You might be wondering why someone would choose a partner card, like the ASUS TUF Gaming 4060 Ti OC we have here, over Nvidia's Founders Edition. Well, that's what we're going to dive into today.
You see, while the Founders Edition cards are great, they are typically designed to offer a baseline experience of the new GPU architecture. Partner cards, on the other hand, often bring a few extra goodies to the table.
With the partner cards, they may not only be overclocked out of the box for better performance, but also include robust cooling solutions, and often, unique aesthetic and design choices that might align better with your gaming rig. Some partner cards may even offer more display outputs or better power delivery systems than what you'd find on a Founders Edition card.
In this example the ports on both cards are the same, but we certainly have a much bigger card. The ASUS 4060 Ti stands tall at just over three slots. It's a design choice that raises questions, especially considering the potential for a more streamlined design. One can't help but wonder, why not sculpt it a tad smaller to comfortably fit within the standard three-slot design?
With its three-fan configuration, the TUF Gaming 4060 Ti is significantly longer. This design choice necessitates the inclusion of a GPU holder to prevent any sagging, ensuring the card stays secure and correctly aligned. Those are the primary physical distinctions; now, let's delve into the performance side of things.
And just a side note - we have already released a comprehensive video on the 4060 Ti Founders Edition, detailing its architecture and a full suite of benchmarks. If that piques your interest, we have the link in description below.
For this video, though, our focus is mainly on comparing the ASUS card to the Founders Edition card to help you decide which one might be the best fit for your needs.
For our testbench we are using our standard AMD 7700X System, maintaining consistency across all components except for the GPU. This allows us to isolate the performance differences attributable solely to the graphics cards.
Let's start with consistent synthetic test where we run Time Spy Extreme on a loop. This test shows us frequency response of both of these cards and even though this ASUS TUF Gaming card is the OC edition - it matches the Founders Edition clock speed throughout the whole test. Interestingly enough, we do see the ASUS card occasionally registering lower dips.
When it comes to power consumption, both cards are virtually identical, leading to very similar performance per watt ratios. This result isn't surprising given that they are based on the same silicon architecture.
In terms of thermal performance, both cards deliver comparable results, maintaining temperatures in the low to mid-60s without any issues. Interestingly, both cards also exhibit noise levels that are quieter than our current room noise floor of 36dBA. We are aware of this and are working towards reducing the noise floor in the future.
In the Blender benchmark, a marginal performance difference can be observed between the two cards, with the ASUS TUF Gaming card holding a slight advantage. This trend is also noticeable in the Blender render, where the factory-overclocked ASUS TUF Gaming card manages to shave off a full second from the render time.
I guess you guys get where I am going with this, but to make sure we have covered it from all angles we will run through some games too.
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the average and 1 percentile performance is very close, but oddly enough in both 1080p and 1440p there is a significant difference in performance per watt, we end up around 9 or 10% more power efficient on the Founders card.
In a much lighter tittle - World War Z at 1080p the Founders card actually delivers better 1 percentile performance as well as being more power efficient.
At 4K on the other hand the tables flip and the ASUS card is faster on average and 1 percentiles. Despite this, it still lags slightly behind in power efficiency, though the difference is marginal.
A slightly different kind of comparison is the F1 2022 game with the highest settings and Ray Tracing enabled, the ASUS card consistently outperforms the Founders Edition by a small margin when DLSS is enabled across different setups. However, it falls behind in terms of power efficiency. This is to be expected, as the factory overclocking on the ASUS card pushes it slightly harder, which often results in sacrificing efficiency.
This leads us well to the conclusion and its kind of an L for ASUS. This TUF Gaming 4060 Ti OC has essentially the same performance as the founders edition, it holds the same temperature but will likely cost more while being considerably larger. Given the option I would choose the FE card. However, I understand that availability of these cards varies by region and many people may not have this choice.
Let us know in the comments below if you are able to buy a Founders Edition card where you live and what is the price difference between it and other partner cards.