NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition review: Mainstream gaming has come a long way

Turing for the masses

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX-series is finally complete. There may not be a super budget-friendly equivalent of the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, but with the GeForce RTX 2060, the company finally has a card for everyone from mainstream consumers to enthusiasts. 

The GeForce RTX 2060 is based on the same Turing architecture as its higher-end siblings. At US$349, it is significantly cheaper than even the US$599 GeForce RTX 2070, but it still features the same machine-finished aluminum shroud as the other Founders Edition models. In fact, save for the lettering on the card, it's nearly indistinguishable from the GeForce RTX 2070.

Both cards share nearly the same dimensions, so they're both really compact and barely extend past the edge of an ATX motherboard. The GeForce RTX 2060 is shaping up to be an excellent choice for compact, mini-ITX systems, and its 2-slot design will fit in nicely in many chassis that don't have the luxury of space. 

Like the other Founders Edition Turing models, the GeForce RTX 2060 truly feels much better made than the vast majority of custom cards on the market. It just feels more premium in hand, and build quality is absolutely stellar. 

The cooling shroud wraps around the entire card and extends over the end of the card to form the PCB backplate. I'm happy to see that the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition still has a backplate, since that was actually missing on the GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition. 

The card is powered by a single 8-pin power connector at the edge of the card, the same as the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition. This makes it slightly more accessible, especially if you're installing it in a smaller case.

The display outputs are the same as on the GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition as well, which is to say that they differ from what NVIDIA offers on the GeForce RTX 2080 and up. Instead of the single HDMI 2.0b connector and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, NVIDIA has replaced one of the DisplayPort connectors with a DVI-DL output. The USB-C port remains, however. There is no NVLink connector though, which means that the GeForce RTX 2060 won't support SLI.

The GeForce RTX 2060 is based on a scaled down version of the Turing TU106 GPU used in the GeForce RTX 2070. This means it still supports Turing's signature DLSS and ray-tracing features, making the tech far more accessible to mainstream consumers. 

The card itself is equipped with a 1,680MHz boost clock and 6GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 14,000MHz. It also features 1,920 CUDA cores, 40 per cent more than the GeForce GTX 1060, 30 RT cores, and 240 Tensor cores. It has a 192-bit memory bus width, which gives it a total memory bandwidth of up to 336.1GB/s. That's quite a bit higher than the 192GB/s offered on the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, so it should enjoy a significant boost in bandwidth-hungry applications and games. Finally, it has a 160W TDP, compared to the 185W TDP on the GeForce RTX 2070. 

Test Setup

The detailed specifications of our new graphics card testbed system is as follows:-

• Intel Core i7-8086K (4.0GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• ASUS ROG Strix Maximus X Hero (Intel Z370)
• 4 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• Acer Predator X27, 4K monitor

The full line-up of graphics cards and their driver versions are listed below:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (ForceWare 417.54)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (ForceWare 416.33)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (ForceWare 399.24)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (ForceWare 417.35)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (ForceWare 417.35)
• PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 (Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 18.12.3)

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Benchmarks

Next up, here's a list of all the benchmarks used:

• 3DMark
• VRMark
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Far Cry 5
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Tom Clancy's The Division

We used the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark and stress test in 3DMark for our temperature  and power consumption tests respectively.

3DMark

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stress your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

The GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition is roughly on par with the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, a card that's actually really competitive against the GeForce GTX 1080 in its own right. All things considered, this is pretty impressive performance for a mainstream card. 

In fact, the GeForce RTX 2060 is around 42 per cent faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 in the 1080p Fire Strike benchmark, a decent improvement in a single generation. It also beat the GeForce GTX 1070 by around 11 per cent in the same benchmark. 

VRMark

Futuremark’s VRMark benchmark is designed to assess a PC’s ability to handle high-performance headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If a PC passes the Orange Room test, it is ready for the latter two systems. The second graph also shows how the cards fared against the benchmark's target of an average FPS of 109. 

There are less stark differences between cards in VRMark, and it looks like the CPU may be starting to become a limiting factor for the faster cards. The GeForce RTX 2060 had no problems with this benchmark, going nearly neck-and-neck with the GeForce RTX 2070. It was also around 42 per cent ahead of the GeForce GTX 1060. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity has long been the poster child for the performance benefits a low-level API like DirectX 12 can bring. It is based on the Nitrous engine and can be extremely punishing thanks to the huge number of onscreen units and the sheer level of detail accorded to each unit. However, the CPU does become the limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings. 

