The latest RTX 4060 of the NVIDIA RTX 40 series has been officially released, and among the first products, there is a rather unique product, which is the GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB launched by Rainbow's new brand COLORFIRE. The graphics card belongs to the "MEOW" series, on the basis of providing strong performance, the main is a simple, beautiful shape, let's learn more about this product.
The next generation of cost-effective desserts – RTX 4060 hardware specifications in detail
RTX 4060, as the "60" dessert in the RTX 40 series, is positioned to provide a high frame rate gaming experience at the limit of 1080P resolution in the latest ray tracing game masterpiece. 1080P itself is the most used resolution by players (accounting for up to 77%), this part of the players generally still use GTX 1650/1060/1050 Ti and RTX 2060/3060 level graphics cards, RTX 4060 emergence undoubtedly the RTX 40 series of advanced features (especially DLSS 3 and high energy efficiency) and a better gaming experience to them, providing a rather "sweet" cost-effective upgrade option.
The RTX 4060 adopts a complete AD107 core, with 3 GPCs and 12 TPCs
▲The average gaming power of RTX 4060 is only 110W, and the energy efficiency ratio is extremely high
Unlike the RTX 4060 Ti, which uses the AD106 core, although it is both "60" series, the RTX 4060 uses a more streamlined AD107 core, so it is more outstanding in terms of energy control. The RTX 4060 uses a complete AD107 core, with 3 GPCs (graphics processor clusters) and 12 TPCs (texture processor clusters), 24 SM (stream processor) units, 3072 CUDAs, 24 third-generation RT Cores (ray tracing units) and 96 fourth-generation Tensor Cores (tensor units). Although the number is slightly reduced compared to the previous generation RTX 3060, it is architecturally ahead of a generation, and the L2 cache of RTX 4060 is as high as 24MB, which is 8 times that of RTX 3060, so the actual execution efficiency is much higher.
In addition, the RTX 4060 also has a set of NVENC+NVDEC units, of which the eighth generation encoder supports AV1 hardware encoding, which is also not available in the RTX 3060. In terms of memory specifications, the RTX 4060 is also equipped with GDDR6 and has the same bit width and capacity as the RTX 4060 Ti, thanks to the large L2 cache, its equivalent bandwidth is up to 453 GB/s, much higher than the RTX 3060's 360 GB/s. In terms of power, RTX 4060 has a very high advantage, its average game power is only 110W, far lower than the RTX 3060's 170W, TGP is only 115W, the requirements for heat dissipation are very loose, especially suitable for creating powerful ITX graphics cards.
▲RTX 4060 has up to 70% performance improvement over RTX 3060 with DLSS 3
According to the official data, RTX 4060 has a 20% performance improvement over RTX 3060 without DLSS 3, and the advantage is increased to 70% after opening DLSS 3. According to this increase, it is not an exaggeration for NVIDIA to position the RTX 4060 with a high frame rate of 1080P to play the game masterpiece. At the same time, as a new graphics card using NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture, RTX 4060 naturally supports DLSS3, a new generation of NVIDIA Studio, AV1 Encoders, RTX VSR technology and other black technologies to improve the user experience.
It is also worth mentioning that NVIDIA will no longer launch the Founders Edition version of the RTX 4060, so the RTX 4060 sold on the market will all be non-public versions. So, let's see how the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB actually looks like.
Refreshing design
Unlike similar products, which generally focus on cool selling points, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB takes the cute route. The graphics card color is derived from the blue cat hair color, through the black theme and purple fan blades, decorative strips, text, to create a cool black and purple main color, with a high degree of recognition, especially suitable for matching dark chassis, to create a cool game console.
At the same time, the details of the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB also contain elements of cat stars. For example, on the two fans, there is an original cute pet cat - the avatar of "Swift Wind", the white pattern on the front is inspired by the structure of the cat scratch board, and the "MEOW" letter below represents the new cute pet series; The LOGO light on the side also incorporates the cat meat pad RGB lighting effect, coupled with the cat meat pad pattern on the front end, the entire graphics card appearance is active and flexible, enough to make people feel refreshed, for players who like to play games and like to pet cats, it has a strong appeal.
On the back of the graphics card, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has an extended back plate with irregular circles on the surface, like ripples on the surface of the water, which further enhances the appearance of the graphics card.
In terms of workmanship, considering that the TDP of the graphics card is only 125W at most, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB uses 4+1 phase power supply, which is completely enough, but the 8pin interface can also meet the needs of power supply. At the same time, the default frequency of the graphics card is 1830MHz~2460MHz.
In the heat dissipation part, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB adopts a meow meow radiator, and the interior is two 6mm heat pipes with a large area of aluminum extruded heat fins to ensure that the GPU heat is quickly conducted. With 11 wing fan blades, dual 90mm fans can provide a large air volume to dissipate heat. This allows the graphics card to maintain a low core temperature even during long, high-load operation.
COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB provides a combination of 3 DP 1.4a and 1 HDMI 2.1, which is also a more mainstream video interface configuration, which can easily meet the user's connection needs for display devices.
Performance performance: Significantly improved compared with the previous generation
Test bed
Processor: Intel Core i9 13900K
RAM: KINGSTON FURY RENEGADE DDR5 7200 16GB×2
MOTHERBOARD: ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO
Graphics: COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition
GeForce RTX 306012GB
Hard disk: WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB
Power supply: Asus ROG Thor 1000W
Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 22H2
First, let's take a look at 3DMark's benchmarks. Overall, compared with the previous generation RTX 3060 12GB, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has a significant improvement in performance.
