Nvidia’s new RTX 4060 laptop GPU is here!
But how does it compare against the older 3060?
I’ve compared both in 25 games at 1080p and 1440p to show you all the differences!
The older RTX 3060 actually has 25% more CUDA cores compared to the newer RTX 4060, but
the 4060 can reach higher boost clock speeds with the new Ada architecture.
The 4060 has 8 gigs of VRAM compared to the 6 in the 3060, but the 4060 has less memory
bandwidth and a smaller memory bus.
The 4060 also has a larger power range, but both of them max out at 115 watts.
Technically both of these GPUs can max out at 140 watts with dynamic boost, which is
the case from both of these laptops.
So this is a best case comparison comparing the most powerful 3060 against the most powerful
4060.
Lower performance is expected from laptops that have these GPUs but with lower power
limits, as you can see here.
I’ve measured the 3DMark TimeSpy graphics score at different power levels, and a higher
power limit results in a better score which means more performance.
At least until about 100 watts or so on the 4060, at which point going any higher does
not make a difference because the voltage limit gets hit in this workload, so only certain
games may be capable of running better beyond here.
The 4060 running at its lowest possible 35 watts was actually scoring slightly higher
compared to a 3060 at its minimum 60 watts, clearly showing that the 4060 is more efficient.
My 3060 laptop is MSI’s GP66 from last year, while my 4060 laptop is MSI’s GP77 from
this year.
Massive thanks to MSI for lending me both of these laptops to do this comparison.
The 3060 is paired with Intel’s Core i7-12700H while the 4060 has the newer i7-13700H.
Both CPUs have the same amount of cores, threads and cache, but 13th gen runs the memory a
little faster.
That’s just a legitimate difference between 2022 and 2023 gaming laptops, so some of this
performance difference will be due to the CPU and RAM changes, but that’s also just
the way it is.
Both laptops were tested with Windows 11 22H2 fully up to date, core isolation off, resizable
BAR enabled, with the same Nvidia driver and optimus off for best performance.
Alright, let’s get straight into the 25 game comparison at 2 resolutions, then after
that we’ll compare price difference to find out if the 4060 is actually worth buying.
Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077.
I’ve got the 1080p results down the bottom and 1440p up the top, with the RTX 3060 below
the RTX 4060.
The 3060 was still able to maintain above 60 FPS at 1080p ultra settings, but the 4060
was only 12% faster, with a slightly smaller 10% lead, or just 4 FPS difference at the
higher 1440p resolution.
I’ve also tested this game with the ray tracing ultra preset, which is a heavier workload,
so I’ve also enabled DLSS on balanced mode too.
This time there’s a much larger 47% boost to average FPS with the 4060 at 1440p, and
if we include frame generation then the 4060 is reaching more than twice the frame rate,
of course assuming that it’s even fair to compare generated frames when the visuals
won’t be comparable.
Cyberpunk makes it look like ray tracing provides big gains for the 4060, but that wasn’t
always the case.
The Witcher 3 was tested with the RT preset and at 1080p the 4060 was just 5 FPS or 13%
faster than the 3060.
Both were reaching about the same average FPS at the higher 1440p resolution, though
the newer 4060 laptop had fewer dips, as shown by the 1% lows.
Hogwarts Legacy had some of the biggest differences out of all 25 games tested, with the 4060
reaching a 43% higher average frame rate at 1080p, and 37% higher at 1440p.
I’ve also tested this game with DLSS on balanced mode, however the performance on
the 4060 was consistently worse at 1080p than both itself without DLSS, and the 3060 with
DLSS for some reason.
The 3060 was basically matching the 4060 at 1440p once you’ve got DLSS going.
The 4060 was only able to get a clear lead if we take frame generation into account,
which did make the gameplay feel noticeably smoother.
It’s definitely not always gains for the 4060 though, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
was basically the same on both laptops.
The 4060 system actually had more dips in performance, as shown by the lower 1% low,
and then at 1440p the 4060 was only 5% or 4 FPS faster, basically nothing.
The difference was small in Apex Legends too, with the 4060 just 3% faster at 1440p and
10% faster at the lower 1080p resolution.
There was a bit more of a difference in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, but not much.
The 3060 wasn’t far behind at all, with the 4060 11% ahead in average FPS at 1080p,
and 10% ahead at 1440p and just able to hit 60 FPS at max settings.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was just 7% faster on the 4060 at 1080p and 11% faster at 1440p,
but if we put DLSS on balanced mode then the difference between the two GPUs gets much
smaller.
Again it’s only when frame generation gets involved that the 4060 starts to look much
nicer, and I think this feature does make sense in a single player game like this where
latency isn’t really important.
Forza Horizon 5 was an outlier and had the biggest difference between both GPUs at both
resolutions.
The 4060 had a massive 64% lead over the 3060 at the lower 1080p resolution, and a 59% lead
at the higher 1440p resolution.
I retested this game on both laptops a day apart, but consistently got the same results,
and this was a few weeks before the DLSS 3 update goes live, so I definitely haven’t
accidentally put frame gen on or something.
Dead Space on the other hand had no real difference between them at 1440p, exactly a 1 FPS difference,
good luck noticing that when playing.
The 4060 was 10% faster at 1080p, but it’s still a relatively small difference.
The gap wasn’t that big in Red Dead Redemption 2 either.
The 4060 was 17% faster than the 3060 at 1080p, and 12% faster at 1440p.
