NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 1080p & 1440p Gaming Performance

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition
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by Rob Williams on January 21, 2019 in Graphics & Displays

At $349, NVIDIA’s new GeForce RTX 2060 becomes the most affordable in its lineup to provide Tensor and RT cores, and along with that, we also see some considerable performance boosts from generation to generation. Is that enough to justify its price tag? We’ll let the benchmarks speak for themselves.

Page 1 – A Look At GeForce RTX 2060 & Our Test Suite

The performance information found in this article is outdated. We’d recommend looking through our recent GPU performance content for up-to-date results, benchmarks, and graphics cards. 

The first graphics card launch of 2019 is NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2060, a 6GB Turing GPU that retains the Tensor and RT cores of the higher-end models. At $349, the RTX 2060 targets high-FPS 1080p and 60 FPS 1440p – and yes, it offers enough juice to power Battlefield V‘s DXR ray tracing feature.

It’s hard to pick out which card of the Turing-based RTX series is most interesting. The 2080 Ti gets an unfair advantage for being the fastest, but we were left pretty impressed with the value proposition after taking a look at the RTX 2070 a couple of months ago. Arguably, the RTX 2060 could become the most interesting of the bunch, since it retains specific Turing features, and is priced for wider adoption.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition

Speaking of price, the $349 tag on the RTX 2060 might rub some who’ve enjoyed the historical $249 price-point the wrong way. However, the upside is that the RTX 2060 actually does perform far better than last-gen’s GTX 1060, as we’ll see on the next pages. Still, when a 6600 GT at $199 in 2004 scales to $270 today, $349 is a big leap for this class of card.

Here’s another angle. The Pascal-based GTX 1070 and 1070 Ti both had 8GB of VRAM, and the RTX 2060 beats or matches their performance. It feels like this $349 price tag could have been better justified if that same framebuffer size was retained for RTX 2060. Even AMD’s $249 Radeon RX 590 has 8GB! To NVIDIA’s favor, the memory bandwidth has increased from 256GB/s to 336GB/s, so we’re at least getting faster GDDR6 memory with this transition.

The table below has the most relevant information for each card model of the current and last generation GeForces (and TITANs):

NVIDIA’s GeForce Gaming GPU Lineup
Cores Base MHz Peak FP32 Memory Bandwidth TDP Price
TITAN RTX 4608 1770 16.3 TFLOPS 24GB 1 672 GB/s 280W $1,199
RTX 2080 Ti 4352 1350 13.4 TFLOPS 11GB 1 616 GB/s 250W $999
RTX 2080 2944 1515 10.0 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 215W $699
RTX 2070 2304 1410 7.4 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 175W $499
RTX 2060 1920 1680 6.4 TFLOPS 6GB 1 336 GB/s 160W $349
TITAN Xp 3840 1480 12.1 TFLOPS 12GB 2 548 GB/s 250W $1,199
GTX 1080 Ti 3584 1480 11.3 TFLOPS 11GB 2 484 GB/s 250W $699
GTX 1080 2560 1607 8.8 TFLOPS 8GB 2 320 GB/s 180W $499
GTX 1070 Ti 2432 1607 8.1 TFLOPS 8GB 3 256 GB/s 180W $449
GTX 1070 1920 1506 6.4 TFLOPS 8GB 3 256 GB/s 150W $379
GTX 1060 1280 1700 4.3 TFLOPS 6GB 3 192 GB/s 120W $299
GTX 1050 Ti 768 1392 2.1 TFLOPS 4GB 3 112 GB/s 75W $139
GTX 1050 640 1455 1.8 TFLOPS 2GB 3 112 GB/s 75W $109
Notes 1 GDDR6; 2 GDDR5X; 3 GDDR5; 4 HBM2
Architecture: GTX & TITAN = Pascal; RTX = Turing

At 6.4 TFLOPS, the RTX 2060 is spec’d just like the last-gen GTX 1070. That should mean that both cards perform about the same, but we’ll learn an important lesson on the results pages about why TFLOPS performance doesn’t paint the full picture, not even between generations of the same vendor.

You’ll see some interesting things on the next few pages. The GTX 1070 falls behind the RTX 2060, while at the same time, the RTX 2060 pulls in front of the 10 TFLOPS-spec’d RX Vega 56 quite often. If this doesn’t whet your appetite to turn to the next page, what possibly could?? Oh, right… you might want to see our testing methodology first, so let’s get to that:

A Look At Test Methodology

Techgage Gaming GPU Test PC
Processor Intel Core i9-9900K (3.6GHz Base, 5.0GHz Turbo, 8C/16T)
Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING
CPU tested with BIOS 0602 (October 19, 2018)
Memory G.SKILL TridentZ (F4-3400C16-8GSXW) 8GB x 2
Operates at DDR4-3400 16-16-16 (1.35V)
AMD Graphics AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) *
AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3)
AMD Radeon RX 590 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3)
AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) *
AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB; Radeon 18.12.3) *
AMD Radeon RX 550 (2GB; Radeon 18.12.3) *
NVIDIA Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (8GB; GeForce 417.35)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB; GeForce 417.35)
NVIDIA TITAN Xp (12GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (8GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB; GeForce 417.35)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB; GeForce 417.35)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB; GeForce 417.35) *
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB; GeForce 417.35) *
Storage Kingston SSDNow V310 960GB (SATA 6Gbps)
Power Supply Corsair RM650x (650W)
Chassis NZXT S340 Elite Mid-tower
Cooling Corsair Hydro H100i V2 AIO Liquid Cooler (240mm)
Et cetera Windows 10 Pro (64-bit; build 17763)
Notes * Synthetic tests only.

Games Tested & Vendor Neutrality

A total of eight games are included in our current test suite. Some have appeared here before, while others make their first appearance: Battlefield V (with some DXR testing), Forza Horizon 4, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Beyond these eight titles, UL’s 3DMark and VRMark, as well as Unigine’s Superposition, are used for some quick and dirty comparison results.

Here’s the full list of tested synthetic benchmarks, games, and developer allegiances:

  • Battlefield V
  • Deus Ex: Mankind DividedAMD partner
  • F1 2018
  • Far Cry 5AMD partner
  • Forza Horizon 4
  • Monster Hunter World
  • Shadow of the Tomb RaiderNVIDIA partner
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsNVIDIA partner
  • UL 3DMark & VRMark
  • Unigine Superposition

Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Battlefield V as-tested settings
Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Battlefield V as-tested settings
Battlefield 1 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as-tested settings
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as-tested settings
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (3) Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (3)
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as-tested settings
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - Techgage Tested Settings (3)
F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (1) F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
F1 2018 as-tested settings
F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (2) F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
F1 2018 as-tested settings
F1 2018 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Far Cry 5 as-tested settings
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Far Cry 5 as-tested settings
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (3) Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (3)
Far Cry 5 as-tested settings
Far Cry 5 - Techgage Tested Settings (3)
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Forza Horizon 4 as-tested settings
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Forza Horizon 4 as-tested settings
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Forza Horizon 4 as-tested settings
Forza Horizon 4 - Techgage Tested Settings
Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Monster Hunter World as-tested settings
Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Monster Hunter World as-tested settings
Monster Hunter World - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider as-tested settings
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider as-tested settings
Rise of the Tomb Raider - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (1) Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands as-tested settings
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (1)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (2) Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (2)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands as-tested settings
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - Techgage Tested Settings (2)

For our apples-to-apples testing, the graphics settings seen above apply to every one of our tested resolutions so as to deliver easily comparable results. In most cases, each configuration is tested twice, with more runs added if the initial results make the extra testing necessary (which isn’t required too often).

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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