I am not implying that performance scales with memory size, and I don't know why you're saying this.
8GB and a 128-bit bus are not enough for some modern games, or at least they don't provide the kind of experience you'd expect at $400. 16GB may be too much, but 12GB on a 192-bit bus would have been a nice sweet spot.
Low memory totals can cause stuttering when using high res textures or playing at high resolutions, though. Performance falls more sharply when increasing resolution on the 4060 Ti than it does on the 3060 Ti or 3070. Performance also takes a bigger hit when enabling ray tracing on the 4060 ti than it does on previous-generation cards. There are some bandwidth-heavy games where performance is surprisingly mediocre, such as Horizon Zero Dawn. In the Tom's Hardware review, they showed the 4060 Ti tying the 3060 Ti in that game at 1440p. They also showed the 3070 Ti getting a performance uplift over the 3070 that's well above average for that card, implying it's a game that responds well to increasing memory speed, even at this midrange level of performance.
There have also been games that really don't play well with 8GB of VRAM unless you turn the texture detail down until it looks like crap. You can easily blame the developers for that, and you'd be right, but it still feels like this wouldn't be such a headache if Nvidia hadn't decided to keep the same memory per dollar as they have been since 2016 with the 1070. More VRAM is beneficial, even on a card like the 4060 Ti, and only getting 8GB for $400 in 2023 just plain feels bad, man.
Seems to me that's exactly what you're doing.
- "All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise." ~4060 Ti TPU review.
With the exception of Horizon Zero Dawn (taking your word for it, as TPU didn't test it), another console port that launched in fairly bad technical condition (
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-horizon-zero-dawn-is-it-finally-fixed), none of the games tested seem to indicate any issues when tested at high quality settings, and the card, when used at the resolution it's designed for (1080p (the most popular gaming resolution)) is basically the equivalent of the 3070 (256 bit) or the 2080 Ti (352 bit).
I doubt anyone would consider the 4060 Ti a 4K GPU. It's a strong 1080p GPU but there is one thing you are overlooking. The TPU review applies to games that have been released. Most gamers only upgrade every other generation so maybe 4 to 5 years. Possibly 8 GB VRAM will be inadequate during the lifespan of their 4060 Ti and the trend lately is to hold onto a card for even longer with a lot of gamers due to high prices and concerns about the economy.
It is a strong 1080p/1440p card. It is possible that 8 GB VRAM could become inadequate, but this hasn't been the case for the last five years, unless you pretend that 4K Ultra gaming with ray tracing is anything other than a tiny % minority, or is relevant for this tier of GPU. I don't think memory requirements are going to scale much until higher resolution gaming becomes the norm. I would imagine that again, the real performance limitation -
Core count, generation and frequency
will be much more limiting than the VRAM size.
Reminder that the RX 7600 is also a 128 bit 8 GB card, and it's 25% slower (~30% cheaper so that's fine).
The Arc A770 is also a 16 GB, 256 bit card, yet it's consistently ~25% slower.
There have also been games that really don't play well with 8GB of VRAM unless you turn the texture detail down until it looks like crap.
I don't think lowering textures from "Ultra" to "High" has ever made textures look like crap either.
I'm skeptical of this framing. How much die size is really taken up when going from a 128-bit bus to a 192-bit bus?
https://locuza.substack.com/p/nvidias-ada-lineup-configurations You can take a look at the die shots.
)
