NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB is the middle-est of this generation’s mid-range and is billed as a GPU for gaming primarily at a resolution of 1440p. Not all games are equally demanding however, particularly when ray traced lighting and shadows are added to the mix, so we’ve looked at performance across a range of older and more recent titles.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War
The oldest of our titles, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is still an exceptionally attractive game that utilises the DirectX 11 API. In deference to its vintage, we'll be testing at 1440p with Ultra image quality presets.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The second sequel to the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also one of the first titles to incorporate NVIDIA RTX ray traced shadows and DLSS. At 1440p we’ll be testing with the Highest quality presets, Ray Traced Shadows manually set at the High, SMAA 4x, and the benefit of DLSS’s ‘Quality’ upscaling mode preset. Performance will also be noted with DLSS disabled .
Horizon Zero Dawn
This game was new to PC in August 2020 and already has a reputation for taxing GPU hardware. It doesn't feature ray tracing, but nonetheless has some of the most stunning scenes ever rendered in games. We've used the Ultimate preset at 1440p here, but Favoured also offers a visual feast with markedly higher performance.
Control
Critically acclaimed on release, Control is the title which made most comprehensive use of NVIDIA RTX prior to Cyberpunk 2077's release in Holiday 2020. Shadows, lighting and reflections all make use of this advanced rendering standard, helping the transition from mundane world to its nightmarish reflection. We opted for the Highest detail settings preset with RTX features enabled including the default recommended level of DLSS: a rendering resolution of 1920x1080.
Cyberpunk 2077
Finally reliable after major patch releases, CDProjekt RED's neo-futurist open world RPG has stunning visuals and ray traced lighting effects to enjoy. We took it for a spin with RTX On at 1440p with DLSS 3 enabled.
The oldest of our titles, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is still an exceptionally attractive game that utilises the DirectX 11 API. In deference to its vintage, we'll be testing at 1440p with Ultra image quality presets.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The second sequel to the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also one of the first titles to incorporate NVIDIA RTX ray traced shadows and DLSS. At 1440p we’ll be testing with the Highest quality presets, Ray Traced Shadows manually set at the High, SMAA 4x, and the benefit of DLSS’s ‘Quality’ upscaling mode preset. Performance will also be noted with DLSS disabled .
Horizon Zero Dawn
This game was new to PC in August 2020 and already has a reputation for taxing GPU hardware. It doesn't feature ray tracing, but nonetheless has some of the most stunning scenes ever rendered in games. We've used the Ultimate preset at 1440p here, but Favoured also offers a visual feast with markedly higher performance.
Control
Critically acclaimed on release, Control is the title which made most comprehensive use of NVIDIA RTX prior to Cyberpunk 2077's release in Holiday 2020. Shadows, lighting and reflections all make use of this advanced rendering standard, helping the transition from mundane world to its nightmarish reflection. We opted for the Highest detail settings preset with RTX features enabled including the default recommended level of DLSS: a rendering resolution of 1920x1080.
Cyberpunk 2077
Finally reliable after major patch releases, CDProjekt RED's neo-futurist open world RPG has stunning visuals and ray traced lighting effects to enjoy. We took it for a spin with RTX On at 1440p with DLSS 3 enabled.
Performance expectations have broadly been met, with average FPS values that underscore the advantages of pairing with a variable refresh rate monitor. Managing a consistent 60fps in Control is particularly impressive, but 50 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 indicates that taking image quality down a notch might be in order.
Performance without DLSS on all RTX titles craters at 1440p, the worst of which is again Cyberpunk 2077 with low double-digit averages and single-digit minimums.
More broadly, the system is a capable 1440p machine in the majority of games, but its struggles in the most modern titles reflect a trend towards pushing graphical fidelity beyond what mid-range GPUs can handle at standard gaming resolutions. Turn off ray tracing and you'll probably be fine, but requiring ever more complex upscaling technologies to reach acceptable FPS levels really poisons the well.
