NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Comparison

The Verdict

The benchmark data presents a clear performance hierarchy, but with a notable anomaly. The desktop NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 dominates the head-to-head comparison, securing 8 wins out of 9 tests against the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile. The RTX 4060's average benchmark score of 17,639 sits in the 61st percentile of all GPUs, while the RTX 4050 Mobile counters with an average score of 19,049 and a 63rd percentile ranking. This discrepancy between the aggregate score and the head-to-head results stems from the RTX 4050 Mobile's exceptional Vulkan performance, which skews its average upward. For users prioritizing raw DirectX or OpenCL performance, the RTX 4060 is the definitive choice, offering leads between 19.7% and 39% across those tests. However, the RTX 4050 Mobile's 54.7% lead in Geekbench Vulkan makes it the superior option for workloads that leverage that specific API. The RTX 4060 is an end-of-life desktop part with a launch MSRP of 299 USD, while the RTX 4050 Mobile remains an active product, which influences their availability profiles but not their measured capabilities.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile has a higher average benchmark score of 19,049, compared to the RTX 4060's 17,639. This places the mobile part in the 63rd percentile of all GPUs, two points above the RTX 4060's 61st percentile ranking.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the most important DirectX tests?

A: The RTX 4060 leads by 25.7% in Passmark DirectX 11 (175 vs 130), 23.3% in DirectX 10 (103 vs 79), 22% in DirectX 9 (236 vs 184), and 19.7% in DirectX 12 (76 vs 61). The largest overall delta favors the RTX 4060 in the Passmark G2D test, where it scores 1,037 against 633, a 39% advantage.

Q: Is there any test where the RTX 4050 Mobile wins?

A: Yes, the RTX 4050 Mobile wins decisively in the Geekbench Vulkan test, scoring 75,235 against the RTX 4060's 48,643. That represents a 54.7% delta in favor of the mobile GPU, which is the single largest percentage difference in either direction across all nine benchmark comparisons.

Q: How do these GPUs compare to their nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 4050 Mobile's average score of 19,049 places it 0.1% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 (19,036) and the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 (19,030), while trailing the NVIDIA Tesla K20m (19,089) by 0.2%. The RTX 4060's average of 17,639 puts it 0.3% ahead of the AMD Radeon 780M (17,588) and 0.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro 560 (17,551), but 0.2% behind the AMD Radeon HD 7790 (17,666).

Q: What are the memory specifications for each card?

A: The RTX 4050 Mobile uses 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 96-bit bus, delivering 192.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 4060 has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, providing 272.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 4060's memory operates at 2125 MHz (17 Gbps effective), while the RTX 4050 Mobile runs at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective).

Q: Do both cards share the same underlying chip?

A: Yes, both the RTX 4050 Mobile and the RTX 4060 are built on the AD107 chip using the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. Both have 18,900 million transistors on a 159 mm² die, with a transistor density of 118.9M / mm².

Architecture Differences

Both GPUs are built on the same AD107 silicon and Ada Lovelace architecture, but they are configured with different resource allocations. The RTX 4060 features 3,072 shading units, 96 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs. The RTX 4050 Mobile is scaled down to 2,560 shading units and 80 TMUs, while retaining the same 48 ROPs. This represents a 20% reduction in shading units and a 16.7% reduction in texture units for the mobile part.

The ray tracing and tensor core configurations follow the same pattern. The RTX 4060 includes 24 RT cores and 96 tensor cores, while the RTX 4050 Mobile has 20 RT cores and 80 tensor cores. These reductions directly impact the compute throughput figures. The RTX 4060 achieves 15.11 TFLOPS of FP32 and FP16 performance, while the RTX 4050 Mobile delivers 8.986 TFLOPS in both precision formats. The FP16 to FP32 ratio is 1:1 on both parts.

The memory architecture also differs substantially. The RTX 4060 uses a 128-bit memory bus with 8 GB of GDDR6, while the RTX 4050 Mobile has a 96-bit bus with 6 GB of GDDR6. This contributes to the RTX 4060's 272.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth versus the RTX 4050 Mobile's 192.0 GB/s.

