GTX 1050 Ti to RTX 4060 Upgrade: See the Gaming Boost!

A few days ago, I shared a comparison of the gaming performance between the classic old graphics cards GeForce GTX 970 and GeForce RTX 4060. The conclusion was that upgrading from the GeForce GTX 970 to the GeForce RTX 4060 could yield about a 3.3 times performance improvement.

In the comments section of that article, a friend mentioned another classic old graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, and wanted to know the potential performance improvement from upgrading to the GeForce RTX 4060.

Considering that the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is also an older model with a high cost-performance ratio and is very popular, I decided to satisfy this friend’s request by conducting a comparative test to answer this question for those interested.

01

Specification Comparison Between GTX 1050 Ti and RTX 4060

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti was released on October 25, 2016, utilizing the GP107 GPU, Samsung’s 14nm process, and features 768 shader units, 48 texture units, 32 raster units, 6 multi-unit stream processors, and an L2 cache of 1024KB.

The standard operating frequency is 1291 MHz, with a maximum frequency of 1392 MHz. It is equipped with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, with a memory speed of 7Gbps, a memory width of 128 bits, a memory bandwidth of 112.1GB/s, FP32 floating-point performance of 2.138 TFLOPS, power consumption of 75W, and an officially suggested retail price of $139.

The GeForce RTX 4060 was released on June 29, 2023, featuring the AD107 GPU based on the Ada Lovelace architecture and TSMC’s 5nm process. It has 3072 CUDA cores, 96 texture units, 32 raster units, 24 multi-unit stream processors, 96 tensor cores, and 24 ray tracing units, with an L2 cache of 24MB.

The standard operating frequency is 1830 MHz, with a maximum frequency of 2460 MHz. It is equipped with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, with a memory speed of 17 Gbps, a memory width of 128 bits, a memory bandwidth of 272.0GB/s, FP32 performance of 15.11 TFLOPS, power consumption of 115W, and a suggested retail price of $299.

02

Test Platform Configuration

The main specifications are as follows:

The processor is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the motherboard is the ASUS ROG STRIX B550, the memory is 32GB DDR4 3600MHz, the hard drive is the Samsung 950 Pro, and the operating system is Windows 10.

03

Gaming Performance Test

The following tests five games, all using 1080p highest quality settings. The series of images below show the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform on the left and the GeForce RTX 4060 platform on the right.

The first game is “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey”.

In this game, the CPU usage on the GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 29% higher than its counterpart, nearly 3 times higher, memory usage is 0.4GB lower, GPU usage is nearly equal, and video memory usage is 1.4GB higher. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform’s video memory is already maxed out and insufficient.

In terms of average frame rate, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform is far from the minimum threshold for smooth operation. The GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 60 FPS higher, a very substantial gap of about 4.3 times, the minimum instantaneous frame rate is about 2.6 times higher, and frame time is about 16% of the competitor’s, with power consumption 52W higher, and temperature 12 degrees higher.

The second game is “Borderlands 3”.

In this game, the CPU usage on the GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 24% higher than its opponent, nearly 2 times higher, memory usage is 1.1GB lower, GPU usage is equal, and video memory usage is 0.8GB higher. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform’s video memory is also maxed out and insufficient.

In terms of average frame rate, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform still does not meet the minimum threshold for smooth operation, but the gap is smaller than the first game. The GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 67 FPS higher, about 3.9 times higher, minimum instantaneous frame rate about 2.4 times higher, frame time about 27% of the competitor’s, power consumption 49W higher, and temperature 13 degrees higher.

The third game is “Cyberpunk 2077”.

In this game, the CPU usage on the GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 15% higher than its opponent, exactly double, memory usage is 0.2GB higher, GPU usage is nearly equal, and video memory usage is 1.8GB higher. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform’s video memory is also insufficient.

In terms of average frame rate, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform performs worse than in the first game, with the GeForce RTX 4060 platform 59 FPS higher, about 5.5 times higher, minimum instantaneous frame rate about 4.8 times higher, frame time about 20% of the competitor’s, power consumption 53W higher, and temperature 13 degrees higher.

The fourth game is “The Witcher 3”.

In this game, the CPU usage on the GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 17% higher than its opponent, also nearly 3 times higher, memory usage and GPU usage are nearly equal, and video memory usage is 0.6GB higher.

In terms of average frame rate, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform is also far from the minimum threshold for smooth operation. The GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 50 FPS higher, about 4.6 times higher, minimum instantaneous frame rate about 3.8 times higher, frame time about 24% of the competitor’s, power consumption 53W higher, and temperature 13 degrees higher.

The fifth game is “Horizon Zero Dawn”.

In this game, the CPU usage on the GeForce RTX 4060 platform is 25% higher than its opponent, memory usage is 1.7GB lower, GPU usage is equal, and video memory usage is 2.9GB higher. The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform’s video memory is also insufficient.

In terms of average frame rate, the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti platform barely meets the minimum threshold for smooth operation, with the GeForce RTX 4060 platform 93 FPS higher, about 3.9 times higher, minimum instantaneous frame rate about 3 times higher, frame time about 23% of the competitor’s, power consumption 47W higher, and temperature 10 degrees higher.

04

Comparative Conclusion

The outcome of this comparison was unsurprising; throughout the entire testing process, the GeForce RTX 4060 held a decisive advantage, consistently leading in all aspects.

The performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti was very poor, constantly maxing out its video memory. The highest CPU usage it could muster with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D was only 35%. In contrast, the GeForce RTX 4060 platform reached a maximum CPU usage of 60%, consistently two to three times that of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D platform during the tests.

This means that the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card is unable to leverage the full potential of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, acting as a bottleneck and holding back the overall performance of the system.

Based on the collected data, the overall performance of the GeForce RTX 4060 is approximately 4.5 times that of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. This is the conclusion of this article.

In conclusion, in response to the reader’s question mentioned at the beginning of this article about “how much performance improvement can be gained from upgrading from the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti to the GeForce RTX 4060,” my final answer is:

“The end of wisdom is at Sun Mountain, and the worthy young man goes beyond Sun Mountain.” The performance of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is even worse than that of the GeForce GTX 970, and the gap is even larger compared to the GeForce RTX 4060.

Overall, the entire GTX 10 series and earlier graphics cards are now considered obsolete. It’s not worth holding on to them anymore and spending time on further reviews and discussions is no longer meaningful. It’s time for them to be completely retired.

Related:

1. Benchmark Results: GTX 1650 vs RTX 3070 Upgrade

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