News Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8GB loses up to 10% performance when using PCIe 4.0

[Admin]

When attached to a PCIe 4.0 interface, Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8GB video cards experience a massive performance hit in some game titles.

Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8GB loses up to 10% performance when using PCIe 4.0 : Read more

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Let’s be realistic. The 5060ti isn’t a terrible product itself for the right price. But 8gb vram on a gpu in 2025 is terrible for any card over $300. If there were a card in the class of a 1050ti which was $150 when it launched years ago then yes 8gb is fine. But not for $300-$400+ cards.

 

[wcbhkids]

8gb is not ideal but why does pcie4 matter? 5060 is unlikely to saturate PCIE

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

And why does this happen? Perhaps TomsHardware could try to replicate these results, and see if it also occurs across other RTX 5000 series products.

 

[Notton]

If the GPU runs out of VRAM, it has to load from RAM or SSD.
5060Ti has an 8x slot 5.0, so it has 32GB/s transfer speeds, and half that when PCIe4.0.
Where as the VRAM on the 5060Ti runs at 448GB/s.

 

[Amdlova]

Lol

 

[hotaru251]

But 8gb vram on a gpu in 2025 is terrible for any card over $300.

given the cost of extra 8gb its bad for anythign over 250.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I actually have a 16gb 5060ti that I picked up for msrp and it’s a decent card but wouldn’t want to go with 8gb especially at about $400.

 

[usertests]

8gb is not ideal but why does pcie4 matter? 5060 is unlikely to saturate PCIE

Less VRAM means it needs to fetch data more frequently, using limited bandwidth. This was seen when comparing the 6500 XT 8GB and 4GB.

I saw some talk about Blackwell just being bad/buggy on PCIe 4.0. Maybe that's part of it.

 

[thestryker]

I saw some talk about Blackwell just being bad/buggy on PCIe 4.0. Maybe that's part of it.

It's not this: I looked through their results which show PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 within margin of error on all of the tests where VRAM isn't an issue. The place where PCIe 4.0 vs 5.0 made a notable difference was in titles where the 8GB model was already behind the 16GB one. It definitely makes sense that this is where lower PCIe bandwidth would really show up.

 

[razor512]

8gb is not ideal but why does pcie4 matter? 5060 is unlikely to saturate PCIE

When a game needs to use more than 8GB of VRAM, it will begin to allocate system memory. The speed of the PCIe bus impacts hoe much of a gradual performance drop you get, as well as impacts how much system memory you can allocate before the PCIe bus saturated and you end up with major issues with hitching and stuttering, or extremely low frame rates.

Since after the RTX 3000 series, Nvidia started leaning really hard into crippling the PCIe bus, we started seeing their cards struggle a lot more in those sub-optimal conditions.

While a different set of cards, when there is VRAM spillover, the RTX 3060 8GB has less of a performance hit than the 4060 8GB. While the spillover is never ideal, a faster PCIe interface makes a bad situation a little less bad (doesn't mean the situation becomes good, but it does become a bit less crappy).

If Nvidia is going to cripple the VRAM, then they should at least offer a full PCIe 5.0 X16 interface, which would go a long way to improving the ability to use shared memory.

The videocard drivers are smart enough to prioritize which memory pools are used, and do a decent job of moving assets that are less throughput intensive to the system memory, but as more gets moved over, the utilization adds up and once the PCIe bus saturates in at least one direction (typically when the bus usage hits 50%, since it doesn't read 100% unless you are simultaneously reading and writing as fast as possible), then games become unplayable..

 

[nitrium]

It's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, not "Big" Circle.

 

[Amdlova]

My last clean install of windows 11 on the task manager see 1.5gb of vram usage... after remove all hardware acceleration from programs like brave, discord, steam etc... get 500mb usage. It's not much but can put some games on high on the 4060 even play some games at 4k without issues.
I will try to see if can make use of intel graphics to accelerate that programs without killing the high end performance of the 4060

 

[TechNomad]

TBH, I don't understand Nvidia's card line-up. It seems more like an exercise in finding out how much slop the masses are willing to put up with before revolting.

 

[danny009]

Just get 5090 MSI Maximus Decimus Meridious Give Me Your Sword Edition for cheap. I heard it's magic. %3 performance boost triple AAA games so you can pre order in advance 6090 next year with double the price of a house in New York.

 

[Pierce2623]

Let’s be realistic. The 5060ti isn’t a terrible product itself for the right price. But 8gb vram on a gpu in 2025 is terrible for any card over $300. If there were a card in the class of a 1050ti which was $150 when it launched years ago then yes 8gb is fine. But not for $300-$400+ cards.

Exactly. 8GB isn’t automatically DOA but it’s only ok on a sub $250 product at highest. Just like the 3050 6GB could actually be a great product at $125, since it requires no pcie power connector, but not at the $175 it normally cost.

 

[Li Ken-un]

This is why such cards should be PCIe 5.0 × 16. It’s not for the 63 GB/s bandwidth, but for the 16 lanes when the motherboard is only PCIe 4.0.

 

[Notton]

This is why such cards should be PCIe 5.0 × 16. It’s not for the 63 GB/s bandwidth, but for the 16 lanes when the motherboard is only PCIe 4.0.

But the problem is already solved with the 16GB model losing <0.5% performance over a PCIe 4.0 connection.
Where as the 8GB model loses an average of 19% for missing 8GB of VRAM.

 

[jomarron77]

I'm wondering how the card will perform on a PCIe 3.0 system? I've just ordered a 5060ti 8gb version for my sons build, which is on the intel i5 9600k platform.

 

[thestryker]

For any game not being held back by the 8GB VRAM it'll be like this:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti PCI-Express x8 Scaling

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti uses the modern PCI-Express 5.0 bus interface, but supports only an 8-lane configuration. This is just half the bandwidth of the higher-end models, which run at x16. Are you in trouble with an older system, which only supports running at PCIe 4.0?

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Kreploon9]

I'm wondering how the card will perform on a PCIe 3.0 system? I've just ordered a 5060ti 8gb version for my sons build, which is on the intel i5 9600k platform.

Badly.

Speculation on my part but if we extrapolate the data from here: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/rx-6500-xt-pcie-gen3-gen4-tested


Then look at the 6500 XT using PCIE 2.0 vs 3.0

The 5060 Ti is on average roughly 200% faster, the 6500 XT loses more performance vs the 5060 Ti because PCIE GEN 4.0 is not that bad vs 5.0 but 3.0 is a lot worse.


So I would take a guess of somewhere in the ballpark of 50% loss.

 

[Pierce2623]

I'm wondering how the card will perform on a PCIe 3.0 system? I've just ordered a 5060ti 8gb version for my sons build, which is on the intel i5 9600k platform.

Oof!