Introduction, Pricing & Availability

I've got to say that I was hit with mixed feelings when I started seeing rumors for the GeForce RTX 2060, as I didn't know what to expect exactly. GTX 1060-ish performance with RTX abilities? Surely not. Yeah well, it's nothing like I expected and it could be one of the better-selling cards in NVIDIA's growing GeForce RTX family of cards.

VIEW GALLERY - 43 IMAGES

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 is here with GeForce GTX 1070 Ti to GTX 1080 levels of performance while delivering on its RTX promises with some kick ass performance numbers in Battlefield V with RTX and DLSS technologies enabled. This new card will be somewhat of a mixed bag of random feelings, where it delivers on performance in spades, is priced well, has RTX and DLSS features that provide stellar improvements to performance in Battlefield V, and more.

I've only played with the Founders Edition variant of the card so far, with custom cards on their way. NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition will sell for $349, while custom cards will sell at cheaper prices. The 6GB of GDDR6 featured is a huge win for the company over the slower GDDR5 memory used on the GTX 1060, helping it kick some serious ass in VRAM intensive titles like Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

NVIDIA is selling the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition for $349 and is available January 15.

Specs: Turing GPUs

Specs: Turing TU106

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 is using the TU106 GPU with 1920 CUDA cores, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs compared to the 1280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs and 48 ROPs inside of the GP106-based GeForce GTX 1060.

When it comes to the Turing GPU we have some new features that the Pascal GPU architecture didn't: TU106 has 240 Tensor Cores, 51.6 Tensor FLOPs (FP16) and 30 RT cores.

The new GeForce RTX 2060 still has 6GB of VRAM but has undergone a rather large change from GDDR5 to GDDR6, a move that makes the new Turing-based RTX 2060 much more expensive than the GTX 1060, but for good reason. The inclusion of GDDR6 drives up the cost of the RTX 2060 but the performance benefits from it are worth it.

GDDR6 has 14Gbps of bandwidth available to the GeForce RTX 2060 compared to just 8Gbps on the GTX 1060, while both cards and their 6GB of GDDR5 and GDDR6, respectively, are on a 192-bit memory bus. This results in a huge increase of memory bandwidth from the GTX 1060 and its 192GB/sec to a whopping 336.1GB/sec.

NVIDIA launched the then-flagship GeForce GTX 1080 at the time with 8GB of GDDR5X at a faster 10Gbps of bandwidth, and a larger 256-bit memory bus was only capable of 320GB/sec memory bandwidth. This means the new GeForce RTX 2060 has more memory bandwidth than the GTX 1060, all thanks to the shift to GDDR6.

There is more power consumption on the new GeForce RTX 2060 with a 160W TDP against the 120W TDP of the GeForce GTX 1060. This is something to look out for but I don't think it really matters - 40W for all this additional performance? The GTX 1080 rolled out with a 180W TDP and the RTX 2060 can nearly keep up with it at all resolutions.

Specs: GDDR6 Memory

Next-Gen Memory: GDDR6

The new GeForce RTX 2060 still has 6GB of VRAM but has undergone a rather large change from GDDR5 to GDDR6, a move that makes the new Turing-based RTX 2060 much more expensive than the GTX 1060, but for good reason. The inclusion of GDDR6 drives up the cost of the RTX 2060 but the performance benefits from it are worth it.

GDDR6 has 14Gbps of bandwidth available to the GeForce RTX 2060 compared to just 8Gbps on the GTX 1060, while both cards and their 6GB of GDDR5 and GDDR6, respectively, are on a 192-bit memory bus. This results in a huge increase of memory bandwidth from the GTX 1060 and its 192GB/sec to a whopping 336.1GB/sec.

NVIDIA launched the then-flagship GeForce GTX 1080 at the time with 8GB of GDDR5X at a faster 10Gbps of bandwidth, and a larger 256-bit memory bus was only capable of 320GB/sec memory bandwidth. This means the new GeForce RTX 2060 has more memory bandwidth than the GTX 1060, all thanks to the shift to GDDR6.

There is more power consumption on the new GeForce RTX 2060 with a 160W TDP against the 120W TDP of the GeForce GTX 1060. This is something to look out for but I don't think it really matters - 40W for all this additional performance? The GTX 1080 rolled out with a 180W TDP and the RTX 2060 can nearly keep up with it at all resolutions.

Detailed Look

The front of the GeForce RTX 2060 is nearly identical to the rest of the GeForce RTX Founders Edition cards, but it is much shorter than the higher-end designs with the dual front fans closer together. Other than that, the same styling applies here.