In the DX12-based TimeSpy series test, whether it is TimeSpy or TimeSpy Extreme, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has a 22% performance lead. In the FireStrike test, which represents DX11 performance, the FireStrike scenario had the largest gap, reaching nearly 30%, while the FireStrke Extreme and FireStrike Ultra scenarios had a performance advantage of 27% and 13%, respectively.
Thanks to the third-generation ray tracing unit, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB ray tracing performance has been greatly improved. In the DXR test, the graphics card was more than 35% ahead of the RTX 3060 12GB.
In the ray tracing test category, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB outperformed the RTX 3060 by about 36% in DXR tests and 17% ahead in PortPoyal. It is worth mentioning that after turning on DLSS 3 with frame generation, the frame rate of COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB reaches 66.55fps, which is 1.06 times that of RTX 3060 12GB, and the advantages of DLSS3 are quite obvious.
Rasterized game testing
As far as NVIDIA's official positioning is concerned, the RTX 4060 is a product that focuses on 1080P games, so in the test of 1080P games, the performance of the graphics card is indeed comfortable. Even "Plague Tales: Requiem", which has the lowest frame rate, has an average frame rate of more than 62fps, which can ensure a smooth picture. While the average frame rate of most other games is more than 80fps, it can be said that the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB is stress-free to play 1080P games.
If we increase the resolution to 2K, with the exception of Plague Tales Requiem and Cyberpunk 2077, the average frame rate of the rest of the games is 60fps. Indicates that the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB faces most 2K games with smooth graphics without stress.
Light tracing and DLSS testing
In terms of ray tracing performance, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has been upgraded thanks to RT Core and Tensor Core, which brings improved ray tracing game performance and DLSS performance. It is particularly noteworthy that after turning on DLSS3, the average frame rate of 1080P ray tracing games has generally increased to more than 100fps, and the picture is quite smooth. Even at 2K resolution, Cyberpunk 2077, which has the lowest frame rate, has a performance of 62fps, and there is no pressure to play light chasing games. This shows that with the blessing of DLSS3, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB can easily cope with 2K ray tracing masterpieces.
In contrast, the RTX 3060 12GB has opened a big gap with the RTX 4060 in the DLSS3 project. It can be seen that in the future more and more DLSS 3 games, the advantages of RTX 4060 will be more obvious.
Productivity performance testing
While the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB is a gaming graphics card, NVIDIA STUDIO is also useful in a variety of productivity applications.
In the 3D rendering software Blender Benchmark, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB achieved an average lead of more than 38% over the RTX 3060 12GB and an average of 49% in V-Ray. And thanks to the new graphics card's improved ray tracing performance, in Octanebench, the lead is 19% after turning off ray tracing, and after turning on ray tracing, the lead is increased to 24%.
Overall, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB not only improves gaming performance, but also performs better in a variety of productivity applications, resulting in a more efficient user experience.
AIGC performance testing
For the current very hot AI applications, we also tested the AI plotting performance of the RTX 4060 with Stable Diffusion. The measured COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has 4.67 images per minute, an increase of about 7% over the RTX 3060, and close to 60 times that of the Core i9 13900K.
Overall, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB not only has an average of more than 60% improvement in game performance compared to RTX 3060, but also improves the productivity performance of 3D content creation by about 37% with DLSS 3, which is indeed worth upgrading for mainstream players and designer users.
Power consumption and test test
We tested the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB using FurMark software. In a room temperature of 26°C, the GPU temperature has not reached 60°C after more than 30 minutes of full-load operation of the graphics card. It can be seen that the meow heatsink of the graphics card not only looks good, but also has excellent heat dissipation performance. And during the examination process, I also examined the fan noise of the graphics card closely, which was not obvious and almost audible. In addition, under full load, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB is only 121.4W, and its energy consumption control is also quite good.
Although from the specs, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB has a maximum frequency of 2460MHz, which is comparable to the public version, and it does not seem to be outstanding. However, in the game, we measured that its maximum frequency can reach 2730MHz, which is a relatively high frequency, which shows that its performance is also outstanding.
Of course, this is not the full strength of the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB, we also tried to overclock it, and when running the 3DMark Time SPY scene again, the game frequency of the graphics card reached a maximum of 2895MHz, and the score was also increased to 11133 points, and the performance release was significantly improved.
In the overclocking state, we tested the machine again, and the power consumption of the whole board of the graphics card increased to 133W, but the GPU temperature was only 60.1 °C, and the increase in visible frequency did not cause much trouble to the meow radiator.
Summary: A new choice of desserts with good looks and strength
NVIDIA's "60" series graphics card has always been considered a more suitable "dessert card" for players with its strong performance and reasonable price, and the latest RTX 4060 also continues the characteristics of the "60" series. The gaming performance of the product, especially with the application of the third-generation RT Cores ray tracing unit and the support for DLSS3, is easy even in the face of 2K resolution ray tracing masterpieces, and the overall game performance has been significantly improved, bringing a more powerful game performance experience to mainstream players.
At the same time, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB equipped with a meow meow cooler is also very strong, even after overclocking, when the game frequency reaches 2895MHz, the GPU temperature is only 60.1 °C, and its heat dissipation performance is remarkable.
On the basis of strong performance, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB also has a unique black and purple main color, cute cat-themed elements, and has a high degree of beauty and recognition in the overall appearance. If you're looking for a powerful RTX 4060 that meets the aesthetics of cat lovers or two-dimensional gamers, the COLORFIRE GeForce RTX 4060 Shadow Purple 8GB is a great choice.