Nvidia RTX 4060 or AMD RX 7600? You might be surprised | Digital Trends

Nvidia’s newly released RTX 4060 is positioned as the champion of mid-range 1080p gaming, but it has some stiff competition in the form of AMD’s RX 7600. Both GPUs are designed for premium Full HD gaming, but there are some important differences between them.

I ran both on my testbed to see which is the best graphics card for your next PC build. While neither GPU outperforms the other, there is a clear winner in terms of value.

Specification by specification

I’ve listed the specs for the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 below, but you shouldn’t compare most of them directly. As is always the case between two GPUs of different architectures, the number of cores and clock speeds say nothing about performance. For example, the RX 7600 is missing over 1,000 cores compared to the RTX 4060, but it’s definitely not a third slower.

There are some useful comparisons, though. The memory subsystem has been a moot point in recent months as VRAM limitations have become more common in modern games. And unfortunately, both the RX 7600 and RTX 4060 hit this limitation in games like The last of us, part one.

Both GPUs use 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus. Unlike previous generations, where Nvidia opted for a larger bus width to improve memory bandwidth, both the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 rely on an improved cache size for bandwidth improvements . Nvidia opts for a faster L2 cache, however, while AMD opts for a slower but more L3.

It’s a pick and choose situation, as both GPUs have very similar effective bandwidth. However, Nvidia has an edge with its power consumption. Less memory on a smaller bus leads to lower power consumption and, combined with the efficiency of Nvidia’s latest architecture, allows the RTX 4060 to run at 50 watts less than the RX 7600.

Outside of power, price is a significant difference. The RX 7600 is $30 cheaper than the RTX 4060. However, likely in response to the RTX 4060, you can now find the RX 7600 priced closer to $250, allowing it to undercut the RTX 4060 by $ 50.

Is the RTX 4060 faster than the RX 7600?

If we take a top-level snapshot of RTX 4060 and RX 7600 performance, the Nvidias GPU is nearly 12% faster while being 11% to 20% more expensive. This average includes my full test suite, however, averaged through a geomean, and encapsulates both raster performance and ray tracing performance.

In many games, the comparison isn’t so clear cut. For example, insideCyberpunk 2077,the RX 7600 is actually 6% ahead of the RTX 4060 despite costing less. The same is true inRed Dead Redemption 2,where AMD’s GPU leads by more than 9%.

These are the only two games where the RX 7600 takes the lead. The RTX 4060 has the edge in most games, even if it’s usually not significant. InAssassin’s Creed Valhalla,leads by 3%; In Dawn Horizon Zero,its 2.5%; It’s insideReturn,its 6% (however, that game supports Nvidia’s impressive DLSS 3).

However, there are some titles where the RTX 4060 pulls ahead. It’s 12% fasterresident evil 4,for example, and a whopping 26% faster inbound The last of us, part one. It’s also 8% faster. Strength Horizon 5, and its advantage is multiplied if DLSS 3 is taken into account.

Taking all games into consideration, the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 trade blows, with a handful of games showing major momentum for the RTX 4060. So where does that 12% lead come from? Ray tracing.

For example, insideresident evil 4,the 12% advantage of the RTX 4060 jumps to 19% if you enable ray tracing. Likewise, where the RX 7600 has the edgeCyberpunk 2077with ray tracing turned off, the RTX 4060 is nearly twice as fast when powered up (and somewhere in the range of six times faster with DLSS 3).

Unlike previous generations, however, the RX 7600 can compete with the RTX 4060 in less demanding ray tracing workloads. It’s not far behind Metro Exodus,for example, and manages to match the RTX 4060 in Return.

For 1080p, there’s no doubt the RTX 4060 has the edge, and you can justify spending more if you take everything into consideration. However, ray tracing is mostly where the RTX 4060 comes next, so you can save some money with the RX 7600 and still get excellent performance in most games.

What about 1440p?

Priced at $300, you should get a 1080p GPU with 1440p aspirations. Unfortunately, both the RX 7600 and RTX 4060 struggle in this regard. As you can see from the average, the 12% gap between the two GPUs stays the same at higher resolution, and it shouldn’t; I would expect to see some movement.

You can look at my other results and see nearly identical scaling to what we saw at 1080p, for both rasterized performance and ray traced performance. There is also a good explanation why.

Both the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 have the same constrained memory interface, limiting their potential at higher resolutions. If you take a look outside the two-way comparison, you can see that GPUs like the Arc A770 push ahead at 1440p with its 16GB of VRAM, and the RX 6700 XT and its 12GB of VRAM push even further. up.

I wouldn’t recommend any GPU for 1440p, frankly. Something like the RX 6700 XT is much better equipped for this. If you have to choose between them, however, the lead goes to the RTX 4060 thanks to access to DLSS 3, which excels more at resolutions and higher settings.

RTX 4060 vs RX 7600: which one to choose?

The $300 graphics card matters. It’s the ideal workhorse GPUjobs,offering great value and decent 1080p performance and promising a stable PC build for the next few years. Unfortunately, both the RTX 4060 and RX 7600 fall short of that level, mainly due to their limited VRAM capacity.

Between the two, the RX 7600 is definitely the value game. You’re giving up ray tracing performance and don’t have access to DLSS 3, but you’re getting just as good or better performance in rasterized games, which is really where a $300 GPU shines. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the RTX 4060 entirely. You should just know that the extra $30 to $50 you spend on this is going largely to ray tracing and DLSS 3, not higher overall performance.

If you have $300 to spend, though, I’d give AMD’s RX 6700 XT a serious look. It’s not great at ray tracing either, but it’s faster than both the RX 7600 and RTX 4060, and it’s around the same price.

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