Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC Edition Review. Asus geforce rtx 2060

Review – Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6

NVIDIA has finally announced its RTX 4060 series for desktop PC, starting with the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB which will be available from today onwards while the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB and RTX 4060 8GB will be coming later in July. In this review, we’ll be taking a look at the Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, one of the RTX 4060 Ti models available from Asus this time around. We have tested it against the RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition to get a better idea of how this card performs.

Specifications

GPU GeForce RTX 3060 Ti FE GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G FE Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8G GDDR6
CUDA Cores 4864 4352 4352
Tensor Cores 152 136 136
RT Cores 38 34 34
ROPs 80 48 48
GPU Boost Clock 1670 MHz 2535 MHz 2565 MHz
Memory Data Rate 14 Gbps 18 Gbps 18 Gbps
Total Video Memory Size 8G GDDR6 8G GDDR6 8G GDDR6
Memory Interface 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit
Memory Bandwidth 448 GB/s 504 GB/s 504 GB/s
TDP 200W 160W 160W
Recommended PSU 600W 550W 650W
Power Connectors 1 x 12-pin 1 x 16-pin (12VHPWR) 1 x 8-pin

Unboxing

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Since the Dual RTX 4060 Ti is technically a model targeted at mainstream users, you won’t find any fancy elements on the box like what you’ll find on ROG or TUF gaming models. Though you’ll still find the important information such as the product features, some of the specifications, and the design of the card at the front and back of the box.

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Design-wise, the Dual RTX 4060 Ti has a full coverage shroud design that looks really similar to the Dual RTX 4070 and it does give a little bit of the TUF vibes at first glance. Although it’s a lot smaller than the higher-end models like ROG Strix and TUF, it’s still a 2.5-slot card but the shorter length at 227.2mm allows it to fit better inside smaller PC cases.

Unlike the Founders Edition cards that are fixed to the 12VHPWR connector, the Dual RTX 4060 Ti comes with an 8-pin PCIe connector. With the rated TDP of 160W, you can use it with pretty much any existing power supply that has a minimum rated power of 550W as recommended by NVIDIA.

As for the display output, you’ll find 3 x DisplayPort and 1 x HDMI at the back of the card, which are the typical options you’ll get nowadays.

Test System Setup

Despite being marketed as a card targeted at 1080P, we still tested the Dual RTX 4060 Ti with 4K and 1440p resolutions just to see how far we can push the card and how well it fare against the RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and the RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition. For our games benchmark test, we’ve selected a number of AAA titles to run at their highest possible settings using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 32°C:

CPU Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard Asus ROG Maximus Z690 APEX
Memory ADATA XPG LANCER RGB [email protected] CL30 (16GB x2)
Graphics Card Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6
Power Supply Cooler Master M2000 Platinum
Primary Storage Kingston KC3000 2TB
CPU Cooler Cooler MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
Chassis Cooler Master MasterFrame 700
Operating System Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 21H2 (Build 22000.1696)

Games benchmark – Raster Performance

At 4K resolution, while it didn’t meet the 60fps average fps that is deemed playable by many, titles like Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5, Hitman 3, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider are actually playable at that frame rate. But do keep in mind that there will be titles that will exceed the 8GB VRAM usage at this resolution, which will affect the overall performance.

The performance gets better as we scale down to 1440P, where the RTX 4060 Ti is able to achieve an average of 60fps on all the titles with the highest graphics settings easily. And for 1080p, the Dual RTX 4060 Ti didn’t disappoint as it easily achieves almost 100fps across all the titles with the highest settings. As the base model, it shares the same specifications as the RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition and the raster performance is almost on par with the RTX 3070.

Games benchmark – Ray Tracing

Moving on to the ray tracing performance, we ran the tests with the game settings set to very high or ultra and DLSS on Quality preset to see how well the RTX 4060 Ti performs. This is mainly for us to test the limit of the GPU and you can always lower the graphics settings and DLSS preset to achieve the performance and quality you desire.

While there are still titles that are able to maintain a playable frame rate at 4K resolution, we can see the RTX 4060 Ti struggles quite a bit on the newer titles with the graphics settings set to the highest and ray tracing on full blast. Titles like Cyberpunk 2077 are Watch Dogs Legion are some of the AAA titles that are known for their high VRAM utilization and extremely demanding ray tracing that can give GPU with low VRAM a hard time.

Similar behavior can be seen in 1440P resolution, where Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion are the only titles that get lower than 60fps results while the rest of the titles easily achieve more than that, with some even reaching above 100fps. As we lowered the resolution to 1080P which was intended for the RTX 4060 Ti, we can see more than 60fps on average on all the titles tested with the graphics settings and ray tracing set to the highest.

Games benchmark – DLSS 3

Since NVIDIA launched its RTX 40 series GPU, we can see more titles being added to the list of games that supports DLSS 3 as we progress through the year. Since it’s a feature that is exclusive to the RTX 40 series cards, the RTX 4060 series cards are the most affordable option for those who want to experience the new tech themselves.

Unlike the RTX 4070 and above, enabling DLSS 3 doesn’t really help much with 4K resolution due to the limited 8GB VRAM. Scaling down the resolution to 1440P does helps a lot as we can see some reasonable performance gains on almost every title tested. The Witcher 3 is a good example to show how increasing texture quality will significantly increase VRAM usage, but NVIDIA did publish an article that addresses this issue and how they can help game developers to reduce VRAM usage. With that being said, I’m guessing that we’ll probably still see GPU with 8GB VRAM from NVIDIA in the near future?

For 1080P gaming, there’s not much to complain about as we can see a significant increase in the average fps and lower PC latency in all the titles tested after DLSS 3 is enabled. This translates directly to the overall performance and responsiveness of the game, which is a significant improvement from what we have experienced on DLSS 2.

Synthetic Benchmark

Shifting our attention to the synthetic benchmarks, the outcomes appear rather intriguing when compared to the benchmarks of the games.

Regarding benchmarks emphasizing game performance, although the RTX 3070 exhibits superiority over the RTX 4060 Ti in Unigine Superposition, the results of 3DMark Time Spy indicate that both cards perform nearly equally.

Regarding benchmarks emphasizing content creation tasks such as Blender, OctaneBench 2020 1.5, and V-Ray Benchmark 5, the RTX 4060 Ti emerges as the unequivocal victor.

Thermals Power Draw

After seeing what the Dual RTX 4060 Ti is capable of, let’s take a look at the thermals and power draw for this GPU. Other than the same specifications as the Founders Edition models, the Dual RTX 4060 Ti comes with its own cooler design which ideally, is able to deliver better cooling performance.

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While both the RTX 4060 Ti shares the same power draw during load, it’s worth taking note that it’s actually drawing only about 163.7W during its peak load, which is about 60W and 110W lower than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 respectively while still delivering a performance that gets really close to the latter at 1080P. This gives us a better view of how power efficient the RTX 4060 Ti really is.

As for the load temperature, the differences might not be that significant but the Dual RTX 4060 Ti does have a slight advantage of 1°C lower than the Founders Edition model based on the peak load temperature observed during the stress test. The actual load temperature during most of the gaming tests is about 55-66°C and the only time it hits 68°C is during our test with titles like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Final thoughts

I’m sure that many of you are aware of the heated debate on how the 8GB VRAM and 128-bit will greatly affect the performance since NVIDIA launched the RTX 4060 series GPUs. I do have my suspicion about this after seeing the benchmark results, but until I can get my hands on the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB to verify this, I’ll leave that aside for now. Though I’d still love to see NVIDIA giving us more VRAM, at least 12 GB instead of 8 GB because I can really see games that can really eat up a lot of VRAM when the texture quality goes up.

