MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio Review: Burly And Brisk
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio: Overclocking, Power, Noise And The Verdict
We also spent some time overclocking our MSI Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 4060 Ti to wring out some additional performance from its GPU and GDDR6 memory...
Overclocking The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio
Like previous-gen GeForces, Ada Lovelace-based GeForce RTX 40 series cards feature GPU Boost, which scales frequencies and voltages, power and temperatures permitting, based on the GPU's workload at the time. Should a temperature or power limit be reached, GPU Boost will drop down to the previous boost frequency / voltage stepping, to bring power and temperatures down gradually and not cause any significant performance swings.
When overclocking, the maximum boost clock and power limit can be tweaked and tuned to increase performance with most cards, however.
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming Trio X Hardware Monitor - Default Settings
Like previous-gen cards, the MSI Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is still voltage or power limited in most circumstances to prevent damage and ensure the card's longevity. It is those limits that will usually be the gating factor in any overclocking efforts. As you can see above, even in its stock configuration, the card was hitting a voltage limit while gaming.
With the MSI Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, the power target can be increased by up to 10% and the max temperature target from 83°C to 90°C. Though the latest version of MSI's Afterburner GPU tweaking utility has the option to alter voltage as well, it was greyed-out with the build we used. We were still able to increase the GPU clock a fair bit, however.
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming Trio X Hardware Monitor - Overclocked
We used the frequency offsets with the power and temperature target sliders available in Afterburner to manually push the MSI Gaming X Trio GeForceRTX 4060 Ti's frequencies beyond its defaults. First, we turned up the temperature and power targets to their maximum values, and then increased the GPU and memory clock offsets until the test system was no longer stable, showed on-screen artifacts, or performance peaked due to hitting the power limit. We did not, however, alter fan speeds because this card ran so cool without any modifications there.
In its stock configuration, the MSI Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 4060 Ti boosted to over 2,800MHz (visible in the screenshot at the top of the page). While overclocked, we were able to take its GPU clock up to 3,000MHz with a 18.3Gbps memory speed. Even while overclocked, the GPU maxed out at only 59°C, and probably had plenty of frequency headroom to spare, but the card was constantly bumping into its voltage and power limits.
With the card overclocked, we saw minor gains in most titles—fitting, given the relatively minimal amount of overclocking that's possible. It's a pity that NVIDIA decided to lock down voltage control on its GPUs, because a card like this, with its grossly over-built power delivery hardware and cooling apparatus, should really be able to deliver some larger performance gains over the stock speeds. Alas it was not meant to be.
Total System Power Consumption
Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we also monitored noise output and tracked how much power the GPUs were consuming in our test system. Our goal here is to give you an idea as to how much power each GPU used while idle and also while under a heavy workload. These power numbers were captured during Far Cry 6 testing, with ray-tracing enabled, and are representative of total system power consumption:
Unsurprisingly, the little Ada Lovelace cards are the most efficient things on our chart, and this MSI Geforce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio takes the cake, even if only just so. We could probably chalk that up to the superior cooling offered by its excessive triple-fan heatsink assembly reducing leakage slightly. Either way, this card isn't going to break your power bank, even if you run it full-out all the time.
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming Trio X Review Summary
We were satisifed with the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti when we reviewed NVIDIA's card yesterday, and this model doesn't offer much to change that opinion. Performance remains fundamentally the same, which is actually sort of a shame considering what overclocked partner cards used to offer. Noise and power aren't all that different, either. That is to say, you will hardly ever hear this card under normal operation.
It's true that if you compare the specifications of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti to previous-generation "x60 Ti" models, it comes up looking a little anemic in the memory bandwidth department. As we've hopefully shown in our testing, that's really not a problem for its performance in games. Sure, you can drag it down by raising the resolution, but you can bring it right back up by enabling DLSS, or even FSR or XeSS where NVIDIA's own solution isn't available.
Find GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming Trio X Cards @ Amazon
We already talked at length yesterday about the pricing of the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, but to reiterate, we think it's probably fair in its price range right now. It's true that you can pick up some cut-rate Radeon cards that are faster than the RTX 4060 Ti in purely-rasterized games for not much more, and those are good deals for that. However, you miss out on the new features of recent GPUs, like AV1 video encoding—remember, YouTube accepts AV1 for livestreams now—as well as DLSS 3 Frame Generation, which is just too good to be ignored. Not to mention NVIDIA's clear lead with ray tracing.
However, when talking about this specific card, MSI's Gaming X Trio GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, we're a little more apprehensive. Fundamentally, it doesn't really offer anything over the Founders Edition card besides some flashier visual styling and lower temps. Personally, we prefer a smaller graphics card when the extra cooling heft isn't required, and given that overclocking didn't yield significant gains, it's a little hard to justify the extra $50, especially considering that's 1/2 way to the price of the 16GB model. If you're into the visual panache, or if you feel the need to compensate for your mid-range GPU with an outsized cooling solution, then by all means check this 4060 Ti out.
