MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X Review: Goosed-Up Graphics
MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X: GPU Compute, Rendering And Encoding Tests
We tested all of the graphics cards represented in this article on an ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO motherboard, equipped with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and 32GB of G.SKILL DDR5 RAM clocked at 6,000MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use and enabled Resizable BAR support. We dialed in memory clock to its optimal performance settings using its EXPO profile, then formatted the solid state drive and installed Windows 11 Professional before performing all updates. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.
The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X slips passed the ASUS card here to take third place, behind only the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and higher-end RTX 4060 Ti.
Blender is somewhat of a showcase application for NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace GPU architecture. Blender can make use of the RT cores in NVIDIA's GPUs, and as a result, performance is much higher than any competing GPU or processor. The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X takes the silver medal here, trailing only the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
Once again, we see the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X just slightly edging out the ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 DUAL, and landing right in the middle of the pack.
Our Graphics Test System Configuration:
Hardware Used: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (4.2GHz - 5GHz, 8-Core) ASUS X670E Hero 32GB G.SKILL DDR5-6000 Samsung SSD 990 Integrated Audio / Network Intel Arc A770 LE Radeon RX 6600 XT Radeon RX 6700 XT GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 4060 MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X Relevant Software: Windows 11 Pro 22H2 AMD Radeon v23.10.01 NVIDIA Drivers v531.93 / v536.2 Intel Arc driver v101.4369 |
Compute / Rendering Benchmarks: LuxMark v4 Blender v3.5.0 Blackmagic RAW Speed Test v3 IndigoBench v4.4.15 Gaming / Graphics Benchmarks: UL 3DMark UL VRMark Unigine Superposition Company Of Heroes 3 Returnal Cyberpunk 2077 Far Cry 6 GOTY Edition F1 2022 Guardians Of The Galaxy |
LuxMark v4.0 Benchmarks
LuxMark is a cross-platform, OpenCL-accelerated 3D rendering benchmark. It's a tool based on the open source LuxRender physically-based spectral rendering engine, which accurately models the transportation of light and supports high dynamic range. LuxRender features a number of material types to allow rendering of photo-realistic and artistic scenes. LuxRender is free software licensed under the GPL that offers plugins for packages like Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D and 3DS Max.
In Luxmark, the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X trades blows with the ASUS card we looked at in our launch piece. Technically, the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X's higher GPU frequency should allow it to pull head in any GPU bound situation, but there is always some small variability in the benchmarks.
IndigoBench Rendering Benchmarks
IndigoBench is based on Indigo 4's advanced rendering engine and offers both CPU and GPU rendering modes for its two built-in models. The standalone benchmark is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux and outputs results in M/Samples per second.
The MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X slips passed the ASUS card here to take third place, behind only the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and higher-end RTX 4060 Ti.
Blender v3.5.0 GPU Rendering Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, and animation, through simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, and even video editing or game creation. The developers offer a standalone benchmark tool that will track performance while rendering a handful of models. We used all three of the default models for these tests...Blackmagic RAW Speed Test Results
The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that tests the speed of decoding full-resolution Blackmagic RAW frames. The tool can be used to evaluate the performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using OpenCL or CUDA on a GPU. We're reporting two results here, both at an 8K resolution, but at differing bitrates and compression levels.Once again, we see the MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X just slightly edging out the ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 DUAL, and landing right in the middle of the pack.