The pixel and texture fill rates reflect these architectural differences. The RTX 4060 achieves 118.1 GPixel/s and 236.2 GTexel/s. The RTX 4050 Mobile produces 84.24 GPixel/s and 140.4 GTexel/s. Both cards support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

Specification Differences

The clock speeds are a primary differentiator. The RTX 4060 runs at a base clock of 1830 MHz and boosts to 2460 MHz. The RTX 4050 Mobile operates at a substantially lower 1455 MHz base and 1755 MHz boost. This 675 MHz boost clock gap contributes significantly to the performance delta.

Memory configurations differ in capacity, bus width, and speed. The RTX 4060 has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with a 2125 MHz memory clock (17 Gbps effective). The RTX 4050 Mobile uses 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 96-bit bus with a 2000 MHz clock (16 Gbps effective). The resulting bandwidth is 272.0 GB/s for the RTX 4060 versus 192.0 GB/s for the mobile part.

The power and physical specifications are starkly different. The RTX 4060 has a 115 W TDP, a dual-slot form factor, requires a 1x 12-pin power connector, and has a suggested PSU of 300 W. Its dimensions are 240 mm in length, 111 mm in height, and 40 mm in width. The RTX 4050 Mobile has a 50 W TDP, an IGP slot width, no power connectors, and its display outputs are listed as portable device dependent. The RTX 4060 offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Both cards share the same PCIe 4.0 x8 bus interface. The RTX 4060 is marked as end-of-life, having been released on 2023-05-17, while the RTX 4050 Mobile is active, with a release date of 2023-01-02. The RTX 4060 has a launch MSRP of 299 USD.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL test shows the RTX 4060 with a score of 95,057 against the RTX 4050 Mobile's 74,748, a 21.4% advantage for the desktop card. This is a substantial lead in a general-purpose compute workload.

The Geekbench Vulkan test is the outlier. The RTX 4050 Mobile scores 75,235, while the RTX 4060 manages only 48,643. The mobile GPU leads by 54.7%, which is the largest percentage delta in the entire comparison. This result is unexpected given the RTX 4060's higher specifications, but it demonstrates that API-level optimization can produce surprising outcomes.

The Passmark suite reveals consistent RTX 4060 dominance across all DirectX versions. In DirectX 10, the RTX 4060 scores 103 versus 79, a 23.3% lead. DirectX 11 shows the RTX 4060 at 175 against 130, a 25.7% gap. DirectX 12 results are 76 versus 61, with the RTX 4060 ahead by 19.7%. DirectX 9 shows the RTX 4060 winning 236 to 184, a 22% margin. These results indicate that the RTX 4060 holds a roughly 20-26% performance advantage across the DirectX API family.

The Passmark G2D test measures 2D graphics performance, where the RTX 4060 scores 1,037 against 633. This 39% lead is the largest percentage win for the RTX 4060 in any test, suggesting a significant advantage in 2D workloads.

The Passmark G3D test, which is a comprehensive 3D graphics benchmark, shows the RTX 4060 with 19,545 points versus 14,423 for the RTX 4050 Mobile. This 26.2% delta reinforces the RTX 4060's dominance in conventional gaming workloads.

The Passmark GPU Compute test shows the RTX 4060 scoring 9,213 against 5,947, a 35.4% lead. This indicates that the RTX 4060 is substantially stronger in compute-heavy tasks, which aligns with its higher FP32 throughput of 15.11 TFLOPS versus 8.986 TFLOPS.

The overall tally is 8 wins for the RTX 4060 and 1 win for the RTX 4050 Mobile. The RTX 4050 Mobile's victory in Vulkan is remarkable both in magnitude and in its contrast to the rest of the results. While the RTX 4060 is the clear winner in nearly every category, the Vulkan result prevents a complete sweep and highlights that the mobile part has specific strengths that can be leveraged in the right software environment. The RTX 4050 Mobile's higher average benchmark score, driven by that Vulkan result, also means that aggregate statistics can be misleading when comparing these two GPUs.