can choose to implement Max-Q technologies (Dynamic Boost, Whispermode).

The performance depends on the TGP setting and cooling of the laptop. At the same TGP level the RTX3080 should be faster than the old top model, the RTX 2080 Super Mobile and similar to the desktop RTX 3070. This means, the GPU should be well suited for 4k gaming or QHD with high frame rates. The similar named RTX 3080 desktop card is significantly faster.

The GA104 chip offers 6,144 FP32 ALUs of which half can also execute INT32 instructions (i.e. 3,072 INT32 ALUs). With Turing all shaders could still execute FP32 or INT32 instructions. The raytracing and tensor cores on the chip were also improved according to Nvidia. The Ampere chips also include an improved 5th generation video encoder (NVENC for H.264 and H.265) and a 7th generation decoder (for various formats now including AV1).

The GA104 chip is manufactured by Samsung in 8nm (8N), which is not quite able to keep up with the 7nm node at TSMC (e.g. used by AMD and also for the professional GA100 Ampere chip).