Performance-wise, I think the RTX 4060 Ti is a decent GPU and it’s more than capable enough for 1080P gaming as it can also be seen to perform quite well on 1440P at the highest settings even though NVIDIA has clearly marketed it as a product for the 1080p gaming segment. Aside from performance, the power efficiency is another noteworthy advantage of the RTX 4060 Ti as it can be seen performing close to an RTX 3070 at 1080P on both the ray tracing and raster performance while drawing much less power during load. It might not be much but I think it’s still a fair upgrade that is significant enough for users who are still rocking the RTX 2060 or lower.

Of course, you’ll find users who disagree with the 399 starting price and would rather spend that money on a used RTX 3080 that has more VRAM and offers better performance which can be found for as low as RM 2000, or the RTX 3070 at around RM 1300 that offers similar performance if the exclusive features are out of the equation. For the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060 Ti which is priced at RM 2050, I think it’s still somewhat reasonable for those who really wanted to experience the new features that are currently only available on the RTX 40 series GPUs.

Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC Edition Review

Nvidia’s xx60 level mainstream cards are always one of the most popular cards to gamers for a strong performance at a reasonably wallet-friendly price. The mid-season update to the Turing powered RTX cards gives you most of last years enthusiast-level RTX 2070 at the same budget-friendly RTX 2060 price point. Asus takes that and gives it their nearly bulletproof Auto-Extreme manufacturing and beefy 2.7 slots cooler with twin Axial Flow fans for reliable and silent gaming performance. Today, we’ll see how it stacks up to the competition!

ProClockers would like to thank Asus for sending over the Dual RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC edition to check out!

Asus’s take on the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC edition:

Delivering the latest NVIDIA Turing gaming experience in its purest form, the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO melds performance and simplicity like no other. Leveraging advanced cooling technologies derived from flagship graphics cards, the Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO opts for substance over style, the perfect choice for a well-balanced build. Buckle up and engage in cutting-edge gaming prowess.

The Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO OC Edition 8GB GDDR6 with two powerful Axial-tech fans for AAA gaming performance and ray tracing

  • RT Cores: Dedicated ray tracing hardware enables fast real-time ray tracing of objects and environments with physically accurate shadows, reflections, refractions, and global illumination.
  • Concurrent Floating Point and Integer Processing: Turing GPUs more efficiently process the compute-heavy workloads of modern games.
  • Ultra-fast GDDR6: Experience up to 496 GB/s of memory bandwidth for high-speed, high-resolution gaming.
  • Axial-tech fan design features a smaller fan hub that facilitates longer blades and a barrier ring that increases downward air pressure.
  • 0dB technology lets you enjoy light gaming in relative silence.
  • 2.7-slot Design expands the cooling surface area to make the most of the two powerful Axial-tech fans.
  • Auto-Extreme Technology uses automation to enhance reliability.
  • A protective backplate secures components during transportation and installation.
  • GPU Tweak II provides intuitive performance tweaking, thermal controls, and system monitoring.
  • 144-hour Validation Program puts cards through a series of stringent tests to ensure compatibility with the latest games.

NVIDIA Turing Architecture

GeForce RTX is powered by NVIDIA Turing, the world’s most advanced GPU architecture for gamers and creators. Get truly next-gen performance and features with dedicated AI and ray-tracing cores for the ultimate experience.

The new GeForce RTX SUPER Series has even more cores and higher clocks, bringing you performance that’s up to 25% faster than the original RTX 20 Series and 6X faster than the previous-generation 10 Series GPUs. It’s time to gear up and get super powers.

COOLING

Axial-tech Fan Design – Better, faster, stronger

Newly designed for the latest generation of top-end ROG graphics cards, these fans feature a smaller hub that facilitates longer blades and a barrier ring to increase downward air pressure.

0dB Technology – Quiet intelligence

An advanced onboard controller brings fans to a standstill when the GPU core temperature is below 55 Celsius, letting you enjoy light gaming in relative silence. As temps rise past the threshold, the fans automatically start up again.

2.7-slot Design – Sink your heat into this

The Dual GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER EVO leverages a 2.7-slot design to gain more heatsink surface area. The extra thermal headroom increases overclocking potential and allows fans to run at even lower speeds in light scenarios.

ENGINEERING

Auto−Extreme Technology – Precision automated manufacturing

Auto-Extreme Technology is an automated manufacturing process that sets new standards in the industry by allowing all soldering to be completed in a single pass. This reduces thermal strain on components and avoids the use of harsh cleaning chemicals, resulting in less environmental impact, lower manufacturing power consumption, and a more reliable product overall.

Protective Backplate – That’s so metal!

The PCB is reinforced by an aluminum backplate that adds structural rigidity, helping to prevent PCB flex and protect components and trace pathways from damage.

GPU Tweak II – Monitor, tweak, and tune

The Asus GPU Tweak II utility takes graphics card tuning to the next level. It allows you to tweak critical parameters including GPU core clocks, memory frequency, and voltage settings, with the option to monitor everything in real-time through a customizable on-screen display. Advanced fan control is also included along with many more features to help you get the most out of your graphics card.

XSplit – Premium streaming

XSplit offers a premium streaming experience with in-game annotations and other advanced features. Enjoy a free license with the purchase of select Asus graphics cards. See you online!

Wtfast – Play lag-free

We’ve partnered with wtfast to help you to play free from lag, latency issues, and lost packets. With a 6-month subscription to the wtfast Gamers Private Network, you’ll enjoy lower ping for a smoother, more fluid online gaming experience. Buy an Asus graphics card – and don’t be left waiting!

Quantumcloud – Profit from GPU power

Quantumcloud is a simple and secure service that lets you effortlessly earn extra money by putting your idle GPU to work. Through an easy-to-use app, your computer can help run Cloud-based applications, making you money in the process. Earnings are automatically transferred to your WeChat or PayPal account, and your privacy remains intact because Quantumcloud doesn’t collect your personal data. Get started making money today!

144−Hour Validation Program – “Extensive” may be an understatement

Each card must meet rigorous performance and reliability standards before it ships. Performance and stress tests are run with the latest chart-topping titles like Fortnite, League of Legends, Overwatch, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. We also carry out reliability trials that include a 144-hour stability test and a series of 3DMark benchmarking runs to ensure the card performs well when pushed to the limits.

Subtle Lighting – A bit lit

The shroud features a subtle illuminated strip that creates a stylish accent for your build.

NVIDIA G−SYNC Technology – Smooth operator

This graphics card supports NVIDIA G-SYNCTM display technology for a super-smooth variable refresh rate experience. Enjoy AAA games without the nuisance of screen tearing or stuttering.

Specifications:

  • Graphics Engine – NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER /li>
  • Bus Standard – PCI Express 3.0
  • OpenGL – OpenGL 6
  • Video Memory – GDDR6 8GB
  • Engine Clock
  • OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1845 MHz. GPU Base Clock : 1635 MHz
  • Gaming Mode (Default) – GPU Boost Clock : 1815 MHz. GPU Base Clock : 1605 MHz
  • HDMI Output : Yes x 1 (Native) (HDMI 2.0b)
  • Display Port : Yes x 3 (Native) (DisplayPort 1.4)
  • HDCP Support : Yes (2.2)
  • 10.5 ” x 4.7 ” x 2.28 ” Inch
  • 26.7 x 11.8 x5.8 Centimeter

Packaging Unboxing

Asus’s non-ROG lineup of cards stay very close to the Nvidia standard packaging with the series in the top right corner.

The back lists tons of features and some basic specifications.

Inside the outer sleeve is a black box with gold writing and an embossed pattern over the entire surface.

Inside, we find the GPU sort of shrink-wrapped into the packaging.

Once you move the cover, we find this is not shrink wrap but a clever way to hold the card in place.

The box is more origami rather than packaging.

