The Nvidia RTX 2060 was rumored to be announced at CES 2019 and Nivida has just announced that it will be available starting January 15th. The card is has a lot to offer, keeping in mind the price point and the fact that it is the least expensive card that supports Nvidia RTX real-time ray tracing features.
Nvidia RTX 2060 The New Budget King
Previously, the RTX 2070 was the minimum requirement for ray tracing but that no longer seems to be the case. Nvidia showed the performance of the RTX 2060 in Battlefield V and mentioned that it is able to run the game at 1440p 60 FPS with RTX off. Turning RTX on does take the FPS down to 45 but there is a solution to that problem. With RTX and DLSS technology working alongside each other, the Nvidia RTX 2060 is able to hit 60 FPS even with ray tracing enabled.
It seems that DLSS is the major selling point for the graphics card rather than RTX real-time ray tracing. DLSS should offer a crisp looking image and better performance in terms of FPS when compared to other anti-aliasing methods like TAA. It is worth noting that support for DLSS is fairly limited and you should not get the card for the DLSS feature alone.
| Nvidia RTX 2060 | Nvidia GTX 1060 | |
| Architecture | Turing | Pascal |
| GPU | TU106 | GP106 |
| CUDA Cores | 1920 | 1280 |
| SMs | 10 | 30 |
| CUDA Cores/ SM | 64 | 128 |
| RT Cores | 30 | – |
| Rops | 48 | 48 |
| Tensor Cores/GPU | 240 | – |
| Tensor Cores/SM | 8 | – |
| Base Clock | 1365 | 1506 |
| Boost Clock | 1680 | 1708 |
| Memory Interface | 192-Bit | 192-Bit |
| Memory Clock | 14 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 336.1 | 192 |
| Texture Units | 120 | 80 |
| TDP | 160 | 120 |
| Manufacturing Process | 12nm | 16nm |
| Transistors | 4.4 Billion | 10.8 Billion |
| Die Size | 445 | 200 |
Talking about the raw performance of the card without RTX features, the graphics card is a major step up when compared to the GTX 1060 and is actually better than the GTX 1070 Ti that Nvidia released to compete with the AMD Vega 56.
We saw the reference design model and it comes with a shorter PCB and dual fans. We also got to see some after-market coolers and it seems that dual fans seems to be the trend for the RTX 2060 but there will be a triple fan option from Asus when the card is released a week from now.
The value proposition is pretty interesting. Nvidia is going to bundle the RTX 2060 with either Battlefield V or Anthem. Chances are that players are going to go with Anthem as it is yet to be released and if that is the case then you are already saving $60 on the purchase.
The card is going to retail for $349 and if you get the bundle then that means that you are paying $289 for the card. That is incredible value for money provided that it can run the Anthem at 1440p 60 FPS. BioWare has confirmed that it is working with Nvidia and that Anthem will feature DLSS technology so that might be a good sign.
For now, it seems that the Nvidia RTX 2060 is great value for money and that it could be a major contender for the new budget king but we will know for sure once the cards are released and we can check out the performance for ourselves. The bundle is great value for money though and is worth looking into if you have an older graphics card and are looking to upgrade.
We will keep you updated regarding the performance of the RTX 2060 so stay tuned for more news and information. Let us know what you think about the Nvidia RTX 2060 and whether or not this is something that you might be interested in getting for your next build or future upgrade.
Except that the 6 gb cripples this card at 1440p. This game stutters like crazy in BFV at 1440p. I was looking for an improvement over my RX 580. In truth the RX 580 with a slower GPU is better than the RTX 2060 because of the extra 2gb of ram. I have to go to high/med settings to match the performance I get on my RX 580 on ultra. Bad card only because NVidia cheaped out on the memory. What a shame, should be the new performance leader in it’s price range. Plus the Ray Tracing on this card is useless. You can go to low settings and add pretty refections while all normal textures look worse and only pull 30 fps at 1080p. No Thanks!