Alright so sometimes the 4060 had decent leads, but many other times it could be quite close,
you get it.
Instead of wasting your time talking through the rest of the 15 games that I’ve tested,
I’ll instead just quickly skip through the rest of the results on screen now, so feel
free to pause the video if you want a closer look at any of the other games tested.
I think it’s important to test a wide selection of games so that we can get an accurate picture
of the average performance differences to make the fairest possible conclusion.
In other words, more data equals more better.
Let’s look at those average differences next.
On average over all 25 games tested, at 1080p the RTX 4060 laptop GPU was 16% faster compared
to the RTX 3060 laptop GPU.
This is basically the same difference to what I got when I compared the 3060 against the
3070 a couple of years ago.
Results really vary and depend on the specific game though, as a small number saw fairly
big gains with the 4060 laptop, while 11 of the games were only around 10% faster on the
4060.
Interestingly the difference actually gets smaller rather than bigger at the higher 1440p
resolution, where the RTX 4060 laptop GPU was now almost 13% faster than the 3060 on
average.
Generally speaking, more pixels needs more GPU power to run, so the fact that the 4060
had a larger lead at 1080p tells me that the bigger difference there could in part be a
result of the CPU and RAM difference.
1440p means we should have less CPU limited results, but the 4060 also suffers from having
less memory bandwidth than the 3060.
Not to mention fewer cuda cores.
Here’s how frame rates look if we instead take the average of all 25 games at both resolutions.
I think this better allows us to visually see the overall differences as a quick summary.
Even with the high setting levels I’ve used, the 3060 was still around 60 FPS without upscaling
technologies like FSR or DLSS.
The 4060 was clearly better, just not by a large amount.
The price difference is a bit strange right now, as the RTX 4060 is still quite new and
it’s not available in a whole lot of laptops just yet.
So you’ll have to check out the links below the video for updates.
And if any 3060 or 4060 laptops go on sale we’ll be sure to add them to the gaminglaptop.deals
website, so check that out to get the best deal on your next gaming laptop!
We update it daily with the latest deals.
A few weeks after launch, the cheapest RTX 4060 laptops start from $1100 USD, though
that Gigabyte system has a max GPU power limit of 75 watts with dynamic boost, so expect
lower performance than what I’ve shown here.
I can’t find the GP77 for sale yet, but MSI’s Pulse also has a 140 watt 4060 and
goes for $1500.
RTX 3060 laptops on the other hand aren’t really that different, except for similar
money generally you’re able to get a higher quality chassis.
Again I wasn’t able to find prices for the GP66 with 3060, the only ones left at Newegg
or Bestbuy are 3070 or higher.
This graph shows how many dollars you’ve got to spend to get 1 FPS.
The older RTX 3060 generally offers better value from a dollar per frame perspective,
but it depends.
The cheapest full powered RTX 3060 I can find right now is $1200, but I’ve also seen them
on sale for $1000, so I’ve included that too.
The cheapest full powered RTX 4060 was MSI’s Pulse for $1500, but MSI also have the Katana
for $1200 which runs the 4060 up to 105 watts, and as we saw earlier in the power scaling
graph, there might not be a whole lot of performance difference there.
A cheaper 4060 around 100 watts could be a good option compared to a cheap 3060, and
this is without factoring in features like frame generation.
If you’ve already had an RTX 3060 laptop with a decent power limit, there’s no real
point upgrading to a 4060 laptop, unless you really want frame generation support.
The difference between these two at the higher power level ranges wasn’t that big, and
in most of the games where DLSS was enabled, the difference becomes even smaller.
Yeah, the 4060 does have 8 gigs of VRAM compared to 6 gigs with the 3060, but in most cases
it wasn’t really enough to help it out that much.
As the older 3060 actually has a bigger memory bus with more memory bandwidth and 25% more
CUDA cores.
The 4060 only really had a clear lead when taking frame generation into account.
Again at least when comparing both laptops at the maximum 140 watt power limit.
I would expect a bigger gap between both of them if we were comparing at say 60 watts.
Let me know if you’d be interested in another comparison between both of these GPUs at lower
power limits, because I suspect the 4060 will have a bigger lead there, which means that
if we were comparing these GPUs in smaller and thinner laptops with lower power limits,
then yeah the 4060 might look much better than what I’ve shown here.
If I was buying today, I could go either way.
With the right deal, a 3060 with max power limit can still run modern games in 2023 with
decent settings.
And then of course you’ve got features like FSR and DLSS to further improve performance.
And don’t forget that I have tested with fairly high setting presets in this comparison,
max settings in most cases.
You could absolutely get more FPS than what I’ve shown here by turning the settings
down.
The 4060 prices available so far don’t seem to be that expensive compared to the 3060,
so I could understand if you want to go the 4060 route for the extra VRAM and frame generation,
which may provide more benefit in the future.
Personally, after testing frame generation in many games, I think I would be willing
to pay $100 or 200 more to go the 4060.
When you’re spending more than $1000 on a gaming laptop that you’re presumably going
to use for 3, 4 maybe even 5 years, I think it just makes sense to spend that extra 10-20%.
Of course as long as I could find the GPU in the right laptop, because there’s more
to picking a laptop than just what GPU is inside.
Check out this video next to find out what you need to consider when buying a new gaming
laptop.
There are many different aspects to consider along with the GPU, like what CPU, how much
RAM and what size screen, and that video breaks it down for you.
So I’ll see you in that one next!