Once you extricate the card form the packaging, you’ll find every surface of the card covered in a protective film as well as an included thank you card from Asus and a quick setup guide.

A Closer Look

Asus’s Dual card uses two large axial tech fans embedded in a shroud that has brushed metal and ridged accents.

The card also has a full cover backplate that features the same ridge and brushed finish but some of the area is slotted to see the PCB underneath and to let heat out via convection.

The large cooler takes up nearly 3 slots. Power is provided by a single 8 pin inlet.

The PCIe power inlet features the diagnostic LED’s that first showed up on the flagship ROG cards. White means your PCIe power cable is working right, and as usual, red is bad.

The rear I/O bracket is only two slots but is fully vented even though very little air from the cooler will reach it. All ports are capped with rubber plugs out of the box. You get a pair of Display Port 1.4 connections and a pair of HDMI 2.0 and the humble DVI port makes a return as a single Dual-Link DVI-D port.

The visible edge of the card has a small RGB accent strip, it adds a nice touch without going off the deep end.

System Configuration Software

GPU Tweak II – Monitor, tweak, and tune

The Asus GPU Tweak II utility takes graphics card tuning to the next level. It allows you to tweak critical parameters including GPU core clocks, memory frequency, and voltage settings, with the option to monitor everything in real-time through a customizable on-screen display. Advanced fan control is also included along with many more features to help you get the most out of your graphics card.

Gaming Mode:

The default “Gaming Mode” gives us a clock speed of 1470 MHz.

OC Mode kicks this up 30 MHz to 1500 MHz.

Silent Mode:

If you care more for efficiency and silence, this mode will drop the stock clock to 1440 MHz.

Synthetic Testing

Testing was performed at stock settings with the exception of system memory had its XMP profile applied.

Futuremark 3DMark

3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your PC and mobile devices in one app. Whether you’re gaming on a smartphone, tablet, notebook, or a desktop gaming PC, 3DMark includes a benchmark designed specifically for your hardware.

Asus’s Dual RTX 2060 Super blows it out of the water with only the smallest gap between the Founders RTX 2070 of last year.

Futuremark VRMark

The performance requirements for VR games are much higher than for typical PC games. So if you’re thinking about buying an HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift, wouldn’t you like to know that your PC is ready for VR?

VRMark includes three VR benchmark tests that run on your monitor, no headset required, or on a connected HMD. At the end of each test, you’ll see whether your PC is VR ready, and if not, how far it falls short.

Orange Room Test – The Orange Room benchmark shows the impressive level of detail that can be achieved on a PC that meets the recommended hardware requirements for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If your PC passes this test, it’s ready for the two most popular VR systems available today.

Cyan Room Test – Cyan Room is a DirectX 12 benchmark. It features a large, complex scene and many eye-catching effects. Cyan Room shows how using an API with less overhead can help developers deliver impressive VR experiences even on modest PC systems.

Blue Room Test – The Blue Room is a much more demanding test. It’s ideal for benchmarking the latest graphics cards. With its massive 5K rendering resolution and spectacular volumetric lighting effects, the Blue Room sets the bar for future hardware generations.

VR isn’t an issue to the Super card, even if the futuristic blue level is still a little out of reach for everything on the market currently but the Dual 2060 Super almost doubles the needed performance for both orange and cyan levels.

Unigine Heaven

Heaven Benchmark is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential for maximum heat output.

The benchmark immerses a user into a magical steampunk world of shiny brass, wood, and gears. Nested on flying islands, a tiny village with its cozy, sun-heated cobblestone streets, and a majestic dragon on the central square gives a true sense of adventure. An interactive experience with fly-by and walk-through modes allows for exploring all corners of this world powered by the cutting-edge UNIGINE Engine that leverages the most advanced capabilities of graphics APIs and turns this bench into a visual masterpiece.

At lower resolutions, the 2060 Super actually pulls a lead over the RTX 2070 cards thanks to the faster memory and really isn’t too far behind last years RTX 2080.

With the resolution cranked up, it slips back to just a few points behind the 2070 cards.

Unigine Superposition

Extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware: video card, power supply, cooling system. Check your rig in stock and overclocking modes with a real-life load! Also includes interactive experience in a beautiful, detailed environment.

A lone professor performs dangerous experiments in an abandoned classroom, day in and day out. Obsessed with inventions and discoveries beyond the wildest dreams, he strives to prove his ideas.

Once you come to this place in the early morning, you would not meet him there. The eerie thing is a loud bang from the laboratory heard a few moments ago. What was that? You have the only chance to cast some light upon this incident by going deeply into the matter of quantum theory: thorough visual inspection of professor’s records and instruments will help to lift the veil on the mystery.

At the 4K optimized setting, the Dual 2060 Super pulls an average of 47.31 FPS.

Game Testing

Ashes of the Singularity

Planet by planet, a war is raging across the Galaxy. The technological singularity has given humanity the power to expand further than they ever have before. Now, they compete with each other and their sentient artificial intelligence adversaries for control of newfound worlds.

Our first real game leaves the Dual RTX 2060 Super a fair bit ahead of even our best RTX 2060 and dangerously close to catching up to the prior RTX 2070 cards.

Anything can happen. Everything will.

Welcome to Hope County, Montana, land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult—known as The Project at Eden’s Gate—that is threatening the community’s freedom. Stand up to the cult’s leaders, Joseph Seed, and the Heralds, as you spark the fires of resistance that will liberate the besieged community.

It’s the same story in a fictional northern Montana. The Super upgrade to last years card gets us a very slight edge over the prior RTX 2070

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War In the epic sequel to the award-winning Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, go behind enemy lines to forge an army, conquer Fortresses and dominate Mordor from within. Experience how the award-winning Nemesis System creates unique personal stories with every enemy and follower, and confront the full power of the Dark Lord Sauron and his Ringwraiths in this epic new story of Middle-earth.

Interestingly, here the Dual RTYX 2060 Super all but matches the Dual RTX 2070 Super and edges out the entire stack of last year’s RTX 2070 cards.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Asus’s Dual RTX 2060 Super is a few FPS ahead last year’s reference RTX 2070 cards.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game.

Frame times for the Dual 2060 Super are super close to the RTX 2070 for a much lower price tag, that’s pretty hard to beat.

Metro Exodus Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first-person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created.

4A’s latest shooter looks incredible but proves to be a brutal load on even the latest flagship GPU’s.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is the very first military shooter in a massive open world that you can play entirely solo or in four-player co-op.

A few years from now, Bolivia has become the largest cocaine producer in the world. The Santa Blanca cartel has turned the country into a narco-state. As a Ghost, you must stop the cartel by any means necessary.

Create and fully customize your Ghost, weapons, and gear. Enjoy a total freedom of playstyle. Lead your team and take down the cartel, either solo or with up to three friends.

Journey through Ubisoft’s largest action-adventure open world. Discover the stunning diverse landscapes of the Wildlands both on and off-road, in the air, on land and at sea with over 60 different vehicles.

The latest visual stunner in the Tom Clancy universe plays quite well maxed out at 1080P and 1440P, but 4K is still playable at a little over 32 FPS.

Overclocking

We always like to open up the power target and see what the card is capable of with the limits raised or removed. Asus gives us up to an additional 20% to play with.

This gives us a pretty impressive jump from stock.

We work on the memory next but quickly run out of slider at 15.4Ghz effective speed.

This gives us almost another 200 points.

After a little digging in the settings, we unlock the full range for overclocking.

At this point, we are able to get another full gigahertz out of the Dual 2060 Super before we run into artifacting, so we settle on 16,500 MHz as our final speed, quite the jump over the stock 14,000 MHz.

This gains us another 100 points overall.

Last but not least is the core. We are able to add 100 MHz before we run into random crashes.

