GTX 1080 vs RTX 4060
The complete head-to-head: full specs, real per-game FPS with 1% lows, ray tracing, a live CPU-bottleneck check, thermals, power and value, with a straight verdict.
GeForce GTX 1080
GeForce RTX 4060
avg, 1080p
The short answer
The RTX 4060 wins this one clearly, about 35% faster on average, 65 watts cooler, and it has features the GTX 1080 simply cannot match: working ray tracing hardware, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, and an AV1 encoder. The 1080 was a flagship a decade ago and it still holds its own in raw raster against plenty of newer budget cards, but against the 4060 it is outgunned on every axis except memory bus width. Buy the 4060 unless you already own a working 1080 and just want to keep gaming for free.
These two get compared because a lot of people still own a GTX 1080 and are wondering whether a cheap RTX 4060 is worth the jump. The 1080 was NVIDIA's 2016 flagship, built on the Pascal architecture with no ray tracing hardware and no AI upscaling of any kind. The 4060 is a 2023 entry-level card that trades some raw silicon for a much more efficient process node and an entire generation of new features.
Keep scrolling for the full spec sheet, the 35% gap broken out per game, what the 4060's DLSS 3 Frame Generation and AV1 encoder actually add over a card with neither, thermals, power draw, price history, and a verdict on whether that gap is worth $290 to you.
At a glance
Seven dimensions, two cards. Bigger area is not automatically better, each card owns different corners.
Strengths radar
Each axis scored 0-100 relative to the pair
Performance vs price
Up and to the left is better value
Grey dots are neighbouring cards for context.
Which should you buy?
Pick your use case, the winner changes with what you actually do.
Faster, far cooler to run, and it comes with a warranty. The clear pick if you're buying today.
A 35% gain isn't worth $290 if the card you have still runs everything you play. Save toward a bigger jump instead.
The 1080 has no RT hardware and no DLSS. This isn't close, it's a hard feature gap.
AV1 hardware encode versus 2016-era H.264/HEVC only. Cleaner streams, faster exports.
115 W and a 450 W PSU recommendation versus 180 W and 500 W. Fits far more cases and prebuilts.
The 1080's 256-bit bus and 320 GB/s of bandwidth beat the 4060's narrower 128-bit link, which shows up in demanding Switch and PS3 cores.
Already own a GTX 1080? Only upgrade if you want RT or DLSS.
Short answer: probably not
If your 1080 still boots and runs the games you care about, a 35% average gain doesn't justify $290 on its own, especially since you'd be trading a wider memory bus for a narrower one. The upgrade only makes sense if you specifically want ray tracing, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, an AV1 encoder for streaming, or a much lower power bill.
If you do want a real generational leap rather than a sidegrade, an RTX 4070 or 4070 Super is roughly double the 1080's performance and comes with the same modern feature set. A used RTX 3060 12GB is also worth a look if VRAM capacity matters more to you than raw speed.
Full specification comparison
Every spec side by side. The highlighted figure wins each row.
| Specification | GTX 1080 | RTX 4060 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| GPU / architecture | GP104 · Pascal | AD107 · Ada |
| Process node | TSMC 16 nm | TSMC 4N (5 nm) ▲ |
| Release date | May 27, 2016 | Jun 29, 2023 |
| Launch MSRP | $599 | $299 ▲ |
| Compute | ||
| CUDA cores | 2,560 | 3,072 ▲ |
| RT cores | None | 24 · 3rd gen ▲ |
| Tensor cores | None | 96 · 4th gen ▲ |
| Base / boost clock | 1607 / 1733 MHz | 1830 / 2460 MHz ▲ |
| L2 cache | 2 MB | 24 MB ▲ |
| Memory | ||
| VRAM | 8 GB GDDR5X | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory bus | 256-bit ▲ | 128-bit |
| Bandwidth | 320 GB/s ▲ | 272 GB/s |
| Power & form factor | ||
| TDP | 180 W | 115 W ▲ |
| Power connector | 1× 8-pin | 1× 8-pin |
| Suggested PSU | 500 W | 450 W ▲ |
| PCIe interface | 3.0 ×16 | 4.0 ×8 |
| Features | ||
| Upscaling | FSR 2/3, XeSS (no DLSS) | DLSS 3 + Frame Gen ▲ |
| AV1 encode (NVENC) | No | Yes ▲ |
| Display outputs | 3×DP1.4 · HDMI 2.0b | 3×DP1.4a · HDMI 2.1 ▲ |
Average FPS by game
Switch resolution, metric, ray tracing and upscaling, the bars update live. Hover a bar for the avg / 1% / 0.1% breakdown.
Average FPS · 1080p · Rasterization. Representative data, hover a bar for avg / 1% / 0.1%. Note the RTX 4060's 1% lows fall off at 1440p and up from its 8 GB VRAM.
Smoothness & frametimes
Average FPS hides stutter. This is one run plotted as frametime, a flat line is smooth, spikes are hitches. Watch what the RTX 4060's 8 GB VRAM does in a texture-heavy game.
