MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GAMING X TRIO 8G Review

Final Score: 82%

We personally have been reviewing PC hardware for (nearly) sixteen years now and the older we get the more we loathe the “latest” trend of clickbait, outlandish, and over the top declarations just to make an extra buck in the review ‘game’. So let us be clear and precise. The 4060Ti is not a great series. The 4060Ti is also not a terrible series. Just like all previous generations of x60Ti/x60 Super NVIDIA desings, it is a middle of the road ‘jobber’ GPU that is intended for buyers who do not spend a lot of money on PC gaming hardware. Unlike enthusiasts, these buyers like to causally play a game or three in the evening with a moderate amount of eye candy turned on (as otherwise they would be using bog standard x60s or even x50s). Maybe it is even in their living room’s HTPC that doubles as a media center.

Either way x60 Ti buyer’s systems are not built with 4K gaming in mind. So, let’s drop the vitriol and be brutally honest about this addition to NVIDIA’s lineup. Yes, this 8GB variant probably should not have been released at all. Rather only a 16GB’er should have launched at this price point. Also, yes. It is not that much faster than its RTX 3060Ti predecessor. It however is still ~14 percent faster. Which for this day and age is a decent generational improvement… but yes. If you already own a good RTX 3000-series card you probably will not consider that a big enough improvement to merit an upgrade. However, the days of upgrading every generation are long gone. Instead, only GTX 1×00 and RTX 2000 series card owners should be thinking about the RTX 4000-series (which also falls into the water makes things wet category).

Yes. This is an PCIe x8 and not PCIe x16 enabled card. This makes zero real world difference. It’s a nothing burger for x60 class cards. It probably would also be a nothing burger on x70 class cards. A rounding error for x80s, and maybe noteworthy if this was a 4090/Ti class card. This is not a 4K and 8K pixel crushing beast that costs more than our first car. It’s a little 1080P card where x8 versus x16 will not matter. Anyone who says otherwise is flat out wrong.

Yes. Even though the new CUDA cores are amazingly efficient compared to last generation, and NIVIDIA have indeed beefed up the cache amount to ‘compensate’, given the reduction in CUDA core count and bus width… this arguably should have been released under the x50 banner… at x50 prices. So yes, there are a ton of better deals in the used market (see above for level of surrealism for having to actually state this fact for the record).

Yes. AMD offers a competitive card for less (for now). Even yes. The fact that, just like the 3060Ti before it, a modern x60Ti class card costing $400(+) is blatant usage of the asymmetric dominance effect (aka Decoy Effect) by NVIDIA to (once again try and) ‘entice’ average jane and/or joe sixpack to upgrade to a x70 class of card… because they “only” cost $200 more (or $150 in the case of 3rd party options such as the Gaming X Trio). Compounding on this less than impressive marketing tactic is… Yes. Team “Leather Jacket Man” egregiously market segments the 4060Ti from the 4070s via a massive memory bus bit-width cut and slower GDDR6 memory instead of faster GDDR6X. All just to make the poorly selling x70’s seem like a better deal.

Even with these statements taken into consideration, the fact of the matter is the 4060Ti series in general, and the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio in specific, is a very decent modern 1080P video card. A card that does what is meant to do and does it rather well. After all, at 1080P it does offer 76’ish percent of the RTX 4070 for about 67’ish percent of the cost. When you peel back all the hate for the RTX 4000-series in general that… really is not all that bad place for a x60Ti to be.

Put another way, it will offer 35’ish percent better performance compared to the card the typical buyer of these types of cards are replacing. For these buyers that was, at best, an RTX 2070 class card that consumed 15 (or more) extra watts of power. Offered first generation (aka dumpster fire) Ray Tracing performance, offered mediocre gaming performance, and fairly mediocre DLSS abilities compared to later generation NVIDIA cards. That is what $500 bought you circa 2018.

Compare and contrast that to 2023. For $450, in 2023 dollars we might add, you get a card that is ~35 percent faster outside of RT scenarios, vastly better in Ray Tracing scenarios… and yet consumes less power. Thanks to MSI bestowing upon their MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio an absolute beast of an over-engineered cooling solution, buyers also get a whisper quiet card. Mix in major DLSS improvements and if one is so inclined the RTX 4060Ti can indeed be a great living room video card. One that will be equally at home upconverting videos (via KODI+madVR+MPC or VSR+Chrome) or crushing n00bs in online multiplayer FPS games. Exactly what x60 Ti class cards are supposed to do.

So when looked at logically, the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio is actually a very decent option. Arguably the best option, until the 16GB variant is released, in this new class of x60 Tis cards. Either way it is good enough that it not only easily justifies its price premium but if you need a new card right now, only have $450 to spend, and care little for Team Red or Team Blue options this is pretty much the card you want to own… especially if the incoming price war forces all manufacturers, including MSI, to reduce the asking price. Thank you MSI for not only reducing your MSRP from the previous generation but showing exactly what is possible with the new NVIDIA AD106-350 cores.