This lets the core boost up to 2130Mhz with it averaging around 2100Mhz most of the time.

Our final score jumps another 200 points, quite impressive!

Asus’s Dual RTX 2060 Super is made for two things, kicking some rear and chewing bubble gum, and it’s all out of gum. It’s easy to think of the 2060 super cards as a rebrand of last year’s 2070, but the Dual 2060 Super ran most of them over in the charts and was within the margin of error on the last few. If that wasn’t enough, Asus left a ton of performance on the table for those willing to go get it. Given the near-silent operation and cool temps, The Dual RTX 2060 Super makes a Super strong case for the masses with its relatively modest 430 price tag.

Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO Review

The RTX 2060 Super isn’t quite the bargain as its non-super equivalent or AMD’s Radeon RX 5700, but still offers an excellent Quad HD performance as well as the exciting ray tracing technology.

Key Specifications

What is the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO?

The Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO is Asus’s third-party version of Nvidia’s RTX 2060 Super, an upgraded edition of the original RTX 2060.

Coming in the wake of AMD’s new Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 TX, the new RTX 2060 Super very much feels like a reaction from Nvidia, possibly spooked by the excellent value the new Navi-based graphics processors offer.

The new RTX 2060 Super should offer performance that not only supersedes the previous RTX 2060 from six months ago, but also sees off the fresh challenge from AMD.

The Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO is an incredibly large graphics card, so it might not be the best fit for small cases

While the only version we’ve been able to get our mitts on so far is the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO, it shares the same design and many of the core specs announced by Nvidia, and supports Nvidia’s current trump card feature – real-time ray tracing.

asus, dual, geforce, 2060, super

Of course, be aware the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO is more powerful and more expensive than the Founders Edition RTX 2060 Super, so don’t take this review as a complete reflection on Nvidia’s own vanilla version.

Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO – Design, specifications and technology

What are the main differences between the ready salted RTX 2060 from earlier in the year, and the newer generation of RTX 2060 Super cards?

On paper, very little. Below is a quick table with the basic specs of the Founders Edition RTX 2060 we reviewed earlier in the year, reference spec for RTX 2060 Super cards from Nvidia, and the official specs of the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO. We also included the specs for the new AMD Radeon RX 5700:

RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO RTX 2060 Founders Edition AMD Radeon RX 5700
Architecture Turing Turing Turing Navi
Base clock speed 1470MHz 1500MHz 1365MHz 1605MHz
Boost clock speed 1650MHz 1725MHz 1680MHz 1905MHz
Video RAM 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 6GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6
Memory bandwidth 448 GB/s 448 GB/s 336 GB/s 448 GB/s
Price £379 £453 £329 £330

Overall, this compares well with the RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition, the only difference being the higher clock speeds.

Compare the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO to Nvidia’s standard RTX 2060 though, and you get a boost in vRAM, which is useful if you want to play games with DirectX 12 and, in theory, play games in 4K with ray-tracing and DLSS turned on. I say ‘in theory’ because if you want a GPU for 4K gaming, then you’re reading the wrong review – you’ll want our RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti reviews for that.

On paper, the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO doesn’t compare too favourably to the AMD Radeon RX 5700, which all of the RTX 2060 Super cards will all be competing against. While these figures will depend on the games you’re playing and the rig you’re running the GPU in, both the base and boost clock speeds are higher on the AMD Radeon RX 5700.

Of course, the RTX 2060 Super has the advantage of ray tracing over the AMD cards, thanks to its Turing architecture which boasts Tensor Cores that boosts the performance of the technology.

The dual-fan system ensures the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO rarely becomes concerningly hot, maximising overclocking potential

Numbers aside, what other features and specifications does the Asus RTX 2060 Super Evo OC have?

The first thing to mention is that the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO is big – it measures 267 x 118 x 58mm, and features a chunky aluminium backplate designed to help stop the primary circuit board, trace pathways and other precious components from flexing and breaking.

It has a 2.7-slot footprint, meaning that in practical terms, the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO will take up three slots on your motherboard. While it’s a big beast, Asus says its leveraged this size to pack in heatsink fins, which in theory gives you more overclocking headroom. Speaking of overclocking and cooling, the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO features two ‘axial tech’ fans, which have longer fan blades than previous designs to help keep everything cool.

Possibly inspired by a former member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Asus’s ‘0dB technology’ is also on board here – this is a feature which will see those axial fans slow to a halt when the GPU core temperature drops below 55°C, meaning things will be a little quieter during less intensive moments.

The Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO lacks a USB-C port, but does feature an older DVI-D connection instead

In terms of connections, there are two HDMI 2.0b ports and two DisplayPort 1.4s on here, along with a single DVI-D port. There’s one 8-pin PCIe connection for your power needs – make sure you’ve got the right cable to hand before shelling out for this.

Aesthetically, it’s quite easy on the eye – the metal backplate gives it a chunky, hulking look, and there’s the usual Asus branding on the side, along with a diagonal coloured LED strip. At the time of writing, I wasn’t able to get this to play nicely with the Asus Aura Sync software, so I couldn’t make that light strip glow in tandem with the Corsair RAM, but that might be down to the fact we picked up this review sample ahead of release.

Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO – Ray tracing and DLSS

Real-time ray tracing and the separate-but-related anti-aliasing technology DLSS (deep-learning super sampling) are two of the standout features of the entire 20 Series line of Nvidia graphics cards. But in terms of actual performance, they’re something of a mixed bag.

Real-time ray tracing more or less does what it says on the tin: it simulates, in real time, virtual light sources in game environments illuminating and reflecting off objects, sprites and other game elements in a manner designed to mimic real light sources, whether that’s fluorescent light tubes, flickering candles or the sun.

It’s a visually stunning trick, but it’s also a very computationally intensive process – to the point we saw huge frame rate drops of around 25ps on Battlefield 5 with the resolution set to Quad HD.

DXR off DXR on, DLSS on DXR on, DLSS off
Battlefield 5 frame rates 80 65 55

Here’s where DLSS is supposed to come in. This is a feature which (provided the game you’re playing supports it and the resolution of the display you’re using is compatible) will counteract that big frame rate dip.

When activating DLSS, we saw the frame rate climb up to 65fps. That’s still not quite enough of an improvement for the performance to return to normal, but it’s still a welcome boost. The big issue here though, is that DLSS seems to slightly tarnish the visual quality of a game, with more blurred edges and less detailed textures. With ray tracing activated, you’re going to have make the tough choice to prioritize either the performance or the graphics.

There’s no doubt ray tracing looks sensational, but if you’re stoked about this then you really need to turn your attention to more powerful cards in the 20 Series – again, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti – and pick up a big, high-resolution monitor in order to get the most out of the technology.

Even then, ray tracing is still in its early stages with just a few titles currently supporting it including Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus and Battlefield 5.

The pro argument for ray tracing is that support for the technology will almost definitely grow in the coming years, especially w ith both the Xbox Two and PS5 confirmed to be flaunting it. The likes of Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs Legion are just two examples of upcoming games confirmed to feature ray tracing, with plenty more likely to follow throughout 2020.

Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO – Performance

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super is – just as its moniker suggests – a specced-up version of the standard RTX 2060 graphics card. That said, its benchmark results are actually closer to the RTX 2070.

The RTX 2060 Super card has been designed to play games at a Quad HD resolution. While running games in 4K is technically possible with modern AAA titles, you’ll only be able to achieve respectable frame rates after playing around with the graphics settings. It’s a different story with games released a number of years ago though, as running Dirt Rally on the RTX 2060 Super saw the frame rate coast past 60fps with the resolution set to 4K.