Frametime: Hogwarts Legacy, 1440p Ultra
Lower and flatter is better · 16.7 ms = 60 fps
Counterintuitive but real: the slower GTX 1080 delivers a smoother line here because 12 GB holds the texture pool the 8 GB RTX 4060 keeps evicting, those spikes are VRAM stutter, not raw speed.
Lab scores
Clean apples-to-apples tests, useful, but weaker at predicting real games than the FPS above.
Ray tracing & upscaling
Ray tracing tanks both cards at native resolution. What makes it playable is upscaling, and here the RTX 4060 has a real edge.
Is frame generation "real" performance?
The GTX 1080 has no support for any frame generation, DLSS 3's Frame Generation requires Ada Lovelace's Optical Flow Accelerator, which Pascal simply does not have. The RTX 4060 supports it fully: an AI-made frame is inserted between two real ones, so the counter can nearly double and motion looks smoother on a high-refresh screen.
Those inserted frames don't react to your input, so it adds a touch of latency, NVIDIA Reflex claws most of it back. Use it for single-player and cinematic games, skip it for competitive shooters, and don't turn it on below about 50 base fps, which is where the latency starts to feel wrong. It only works on the RTX 4060, the 1080 has no equivalent.
Will your CPU bottleneck these cards?
A faster GPU only helps if your CPU keeps up. Pick your CPU and resolution to see expected FPS and bottleneck for each card.
CPU + GPU pairing check
The willitbottleneck engine, built right into the comparison.
Estimated from a 43-CPU model across 1440p. A weak CPU mostly bites at 1080p; at higher resolutions the GPU becomes the limiter and the bottleneck shrinks.
Thermals & noise
The efficiency gap shows up here: the newer card runs cooler and quieter, day in and day out.
Real draw, efficiency & PSU
TDP is the rated figure; what matters is real gaming draw and how many frames you get per watt.
Both use a single 8-pin connector. If your PSU already ran the GTX 1080, it will run the RTX 4060 easily. Leave about 30% headroom for spikes.
Will it fit, and what to pair it with?
Size to scale
Card length matters for small cases
What monitor to pair
GTX 1080: comfortable at 1080p 100+ Hz and solid 1440p at 60-100 Hz, since it has no upscaling to lean on. RTX 4060: 1080p at 165 Hz and up, or 1440p at 60-90 Hz with DLSS doing some of the work. Neither is a real 4K card, treat 4K as DLSS-only, older-title territory on the 4060 and skip it entirely on the 1080.
Running an older PCIe 3.0 board?
The 4060 uses only PCIe 4.0 ×8, which is roughly the same real-world bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 ×16, so on an older PCIe 3.0 board it effectively becomes 3.0 ×8 and costs a few percent in the heaviest titles. The 1080 runs a full PCIe 3.0 ×16 link and is unaffected on any board it's likely to be paired with.
Price history & dollars-per-frame
Raw price is only half the story. Cost per frame is the number that decides it, and it keeps moving as prices fall.
New price over time
Street price of new cards (USD)
The 8 GB vs 8 GB question
GTX 1080 · 8 GB
- 256-bit bus and 320 GB/s bandwidth actually out-muscle the 4060's narrower 128-bit / 272 GB/s link, so the 1080 doesn't choke as hard when a game leans on raw memory throughput.
- 8 GB was generous in 2016 and is still enough for 1080p ultra in the large majority of 2026 titles.
- GDDR5X was tuned for high transfer rates per pin, so despite its age the memory subsystem isn't the 1080's weak point.
- The GPU core itself, not the memory, is what runs out of steam first; extra bandwidth doesn't offset a compute deficit in newer engines.
RTX 4060 · 8 GB
- Same 8 GB capacity as the 1080, so neither card has a size disadvantage over the other here.
- 24 MB of L2 cache soaks up a lot of memory traffic before it ever needs to hit VRAM, softening the narrow 128-bit bus.
- The 128-bit bus and 272 GB/s bandwidth are both lower than the decade-old 1080's, a genuinely unusual generational regression.
- At 1440p with ray tracing or heavy texture packs, the narrow bus is the first thing that shows up as stutter.
Emulation & memory bandwidth
The narrower bus is a real downgrade for emulation
Emulators such as Switch and PS3 cores lean hard on memory bandwidth once you raise the internal resolution. The 1080's 320 GB/s over a 256-bit bus beats the 4060's 272 GB/s over 128-bit, so the older, slower card can pull ahead in demanding, high-resolution emulation. If that's your main use, the 1080 is the smarter pick, assuming you can find one in good health.
Creator, AI & streaming
The newer card is quicker per task, but the older card's extra VRAM unlocks larger jobs it can't fit at all.