Once again, the GeForce RTX 2060 demonstrated significant improvements over the GeForce GTX 1060. At 1080 and Crazy settings (DirectX 11), the former was roughly 31 per cent quicker. It also turned out very similar numbers as the GeForce GTX 1070, although it was overall around 26 per cent behind the GeForce RTX 2070. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided features just about every trick to make your game look pretty, including things like volumetric and dynamic lighting, screenspace reflections, and cloth physics. Even though it was released in 2016, the game is capable of bringing even the most powerful systems to their knees. 

The GeForce RTX 2060 was more than capable of running the game at 1080p and Ultra settings, pushing well above 60FPS. It was 46 per cent faster than the GeForce GTX 1060, which trudged along at under 50FPS. It was even slightly quicker than the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, no small feat for a supposedly mainstream card. 

Far Cry 5

The latest installment in the Far Cry series is actually an AMD launch title, so it'll be interesting to see how the green camp fares here. 

The GeForce RTX 2060 again had no trouble running the game at 1080p and Ultra settings. It was approximately 26 per cent faster than the GeForce GTX 1060, but it fell behind the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti this time. 

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

In Shadow of War, NVIDIA's latest Turing card once again proved itself very capable at 1080p and Ultra settings. It might have been roughly 21 per cent behind the GeForce RTX 2070, but it still handily beat the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1060 by 16 per cent and 47 per cent respectively. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

NVIDIA has mentioned Shadow of the Tomb Raider a lot lately, largely because it will be one of the first games to support its RTX technology through a post-release patch. At the time of writing however, the patch hasn't dropped yet, so the results still deal with conventional performance metrics. 

The GeForce RTX 2060 did well here as well, giving the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti a good run for its money. 

Tom Clancy's The Division

In the The Division, the GeForce RTX 2060 managed a 38 per cent advantage over the GeForce GTX 1060 at 1080p and Ultra settings. The card really looks like it's capable of handling just about any game at 1080p and max settings, which is an exciting prospect for the hoards of gamers out there. 

Temperature and power consumption

The improvements NVIDIA made to the cooling solution on its Founders Edition cards are plain as day here, and all the Turing cards posted lower temperatures despite being more powerful. The cards are also fairly quiet, and I don't see this being a problem for most people.

The GeForce RTX 2060 had the lowest peak temperatures among all the Founders Edition cards, probably owing in part to its lower power envelope compared to the other Turing cards. NVIDIA's has done good work in upgrading the cooling solution on its Founders Edition models, and I'm really glad to see the blower fan go. 

When it came to power consumption, the card proved more power hungry than some of the Pascal models, but that's probably not surprising given how much faster it is. 

Mainstream gaming has never looked so good

NVIDIA's Turing cards are a pretty mixed bag. On the one hand, they're really, really fast, but on the other, they're also prohibitively expensive. The GeForce RTX 2070 made Turing's DLSS and ray-tracing technology more accessible with its US$599 price tag, but it was still far from being considered a card for mainstream audiences. 

A lot hinged on the GeForce RTX 2060. NVIDIA's ray-tracing acceleration will only really become useful if developers catch on, and there's no chance of that happening if no one is buying Turing cards. For that to happen, the mainstream Turing model needs to be priced right. Fortunately, at US$349, the GeForce RTX 2060 is pretty accessible. It's still US$50 more expensive than the GeForce GTX 1060, but that isn't that hefty a premium to pay considering how much faster it is.

As it stands, the GeForce RTX 2060 means great things for the average gamer. Here's a card that won't break your bank, but which will run just about any game at 1080p and max settings. And let's face it. How many of you actually own 1440p or 4K monitors? 1080p is still the most common resolution to game at, and the GeForce RTX 2060 will handle that wonderfully. 

That said, it's proven itself capable of tackling 1440p resolutions as well, but you'll probably have to turn some settings down for a smoother experience. 

I've written about how performance trickles down the product stack before, and the GeForce RTX 2060 is a great example of this happening. It's faster than the GeForce GTX 1070, and it's even fast enough to trade blows with the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. 

The GeForce GTX 1060 was a great card for 1080p in its own right, but it still felt like a compromise sometimes. The GeForce RTX 2060 sloughs off that burden like dead skin. Mainstream cards are no longer signifiers of middling performance, and you can buy a GeForce RTX 2060 with the happy knowledge that you'll be able to max out your settings at 1080p.

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