Judging from the benchmark results, the closest competitor to the RTX 2060 Super is clearly the AMD Radeon RX 5700. There’s rarely much between the cards in terms of performance, but with the former boasting ray tracing and the latter being slightly cheaper, your buying decision is likely going to come down to how keen you are for realistic light rendering technology.

I tested the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO graphics card for this test, which has higher clock speeds than a Founders Edition RTX 2060 Super, so expect the benhmark results to reflect these higher specs.

To ensure a fair test, I benchmarked every graphics card on the same computer rig. This means all the other components – including CPU, SSD and RAM – remained consistent throughout. Have a look at the components we used below:

Each game used for the benchmark testing was also carefully considered. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and The Division 2 were chosen as examples of GPU-intensive titles, with the former optimised for Nvidia drivers and the latter for AMD. Dirt Rally, meanwhile, was selected to represent games launched a number of years back and don’t demand as much GPU resources.

ASUS RTX 2060 l Applying Thermal Paste l OC Edition

For every benchmark test, I picked the top graphics preset setting, while disabling features such as Vsync which can influence the frame rate based on the refresh rate of the monitor. Look below for all the results:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

With Shadow of the Tomb Raider optimised for Nvidia cards, I expected the RTX 2060 Super to boast an advantage over AMD’s offering. In reality, the opposite happened. The RX 5700 posted superior results at every resolution despite being cheaper. That said, the difference became smaller and smaller when I dialled up the resolution and heightened the graphics settings.

But with Quad HD being the main FOCUS for these cards, Nvidia can revel in the fact the RTX 2060 Super’s 64fps benchmark result only lagged 4fps behind the RX 5700 while also flaunting the ray tracing ace card.

The most impressive aspect of these results is how significantly they’ve improved since the standard RTX 2060, with a 16fps increase at a Quad HD resolution. With the RTX 2060 Super only costing £50 more than the standard RTX 2060, the majority of folk may well be tempted to go for a Super upgrade.

Lastly, the RTX 2060 Super saw an average 33fps score when running games in 4K. This suggests this Super card is not capable of comfortably running games in Ultra HD when playing AAA games, which comes as no surprise.

Rather bizarrely, the RTX 2060 Super graphics cards excelled with The Division 2, edging out the RX 5700 at every resolution and even saw a superior Full HD result compared to the RTX 2070. I’m not sure why this is the case, especially since The Division 2 is optimised for AMD, but it does prove the RTX 2060 Super is capable of beating the competition with select games.

The 63fps average when playing The Division 2 in Quad HD is superb, and a big contrast to the RTX 2060 which only managed 53fps. It’s only a 10fps difference, but by exceeding the 60fps mark hints the Super variant is more future-proofed for upcoming GPU-intensive games, such as Cyberpunk 2077.

Planning on playing The Division 2 in Full HD instead? The RTX 2060 Super looks to be the best card out of the four for that – with a mighty impressive 91fps score. That result outperforms the RTX 2060 by 14fps, the RX 5700 by 8fps and even the RTX 2070 by 5fps.

There’s no surprise the RTX 2060 Super isn’t suited to 4K gaming here though, as upping the resolution to this standard will see the frame rate freefall to 33fps. If you want to play modern AAA games in Ultra HD, you’re going to have to spend a lot more money.

Dirt Rally emphasises how close the performance is between the RTX 2060 Super and the AMD RX 5700, with the former card taking the lead for 4K performance, and the latter regaining the advantage when scaling the resolution down to Full HD.

That said, there’s little reason to dive too deep into these differences, as all of the frame rates here are so high you’ll get an excellent and smooth performance whichever card you plump for. Plus, the difference in frame rates are so marginal you probably won’t be able to notice the difference between the two cards.

Achieving a stonking 80fps frame rate average for Dirt Rally when upping the resolution to 4K, these results suggest the RTX 2060 Super can play the majority of games released a number of years ago in Ultra HD. This doesn’t make the RTX 2060 Super a 4K graphics card, but at least you’ll get some stunning visuals when playing through your backlog of old games.

asus, dual, geforce, 2060, super

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

The 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra benchmark software is great for testing the raw performance of a graphics card, providing a rough estimate of the GPU muscle of each graphics card. Of course, this is more of a reference than a real-time performance analysis, with in-game benchmark results offering a more realistic view on performance, but it’s still interesting nevertheless.

The benchmark score of 5265 backed up my suggestion that the RTX 2060 Super is closer in terms of performance to the RTX 2070 than the RTX 2060. It also showed how little difference in performance there is between the RTX 2060 Super and the RX 5700, despite the latter being cheaper by a fair margin.

The RTX Super at least owns the bragging rights for power consumption, as it saw a peak figure of 299.1 watts while running the Fire Strike Ultra benchmark, which undercuts the RX 5700 result of 327.6 watts. How important is this? Not really much at all, as long as your PSU can handle such requirements.

Impressively, the RTX 2060 Super (65 °C) actually has a lower peak temperature than the RTX 2060 (66 °C) despite the increased performance power. This is one area where the AMD Radeon RX 5000 Series has struggled, with the RX 5700 XT seeing a slightly concerning peak temperature of 80 °C.

Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO – Overclocking

Aside from ray tracing support, the RTX 2060 Super has one noticeable advantage over its AMD rival and that’s the dual-fan system. This design choice means the Nvidia card is better equipped to cool down the card when things get too hot for comfort, which consequently gifts the Super card an improved overclocking performance.

While I was only able to achieve a 100MHz overclock before performance became unstable, this resulted in a 16.8 frame rate boost for the benchmark software Unigine Heaven, which is very impressive. What’s more, the temperature never exceeded 64°C during my overclocking tests, so there’s little worry of components getting roasted with the clock speeds boosted.

With such marginal performance differences between the RTX 2060 Super and the RX 5700, this overclocking potential could give Nvidia the edge in this face off, as long as you’re comfortable with fiddling around with your GPU’s settings. Bear in mind though, I’ve been testing the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 Super Evo OC graphics card, which is purpose-built for overclocking, so don’t expect the same performance if you buy a Founders Edition RTX 2060 Super instead.

Should I buy the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO?

The RTX 2060 Super is a more powerful version of the already superb RTX 2060, while the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO on test here is even more specced-up than the Founders Edition RTX 2060 Super with improved clock speeds.

This is a great example of “powerful isn’t always better”, though, as the increased cost towers above the price of both the standard RTX 2060 and AMD’s RX 5700, losing the card’s bargain status in the process.

You’ll want the cheaper RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition instead of the Asus model if you’re not fussed about overclocking

Because of this price, the only legitimate reason you should choose the Asus Dual RTX 2060 Super O8G-EVO over the AMD RX 5700 is for ray tracing and overclocking potential. There’s no question that ray tracing jazzes up video game visuals with improved lighting, shadow and reflection effects, but I’m not convinced the technology is currently worth the £123 price difference.

I’d personally argue there’s not enough games that support ray tracing to make the added cost worthwhile, but you could counter that by saying it’s important to ensure your card is future proofed.

With that all said, if you have a stubborn allegiance to Nvidia you’ll still be getting a great graphics card for Quad HD gaming with the RTX 2060 Super, especially if you get this third-party Asus model which is primed for overclocking.

Verdict

If you’d rather pick up a graphics card that’s future proofed for ray tracing support instead of cheaper, all-purpose card for Quad HD gaming, then pick up an RTX 2060 Super – otherwise, you’re best off saving your money and going for a Radeon RX 5700 instead.

The ROG (Republic of Gamers) moniker also covers a series of products that are a step above the standard/reference products. STRIX is the second part that essentially describes products that are designed for cool and quiet running. These have been pretty popular products with enthusiasts who are able to spend a little extra money to get the features they want out of a card. These products are over-engineered in terms of components and cooling to provide an experience that should extend well above what reference designs can deliver.

The Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G that we are covering today is a card that currently is priced at 419, which is well above the MSRP of a generic RTX 2060 (and with the RTX SUPER launch this must assuredly come down – Ed.). It features an overclocked core, but the memory is left at standard speed. Further discussion of the benefits of the card will follow.

Product Specifications

  • Graphics Engine: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
  • Video Memory: GDDR6 6GB
  • Engine Clock:
  • OC Mode – GPU Boost Clock : 1860 MHz. GPU Base Clock : 1395 MHz
  • Gaming Mode (Default) – GPU Boost Clock : 1830 MHz. GPU Base Clock : 1365 MHz
  • HDMI Output : x 2 (Native) (HDMI 2.0b)
  • Display Port : x 2 (Native) (DisplayPort 1.4)
  • HDCP Support : Yes (2.2)
  • Maximum Display Support: 4
  • 1 x ROG Velcro Hook Loop
  • 1 x CD
  • 1 x Quick Guide
  • 11.81 ” x 5.2 ” x 1.97 ” Inch
  • 30 x 13.2 x5 Centimeter

Manufacturer Description

“ The ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 empowers NVIDIA’s latest GPU with a serious cooling solution, setting the stage for high-stakes gameplay. An automated production process ensures reliability, and tried and true Wing-blade fans let Turing’s performance shine. And with an arsenal of utilities that allow you to customize and tweak this powerful hardware, you call the shots. “

The Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G Card

This is the overclocked version of the STRIX RTX 2060 which pushes maximum boost clocks to 1860 MHz as compared to the standard 1680 MHz that NVIDIA specifies. The board has 6 GB of GDDR6 clocked at 14 Gbps (or 7000 MHz, depending on what measurement you apply). This memory is on a 192 bit bus rather than featuring 8 GB of memory on a 256 bit bus as seen on the RTX 2070. The 2060 and 2070 parts both share the same silicon, but the 2060 is partially disabled. The 2060 has a total of 1920 CUDA cores as compared to the 2304 of the 2070. The 1920 CUDA cores is identical to the specifications of the older GTX 1070. This should have been the biggest clue to me about how the card would perform in a variety of applications.

The Turing architecture increases overall performance per clock compared to the older Pascal GPUs, and it also adds the RTX features mentioned above. The die size of the RTX silicon is quite a bit larger than the previous GTX generation, even though it is made on an optimized 12 nm process from TSMC. The extra RTX features consume a respectable amount of die space with the included tensor cores and other hardware to accelerate the additional functionality. We also see a bit of a clockspeed boost going to the new Turing architecture due to both process and design decisions.

The biggest single feature of the card is the cooling. This is a 2 slot affair that features 3 variable speed fans. It is a significant chunk of aluminum fins and nickel-plated copper heat pipes/GPU plate. The fans themselves are a Asus patented design which features finlets on the end of the blades to increase pressure/airflow as well as potentially cut down on noise. To help support this cooler there is a front metal frame that surrounds many of the components as well as a large, stiff back plate with strategically placed holes to improve airflow around hot components.

Asus has boosted the power delivery with their own custom design. It features more power phases and higher quality components as compared to the reference NVIDIA design. In theory this should allow the GPU to clock higher for longer with more adequate power and cooling. The reference RTX 2060 features a single 8 pin PCI-E power connector while the Asus ROG STRIX unit has both a 6 pin and 8 pin connection.

There is a switch that enables either a standard firmware setting which provides stronger fan response as well as a Quiet mode that can lower the fan profiles for moderate gaming. This does very little to reduce performance in Quiet mode, but once the GPU heats up then it falls back on the more aggressive fan profiles. If a user tends to play less graphics intensive games then this is a good option to keep fan noise down. Neither setting has any particularly detrimental effect on overclocking.

The back edge of the card features two external fan headers as well as the Aura RGB Header for external control. RGB is now pretty much standard on most enthusiast cards. It can be disabled by a button right next to the vBIOS switch. There are “light tubes” throughout the front side of the fan design which will display whatever color the individual desires in flashing/strobing/solid motifs.

Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G Top

Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G Profile 2

Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G BIOS Switch

Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G Headers

Connectivity is provided by two HDMI 2.0 as well as two DisplayPort 1.4 ports. The card can drive four monitors at once, but users will obviously have to mix and match connections if they choose to use 3 or 4 monitor configurations. Surround gaming is seemingly being pushed aside on the lower end cards as users typically like to utilize 3 identical monitors with the same connection due to potential G-SYNC use. This is not a killer in terms of functionality, as the availability of ultra-widescreen displays is very common and affordable. I myself moved from a triple screen display to a single ultra-wide with a resolution of 3440×1440 and have been quite happy with that transition.

Included in the software bundle is the GPU Tweak II overclocking and monitoring utility. This is a handy way to monitor clockspeeds, fan speed, and temperature to optimize your gaming experience. The software works very well to easily adjust clockspeeds and fan profiles. The only error I had is that it reports GPU Power Target settings going up to 125%. The cards I used with this application would go nowhere near that high in reality. Less expensive cards might go to around 106%, but the program would report that it could be set to 125%.

The packaging with the card is a highly protective one. Stiff cardboard surrounds a large amount of packing. The card is nestled in the middle with an anti-static bag. The box contains the quick manual, a driver CD that also includes GPU Tweak II and a full version of XSplit Gamecast, as well as several velcro cable ties. These are not exactly the pack-ins of yesterday that could contain multiple cable solutions and adapters as well as bundles of free software and games. Still, Asus does provide some extra value with the XSplit software and the cable ties.

A Personal History of RTX

Last year the release of RTX products was met with nearly a collective “meh”. I was part of the group that had read some of the reviews and came away thinking, “That’s it?” Performance did not seem to match well with the that the cards were being offered at. The highest performing part was the RTX 2080 Ti which was introduced at a pretty eye watering 1200 US. That is Titan territory for what is still considered a desktop/gaming card. During the past 9 months we have not seen the drop at all, but we have seen the introduction of the lower end RTX 2060 this past January and the non-RTX Turing based cards a few months later.

Benchmarks from last year did not seem all that impressive to me. My impression was that the RTX 2070 was only slightly faster than the GTX 1070 OC cards. When the RTX 2060 was released it was again only faster than the GTX 1060. Sure, it added RTX features to the mix, but there were still relatively few games that supported those. Also, the RTX performance penalty was pretty hefty, though it could be offset by utilizing DLSS (if the game supported it).

I never purchased any of these cards for myself as I simply thought they were not worth it. This old MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z card that was overclocked to nearly 2 GHz was going to be perfectly fine, as the only reasonable upgrade for me would be the RTX 2080. At nearly 700 US that was just not an option for my penny pinching heart. I was then given the opportunity to review an RTX 2060. Originally it was supposed to be a GTX 1660, but mistakes were made and I was sent the 2060. I’m actually quite glad it happened that way. I was not really prepared for what I discovered when actually testing these cards by myself. The numbers are far better than what I remembered from reading previous reviews.

Has this changed my mind about RTX? Yes, it has. Do I think the price is justified? Well, mostly. As I am writing this review we are closing in on two major GPU launches from AMD and NVIDIA with their respective RX 5700 series and the Super cards. The pricing will have to change, but I do not have any new information I can share here that will change what my impressions are here at the end of June, 2019. Once we receive more information I will revisit the price/performance ratio that currently exists for this card.

Did I expect to have as much fun with this card as what I did? Frankly, no. I was expecting less than GTX 1070 performance for a price that was more than what 1070 cards could be had for. I’m glad that mistakes were made and I could experience this product for myself. I really was not expecting it to perform as well as it did.