The back of the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition is identical to the rest of the GeForce RTX family of Founders Edition cards, with the entire card covered with a slickly-styled shroud. This keeps the back of the card cooler than normal, but it is still bloody hot to touch after a huge benchmarking or game session.

There's still very clear 'GeForce RTX' branding at the top which lights up green.

I'm a huge fan of the GeForce RTX Founders Edition cards, and I love the look of the card from the top.

All you need is a single 8-pin PCIe power connector to run NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition graphics card.

For display connectivity we have 2 x DP, 1 x HDMI, and 1 x DVI.

Test System Specs

Our New GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

Detailed Tech Specs

CPU : Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz

Cooler : Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO

MB : Z370 AORUS Gaming 7

RAM : 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933

SSD : 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2

SSD : 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2

PSU : InWin 1065W PSU

Chassis : In Win X-Frame

OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Heaven - 1440p

Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

Overwatch is one of the most popular games on the market, from legendary game developer Blizzard. It's a game that looks great but doesn't require a huge amount of GPU grunt, but it's tested for another reason: high-FPS for enthusiast/professional gamers. Overwatch in our testing is to provide a two-fold result: first, it's a popular esports title and second it gives us a look at what we need to run it at 1440p for 144/165Hz displays and at 4K on those new 144Hz HDR G-Sync displays.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Rainbow Six: Siege has been a strong entry into the franchise, popular for its realistic feel and great graphics. Stable as a rock for benchmarking, right up to 3440x1440 and 4K.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from developer 4A Games, making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.

You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.

Far Cry 5 was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

Overwatch is one of the most popular games on the market, from legendary game developer Blizzard. It's a game that looks great but doesn't require a huge amount of GPU grunt, but it's tested for another reason: high-FPS for enthusiast/professional gamers. Overwatch in our testing is to provide a two-fold result: first, it's a popular esports title and second it gives us a look at what we need to run it at 1440p for 144/165Hz displays and at 4K on those new 144Hz HDR G-Sync displays.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Rainbow Six: Siege has been a strong entry into the franchise, popular for its realistic feel and great graphics. Stable as a rock for benchmarking, right up to 3440x1440 and 4K.

Metro: Last Light Redux comes from developer 4A Games, making the Redux version of Metro: Last Light the 'definitive' version of the game. Redux had a fresh coat of paint on the already impressive 4A Engine, and it really pushes our GPUs to their limits.

You can buy Metro: Last Light Redux at Amazon.

Far Cry 5 was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Overclocking

The new GeForce RTX 2060 is already hella fast out of the box, but there is always room to wiggle on graphics cards with out-of-the-box overclocking from custom partners like MSI and ZOTAC, with NVIDIA's own GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition able to flex its muscle in terms of OC headroom.

I played around with the OC Scanner that is built into the beta version of MSI Afterburner, where my sample met its ceiling at 2100MHz which is a 161MHz overclock, not bad at all. I didn't have time to re-run the benchmark suite with overclocked results but if this is something you want to see - let me know in the comments below and I'll re-run the entire suite and have a separate benchmark chart for each game/synthetic test.

Manual OC: With very little time to test overclocking on the GeForce RTX 2060, there was an hour or two that I played with manually overclocking the card. I was able to easily hit 2050-2100MHz with manual overclocking depending on the test, while driving the GDDR6 up by another 500MHz resulting in 363GB/sec memory bandwidth.

Heat and Power

Heat

The new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition was running at 71C maximum during heavy benchmarking stress, with no adjustments made to fan curves or speeds. With overclocking at maximum (+150 on the GPU and +500 on the GDDR6) the card topped out at 75C - again, with no adjustment to fan curves or speeds. This is all out of the box.

Power

My entire Core i7-8700K graphics card test bench was using a total of 220-230W during all of the testing for the GeForce RTX 2060. Damn good on power consumption considering the horsepower in this card.

RTX & DLSS: Battlefield V Thoughts

RTX + DLSS + RTX 2060 + Battlefield V = WOW

There is a patch dropping for Battlefield V very soon with EA and DICE incorporating DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) support into the game. NVIDIA wins both ways here as infusing DLSS and ray tracing results in more performance, not less.

