You realize you’ve really made it when Nvidia ship you a free graphics card so that you can overview! Nicely, maybe not fairly, however it’s sort of enjoyable. My views after all stay my very own. I occur to personal the RTX 4080 (which I’ve reviewed here), however I used to be comfortable to run the 4060 Ti by means of the identical paces.
There are three new playing cards from Nvidia and in contrast to the upper finish playing cards, there are many third occasion playing cards from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte at MRSP:
- RTX 4060 $299 / £289 (July)
- RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) $399 / £389 (out now)
- RTX 4060 Ti (16GB) $499 / £479 (July)
Let me offer you a TL:DR abstract of the RTX 4060 Ti (8GB) model I’m reviewing right here. This can be a nice improve for you if:
- You’ve got an older card like a 1060 or 960 or older AMD card
- You don’t want greater than 8GB VRAM
- You don’t want the additional velocity/energy of a dearer card
- You want AV1 encoding
Per week of enhancing
Swapping the 4060 Ti in for my 4080, the very first thing I seen was that the 4060 Ti is a lot smaller. That is fairly welcome, as I can barely shut the case with the 4080 in it. Plus the ability utilization/value is far decrease too and it means you don’t want as highly effective a PSU.
You possibly can learn all about the specs if you need, just like the elevated L2 cache or the decreased reminiscence bus (in comparison with the 3060 Ti), however the one factor I’m concerned about is the way it performs in daily enhancing duties.
I used the 4060 Ti for per week of enhancing in Adobe Premiere Professional. I seen no distinction by any means in downgrading from the rather more costly 4080. That is to be anticipated – these playing cards are rather more highly effective than NLEs want within the daily. In the previous few years I’ve used the 2060 Tremendous, the 4060 Ti and the 4080 – all of them gave me the identical expertise in daily enhancing.
The RTX 4060 Ti is greater than highly effective sufficient for many editors. As you may see beneath, until doing extra intensive duties, it has a lot of the efficiency of the rather more costly 4080. It’s an ideal card, although in case your price range is smaller, you may additionally contemplate ready for the 4060 at $100 much less or getting a used 20 or 30 collection card – I don’t advocate going again additional than that as a result of there was a big enhance in H.264 encoding high quality that got here on the 20 collection & since then I’ve by no means bothered with software program compression. And I do advocate sticking with Nvidia, they simply work that bit higher than AMD for enhancing duties.
Take a look at 1: Decoding H.264
These exams are barely totally different from my final overview and the software program variations and drivers have superior, so I examined all three playing cards once more. This check is decoding H.264 (8bit 4:2:0) at 1080p to DNx (may be ProRes) – which you’d do when transcoding or making proxies initially of a venture.
- Specs: Home windows 10 Professional, AMD Threadripper 3960X (24 core), 128GB RAM (CL-16 3200MHz), A number of NVMe SSDs. Avid Media Composer v2023.03, Adobe Premiere Professional v23.4, Davinci Resolve v18.1.2, Topaz Video AI v3.2.7.
- I did the check at 1080p this time versus UHD in my earlier article, which is why all of the scores are larger, although the patterns are the identical.
- Avid continues to rock each thread of my Threadripper, while not utilizing the GPU’s decoder in any respect, which exhibits that an Avid transcoding machine needs a pleasant huge HEDT processor.
- Premiere continues to not entry Nvidia’s {hardware} decoder (NVDEC) for export (it does use it for playback a minimum of) – this has been true for a lot of months throughout totally different variations and drivers. When you’ve got an Intel CPU with Fast Sync you have to be superb as Premiere can decode with that.
- There are respectable good points available within the 40 collection over the 20 collection, although not a lot between the 4060 Ti and the 4080.
- Davinci Resolve is ready to take advantage of use of {hardware} & in a UHD check pulls forward of Avid by a better margin.
Take a look at 2: Encoding H.265
That is the alternative check – encoding H.265 from a mezzanine codec. For instance you could have exported a ProRes grasp and have to ship it for overview. This check is at UHD and makes use of what I learned about presets to get probably the most velocity.
- Avid is horrible at encoding – it doesn’t use the GPU, nor use the CPU effectively. Finest to export similar as supply after which use Shutter Encoder or Resolve.
- Premiere is healthier, however isn’t taking advantage of the {hardware} so will get no acquire from the higher playing cards.
- Resolve is ready to entry the twin encoders within the 4070 Ti, 4080 & 4090 for outstanding speeds, you simply need to be utilizing H.265 or AV1, the “Quicker” or “Very Quick” preset & be at UHD or above.
For curiosity I did an H.265 export check for Resolve at 1080p which doesn’t entry the twin encoders of the 4080. It nonetheless beats the 4060 Ti, however by lots much less. The 2060 Tremendous falls additional behind although.
Take a look at 3: Decoding and Encoding H.264 to H.264
This check is for when you could have H.264 media in your timeline and export to the identical for overview. Once more I did this one at 1080p so all of the figures are larger than final time, although Resolve pulls forward remarkablty at this decision.
- Avid’s unhealthy encode is extra highly effective than its good decode right here
- Premiere falls behind Resolve by a a lot better margin at 1080p in comparison with my previous UHD test. I don’t know if it’s Nvidia or Adobe who have to type this out, however I hope they do. Once more, if utilizing an Intel chip with Fast Sync, you’ll in all probability be getting a lot better speeds than this.
- Apart from Resolve being spectacular, when doing each encoding and decoding, the dearer playing cards aren’t actually bringing that a lot. Although at UHD and above the distinction is larger.
Take a look at 4: Topaz Video AI
Surprisingly, with the most recent model of Topaz, the cardboard didn’t make any distinction in any respect, although it was a lot sooner throughout the board since my final check. Realistically this may in all probability change once more with future variations and I anticipate if you happen to do use Topaz lots, a 4080 or 4090 will likely be nice to have.
Take a look at 5: Intensive or AI duties in Davinci Resolve
That is the sort of work the place it actually pays to have a 4080 or 4090 – issues like noise discount in Resolve or much more an AI based mostly software just like the outstanding Magic Masks.
Different concerns: 8K and VRAM
A superb rule of thumb for VRAM is: Decision +2 is protected, Decision x2 is healthier. So for 1080p/2K you might be superb with 4GB VRAM. With UHD/4K, 6GB VRAM is normally superb and 8GB is healthier. If you happen to do use 6K or 8K you may wish to anticipate and pay the additional $100 for the 4060 Ti (16GB) model that’s popping out in July.
Conclusion
Graphics playing cards get increasingly highly effective annually and whereas the gaming group appear to complain for each launch, I feel for the submit manufacturing skilled, you get a variety of worth out of playing cards such because the 4060 Ti.
Nevertheless, if you happen to’re a colourist or do graphically intensive duties or are a Davinci Resolve energy person, you will get fairly a bit extra out of the dearer playing cards and doubtless need greater than the 8GB VRAM on supply right here.