Test Setup

I have decided to shake a few things up with this review. Instead of testing at multiple resolutions I thought I would see how these midrange cards can handle ultra quality settings while trying to push a 144 Hz 1080P monitor. Hitting 60 fps on a modern title at this resolution is something that the RX 570 and GTX 1050 and above cards can do, but pushing upwards to 144 fps is a lot more of a struggle than one would think. The availability of quality 24” monitors featuring 144 Hz operation with IPS and VA panels along with FreeSync is high with often found below 250. I enabled FreeSync/G-SYNC on the tested cards with the Acer ED242QR which currently retails for 180, but is often for sale around 160.

The test machine is powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 2600X. This has more than enough horsepower to push these cards to high framerates at even 1080P settings. The motherboard is the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC along with 2 x 8GB XPG 3200 memory from ADATA being run at 3200 MHz with timings of 16-18-18. Storage is comprised of a 250 GB OCZ Agility 3 drive for OS, 2 TB Hitachi 7200 RPM drive for extended storage, and the Intel 660P 2TB NVMe drive for gaming/benchmarking installation. Power supply is a Mushkin Enhanced Joule 1000 watt. Windows 10 Pro was used as the OS and updated to version 1903. NVIDIA cards were powered by the 430.86 drivers while the AMD cards utilize 19.6.2.

The RTX 2060 was tested against the MSI GTX 1070 Gaming Z, MSI RX Vega 56 OC, and the MSI RX 580 Armor. All three are overclocked versions of those chips. These make for an interesting comparison as the RX 580 is often found well below 200 and is considered a good deal for 1080P gaming. The Vega 56 is the last generation midrange card from AMD that can now be found for around 279 when on sale. The 1070 Gaming Z was the highest overclocked offering of that model from MSI and originally retailed for around 460.

Benchmark Results

Unigine Heaven 4.0

This is a much older benchmark, but I was curious how geometry/tessellation performance is with the latest GPUs. This is the one benchmark that at 1080P with tessellation disabled actually went above 144 fps with two of the cards. Ultra preset enabled with 4X AA.

Unigine Superposition

The Unity Engine is highlighted by this much newer benchmark. It delivers quite stunning visuals and at the Extreme setting can hammer even the highest end cards. I tested the Medium and Extreme presets at 1080P.

This really is a good looking benchmark with some excellent material and lighting effects.

All of the cards except the RX 580 are performing very well, with the 2060 taking a commanding lead. At extreme settings we see framerates drop pretty dramatically. The 2060 is still pretty smooth with minimum rates at 28, but when the screws are applied we see the RX Vega 56 take 2nd place from the 1070. The RX 580 is getting close to being a slideshow.

DiRT Rally 2.0

The true successor to the surprise racing hit DiRT Rally features upgraded graphics, more advanced physics and handling, and greatly improved lighting effects. The game has a built-in benchmark that can be enabled by adding the variable.benchmark to the executable/shortcut. Ultra settings were enabled for the test.

None of the cards are sitting anywhere near 144 fps. The 2060 again takes a commanding lead, while the Vega 56 again grabs second. The Vega and 1070 both exhibit some pretty low minimum framerates while the 2060 never gets below 58. This test was done several times for each card and they exhibited these characteristics on each run. The poor RX 580 is well behind, but at least is still playable for the most part, but minimum framerates drop pretty low.

Far Cry 5

While not the absolute latest iteration of the Far Cry series, it still uses the same Dunia engine as Far Cry: New Dawn. The built-in benchmark was used with Ultra settings enabled.

The cards are still mostly bunched together, but the 2060 again takes first place with a nearly 10% lead. Even the RX 580 is doing well by staying around 70 average. Minimum framerates are all pretty acceptable here with the 2060 hanging on with the lead. In future titles the lack of a full 8 GB of memory might come back to haunt it. We are already creeping up towards 6 GB of used video memory in many of these latest titles.

The Division 2

The sequel to The Division takes place during Summer in Washington, DC rather than Winter in NYC. This makes the color palette far more interesting than its predecessor. DC is meticulously recreated in this very ambitious title. The built-in benchmark was used at the Ultra preset.

This is a huge win for the 2060 over what should be a pretty competitive 1070. The Vega 56 holds its own, but the 2060 is just miles ahead in this particular benchmark. The RX 580 again brings up the rear.

Battlefield V

The latest Battlefield installment on the latest version of Frostbite. Though Johan Andersson and some of the principle software engineers have gone to start up a new company, the technology still pushes hardware. It is also highly tuned so that it plays smoothly on a wide variety of configurations. The Ultra preset was enabled and a manual runthrough of the first single player episode was recorded using FRAPS.

For the first time we see the 2060 take second place to the Vega 56. The two are pretty close together, but Vega edges it out. The 1070 is barely edging out the RX 580. Results were consistent across several tests. I did notice some unpleasant stuttering in certain cutscenes with the RX 580, but in actual gameplay it smoothed right out. All of the cards performed well and provided a good experience.

Power Consumption

One of the areas where NVIDIA has had an exceptional lead over AMD is that of power efficiency. The performance of their architectures from Kepler on proved to be very high, all the while doing it without extreme power consumption. AMD’s GCN architecture was pretty good for the time, but it was seemingly unable to scale up while improving power characteristics. So while AMD was running towards 300 watt TDP chips, NVIDIA was staying under 200 watts for most of their desktop chips. Power was measured from the back of the system power supply so it includes all subsystems and not just the GPU.

The results here are not entirely unexpected. At idle all of the cards go into a similar low power state. There is no real winner as the differences are not significant enough. At load the GTX 1070 has the lowest power consumption of the four tested cards at 279. The RTX 2060 chip is pretty large and features more potential functional units, but it comes in at a still pretty reasonable 310 watts. RX Vega is pretty power hungry. While it benefits from lower power HBM2 memory, the chip itself is consuming a lot of power and pumping out some serious heat. The RX 580 sits at 324 watts, but is consistently about half the performance of the RTX 2060 in the above games and benchmarks.

The RTX 2060 achieves a good boost in performance and a significant increase in capabilities without breaking the bank when it comes to power consumption as compared to the previous generation of NVIDIA chips.

Overclocking, Temperatures, and Sound

Expectations for overclocking were very high for this card. The reworked VRMs, the dual power connections, the extra cooling, and a Power Target that approached 120% as well as voltage modifications promised that this card should exist quite happily above 2000 MHz, if not approaching stable 2100 MHz speeds. Sadly, these promises were mostly hollow.

Without overclocking the card at all I was seeing speeds bursting to around 1920 MHz, which is 60 MHz higher than the stated maximum boost clock. The card ran around that speed regardless of the application or how long the application was played. Raising the Power Target to its maximum saw the burst go up to 1960 MHz while extended play resulted in speeds dropping to around 1940 MHz and staying there.

Raising the voltage allowed the burst to achieve 2000 MHz without touching the clock offset and speeds normalizing to 1960 MHz while under load. Pushing the offset as high as it could go without instantly freezing the system did allow speeds to hit 2100 MHz under boost, but very quickly those speeds would drop below 2000 MHz. The highest speed I was able to achieve consistently and under load was between 1980 MHz and 1990 MHz. It would simply not stay above 2 GHz.

Temperatures would go from 42C at idle and max out around 68C at full load and overclocking. At stock speeds/target/voltage the card would hit around 63C with the fans being audible, but certainly not overpowering. Under overclocking and that 68C temperature the fans barely made much more noise. I did not see temps go over 70C at any time during testing and monitoring. The cooling solution on this card is highly effective and the fans are not overly loud or annoying.

I was able to get a few more MHz out of the already overclocked design, and heat and noise were never problems during that experience. Memory overclocking proved to be ineffective. Raising the memory speeds did not show any appreciable performance differences even by going to 7200 MHz. The monitor reported that clocks did indeed go up, but it simply had no positive performance impact. Users can certainly experiment, but my suggestion here is to leave memory clocks alone and FOCUS on GPU core speed.