NVIDIA has tested with "early builds" and had the GeForce RTX 2060 with both DLSS and RT enabled at the same time with amazing results. The company generated the data using the Arras multiplayer map for these results:

Battlefield V: RT off - 90FPS

Battlefield V: RT on + DLSS off - 65FPS

Battlefield V: RT on + DLSS on - 88FPS

As you can see RT + DLSS enabled on the GeForce RTX 2060 allows for virtually no performance drop between enabling and disabling real-time ray tracing effects. I don't know why anyone would run Battlefield V with RT on and DLSS off once the patch is here for the game, as the performance benefits are beyond obvious.

This was one of the most exciting parts of the Turing GPU architecture unveiling, was waiting to see things like this happen. INCREASING in-game performance by enabling DLSS with ray-tracing effects ON is an incredible achievement, only capable on NVIDIA technology.

Performance Thoughts

Performance Thoughts @ 1080p/1440p

Just before we step into performance thoughts on the GeForce RTX 2060, I thought I'd cover the pricing of all of the cards in an easy-to-consume manner. The GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition falls between the GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 in terms of pricing, yet beats the GTX 1070 Ti in performance and comes close to the GTX 1080 which is a $549 graphics card. $200 cheaper and RTX abilities? Not too damn bad if you ask me.

RTX 2080 Ti - $1199

RTX 2080 - $799

GTX 1080 Ti - $699

RTX 2070 - $599

GTX 1080 - $549

GTX 1070 Ti - $449

GTX 1070 - $399

RTX 2060 - $349

GTX 1060 - $299

1080p

NVIDIA really nails the 1080p gaming experience with its new GeForce RTX 2060 as it offers a gigantic leap in performance over the GeForce GTX 1060. We're talking at least 30-40% additional performance (and in some cases 50% and very much beyond that), putting it into the performance more between the GTX 1070 Ti and GTX 1080 that cost significantly more money.

1440p

The scaling in performance at 1440p is even greater thanks to the additional memory bandwidth courtesy of the GDDR6 tech on-board the RTX 2060. We're seeing even more performance with an average of 60% additional performance over the GTX 1060 which is simply incredible.

Games like PUBG run at over 80FPS average at 2560x1440 on the RTX 2060 compared to the 60FPS average on the GTX 1060, while the GTX 1080 pushes out a few more FPS at 1440p over the RTX 2060.

Final Thoughts

This is the second RTX series card that has impressed me, with both the GeForce RTX 2060 and flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti the two Turing-based GeForce RTX cards that deserve positions on the market as book ends to a larger family of cards that I think will further evolve into 2019 and beyond.

NVIDIA deserves praise for putting real-time ray tracing and DLSS technology into the mainstream with the GeForce RTX 2060, especially when you won't lose performance enabling RT + DLSS in games like Battlefield V. If that's the future of gaming where game developers can deliver real-time ray tracing and DLSS with no performance drop on a card like the RTX 2060, then the ceiling goes much higher on the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, and into the realms of 4K on the RTX 2080 Ti.

If you want a card that handles 4K 60FPS in every game on the market then NVIDIA has you with the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, while if you want something that handles 1080p 60-90FPS average then the RTX 2060 is there for the taking. Add in RT and DLSS technologies and you're set for the future - at least for the games that support it.

The thing is, real-time ray tracing and DLSS support won't extend to all games, meaning specific games only. The big ones include ARK: Survival Evolved, PUBG, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. There are 25 games in total that will support DLSS in the near future, with NVIDIA recently adding 9 new games to the roster from the original 16 announced in September.

All-in-all the GeForce RTX 2060 rounds out the Turing GPU family beautifully. Sure, it's more expensive than what the GTX 1060 that launched for $249, the RTX 2060 provides far more than $100 additional value. It provides the value of what would be found for around $500-$530 if you compare it to being between the GTX 1070 Ti ($449) and the GTX 1080 ($549).

We have more performance than the GTX 1070 Ti but less than the GTX 1080, while it rocks faster GDDR6 memory technology, RT abilities and DLSS technology. If you were buying a new graphics card and wanted to spend less than $600 right now (RTX 2070 is $599) then you would be crazy to buy a GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, or GTX 1080 when the RTX 2060 is the best choice out of all of them.

That is however, if we're talking brand new. You can buy some second hand GTX 10 series cards pretty damn cheap these days, which is a big thing right now post-crypto mining boom. On the Team Red side of things, the Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 continue to be stellar 1080p/1440p cards for gamers.

With huge memory bandwidth thanks to GDDR6, the new Turing-based GPU providing real-time ray tracing and DLSS abilities, the new GeForce RTX 2060 is a kick ass card for $349. From here it'll be interesting to see where custom cards fall in terms of pricing and performance, which we will be keeping a close eye on going into 2019.