Streaming: the AV1 encoder is the differentiator
The RTX 4060 has a hardware AV1 encoder; the GTX 1080 tops out at H.264 and HEVC through its 2016-era NVENC block. AV1 gives noticeably cleaner quality at the same bitrate on YouTube and Discord, and faster exports in AV1-aware editors. For anyone who streams or records regularly, that alone settles it in the 4060's favor.
Overclocking & undervolting
The 1080 has real overclocking headroom left, roughly 12% with a good cooler and GDDR5X that tolerates aggressive memory OC. The 4060 is already tuned tight by Ada's efficiency curve, so the bigger win there is undervolting rather than clocking higher.
Pros & cons
GTX 1080
- Still faster in pure raster than plenty of newer entry-level cards
- Wide 256-bit bus and 320 GB/s bandwidth age surprisingly well
- Dirt cheap on the used market
- No ray tracing hardware at all, and no DLSS
- 180 W and older cooler designs run hot and loud
- No warranty left on most used units
RTX 4060
- DLSS 3 Frame Generation and real ray tracing hardware
- 115 W, cool, quiet, fits small builds
- AV1 encoder for streaming and faster exports
- Only a 128-bit memory bus, narrower than the decade-old 1080's
- Not a huge generational leap over Pascal in raw raster
- 8 GB is starting to show its age at 1440p and beyond
Buying pitfalls
No ray tracing on the 1080, at all
The RT toggle in a game's menu will either be greyed out or will run at single-digit frame rates through pure software fallback. Some newer titles, like Alan Wake 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, require mesh shader support that Pascal never got, so they won't launch on a GTX 1080 at all, that's why we used Resident Evil 4 instead of Alan Wake 2 in the chart above.
Laptop 1080 and 1080 Max-Q are not this card
A mobile GTX 1080 performs closer to a desktop GTX 1070, and the Max-Q variant is throttled further still for thinner chassis. If you're shopping a laptop, use the mobile version of this comparison, desktop and laptop numbers never mix.
GTX 1080 vs RTX 4060: your questions answered
For most buyers, yes. It's about 35% faster on average, runs 65 watts cooler, and adds real ray tracing hardware and DLSS 3 Frame Generation, none of which the 1080 has. The 1080's one edge is a wider 256-bit memory bus.
If you're buying new, the RTX 4060. If you already own a working GTX 1080, keep it unless you specifically want ray tracing, DLSS, or a lower power bill, the performance gain alone doesn't justify the cost.
Yes, for 1080p gaming without ray tracing it's still a capable card, ten years on. It won't run every modern title (a few require mesh shaders it doesn't have), but the large majority of games run fine on high settings.
Only if you want features the 1080 can't do at all: ray tracing, DLSS, or AV1 encoding. A 35% raster gain for $290 is a weak upgrade on its own, put that money toward an RTX 4070-class card instead if raw speed is the goal.
The RTX 4060, clearly. It has dedicated Tensor cores and OptiX-accelerated rendering; the GTX 1080 has neither and is roughly half the speed in Stable Diffusion and Blender.
The RTX 4060, thanks to its hardware AV1 encoder, cleaner streams at the same bitrate, and quicker exports in AV1-aware software. The 1080's NVENC block is a full decade older.
No. DLSS and Frame Generation both require Tensor cores and, for FG specifically, an Optical Flow Accelerator, neither of which Pascal has. The 1080 can use FSR and XeSS instead, since those run on any GPU.
No, it has zero dedicated RT hardware. Some newer games with a hard ray tracing or mesh shader requirement won't even launch on it. The RTX 4060 has real, if modest, RT cores.
A little, on the RTX 4060. Frame Generation inserts AI frames, so latency rises slightly; NVIDIA Reflex offsets most of it. It's great for single-player games, turn it off for competitive shooters. The 1080 has no frame generation to worry about either way.
It's the other way around at 1080p, a weak CPU bottlenecks either card. Use the pairing checker on this page; a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-12400F and up keeps both fed reasonably well.
The RTX 4060 wins clearly: 115 W against the 1080's 180 W, meaning lower temperatures and noticeably less fan noise under load. Both idle silently on most cards.
A solid 500 W unit for the GTX 1080, 450 W for the RTX 4060, both on a single 8-pin connector. A 550-650 W supply is a safe, flexible choice for either.
Most 1080 models run 260-290 mm and most 4060 models around 200 mm, so check your case's maximum length either way. On a PCIe 3.0 motherboard the 4060 loses only a few percent; the 1080 is unaffected since it already runs 3.0 ×16.
No, the laptop RTX 4060 is a separate, weaker chip, similar to how the mobile GTX 1080 trails the desktop version. Never compare laptop numbers against desktop numbers, use the mobile comparison instead.
Not for modern AAA games. Both are 1080p-to-1440p cards; the 4060 can stretch to 4K in older or lighter titles with DLSS, the 1080 has no upscaling to help it get there.
The GTX 1080 is used-only at this point and still gets driver updates, though NVIDIA's Pascal support window is narrowing. The RTX 4060 can be bought new with a warranty and has years of Game Ready support ahead of it on the current Ada architecture.