Conclusion

I came away from testing the RTX 2060 with a much greater respect for the card. I did not honestly expect it to be consistently faster than the previous 1070 which shares the same number of CUDA cores and relative clockspeed. The new RTX features are slowly being integrated into many titles with perhaps one of the more interesting twists is that NVIDIA released a RTX version of Quake II.

While the RTX features do not turn Quake II into a modern looking title, the changes in rendering with regards to light and effects is subtle, yet powerful to experience. It makes it an entirely new game in many ways. Watching light stream through Windows as the sun starts to set is beautiful to behold. Reflections, water effects, and materials upgrades also contribute to a fully revitalized game that is a fun trip down memory lane. While not nearly worth the price of admission into the RTX world, it shows the promise of this type of hybrid rendering which can have dramatic effects on not only the visuals, but potentially the mechanics of the game.

The 2060 is billed as a 1440P solution. On a 60 Hz monitor this is perfectly reasonable. It might be the best option for those looking at these 1080P, high refresh rate gaming monitors. Not only can it push framerates in a lot of games, but it supports G-SYNC compatible (eg. FreeSync) monitors. It also is able to apply RTX effects at 1080P resolutions without causing rates to go below 30 fps.

Asus has made a very good card the keeps extremely cool. It is not able to overclock as well as I had hoped, but it never broke 70C in an office that was at a pretty constant 20C. Users in hotter climates can expect higher temperatures, but it did very well under the circumstances I tested it in. Not everyone likes RGB, so Asus has given us the option of turning it off to go into “Stealth Mode”. It was extremely stable in performance and when tweaking power it was able to sustain near 2 GHz clockspeeds without excessive heating or fan noise.

The bundle with the card is not exactly inspiring, but it does include a few pieces of software that can be useful. The packaging keeps the card very safe and the box art is certainly pleasant to look at, but ultimately will make its way to a shelf or the recycle bin.

The price is a sticking point. The card is listed as of today for 419.99 on most sites. This is a very large increase from the 349 MSRP of the standard RTX 2060. Then again, it is clocked significantly higher than the standard RTX 2060 and approaches base RTX 2070 type performance. When looking from that angle the user is getting a pretty reasonable deal considering the 2070’s 499 MSRP. It does not quite reach that performance and users get the memory bus hit as well as 2 GB less memory. We also do not yet know the pricing of the “Super” products that will launch soon. For now 419 is reasonable, but it is going to have to adjust to stay reasonable in the face of the RX 5700 and Super releases.

Asus makes a very solid and appealing card, but the user pays a price for that luxury. It is very flexible and it certainly is fast for the price range. It is an attractive card that packs in the cooling power, all the while keeping noise to a minimum. I can find very few faults with the card other than the price. I will be revisiting it when we see the release of these new cards in the next week. If Asus is able to lower the price, then it will continue to be a compelling buy for the enthusiast not wanting to spend much more than 350. In a vacuum it is really an outstanding card in terms of quality and performance. Let’s just hope that as the RTX 2060 continues, it will be adjusted down in price to be more competitive with the latest offerings.

One last point to make is that the 2060 and 2070 parts do not support the NVLINK functionality. Users cannot double up these cards in SLI as that is only reserved for the RTX 2080 and above parts. This is not necessarily a bad thing as multi-GPU rendering is slowly being phased out in most applications. It is rare to see new titles coming out with multi-GPU support and it sometimes takes a while for drivers to be released that will optimize that type of usage. Once SLI was a value proposition, now it seems far too expensive to effectively implement in any reasonable number of games. Perhaps we will see scalability come to the forefront again with improvements in software and hardware implementations. I would not necessarily bet on it though.

In closing the Asus ROG STRIX RTX 2060 O6G is a very good card with a justifiable price point. The hardware implementation is extremely solid and high performing for this class of card. It can easily replace a GTX 1070 and give the user a noticeable boost in performance all the while delivering on the new RTX features.

Update: This article was written before the Super release last week, so some factors have changed in that time. As good as this card is, the performance it provides at nearly 420 does not justify the price in the face of a stock 2060 Super. Yes, it is a superior build and has outstanding cooling, but we are not that far away from non-reference designs of the 2060 Super which provide these same features with a big uptick in performance that will debut around this price point. Asus has made a great card, but we need to see some serious price reductions in the 370 range before I would recommend buying it. Even at that point, we must ask if spending an extra 30 is a better idea? Regardless, the Strix card is an impressive product, but adjustments must be made.

First Look: All the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Cards You Can Buy

Nvidia’s most-affordable GeForce RTX graphics cards are just now hitting the street. Let’s take a look at the 20-plus models slated for the U.S. so far.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I’ve always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know.

At CES, Nvidia unveiled the Founders Edition of its much-anticipated GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card. These new cards use the same TU106 GPU core found in Nvidia’s more powerful RTX 2070, and the RTX 2060, like the others in the RTX family to date, will support advanced features such as the ultra-realistic lighting technology known as ray tracing.

Priced at 349.99, the GeForce RTX 2060 is notably more expensive than Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 (which these days is selling in the mid-200s), but the increase in performance, paired with the card’s new abilities, make it an excellent solution for those aiming ahead of the curve for 2019 games.

Beyond the Founders Edition, Nvidia’s board partners are, as usual, rolling out new boards based on the GPU at the same time. Most of these new cards will be released later this month and are going up for pre-sale this week, so without further ado, let’s have a look at what the partner crowd has cooked up for the RTX 2060. (We’ll keep adding shopping links as they appear from resellers; only some are listed now from the Neweggs and Amazons of the world.)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition

Produced and sold directly by Nvidia, the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition serves as both a reference card for OEMs, on which they can base their own designs, and as a solid, well-rounded card in its own right. The thermal solution used by Nvidia on its Founders Edition graphics cards hasn’t changed across the RTX line. The Founders Edition cooler has two fans and looks rather industrial and modern, here with “RTX 2060” etched in the center. The spine of the card is emblazoned with “GeForce RTX.”

The Founders Edition comes with its 1,920 CUDA cores clocked at 1,365MHz, with a boost clock of 1,680MHz. Nvidia opted to use GDDR6 memory on the GeForce RTX 2060, which is clocked at 14Gbps. The card carries a 160-watt TDP and requires an eight-pin PCI Express connector to supply enough power to the card to work. It also has a 42 power-phase design.

Asus ROG Strix RTX 2060 OC Gaming Edition

Asus ROG Strix RTX 2060 OC Gaming Edition

Leading Asus’ pack of seven GeForce RTX 2060 graphics cards is the company’s ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 OC Gaming Edition (pictured here), which is followed closely by the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 Advanced Edition (not shown). These two cards, as well as a third card with a somewhat shorter name (“ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming”), are identical to the naked eye. All of these are beefy 2.5-slot graphics cards that have large triple-fan coolers. Under each card’s cooler is a large aluminum heatsink that will also aid in cooling the card’s VRAM, voltage regulation modules (VRMs), and other power-related circuitry. The enclosure is covered in RGB LEDs controlled using Asus’ Aura Sync technology.

At this time, we can’t say for sure how much these cards will differ from each other, as Asus didn’t disclose clock speeds. These will almost certainly come factory-overclocked above Nvidia’s RTX 2060 Founders Edition. Asus also gave these cards a six-pin power connector in addition to the standard eight-pin connector, which will allow plenty of room in its power budget for overclocking. Given their names, size, and features, however, we can tell that these are designed to be the fastest RTX 2060 graphics cards that Asus will offer at launch. (Based on past cards, the ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming will likely be slightly behind the other two.)

Asus GeForce RTX 2060 Dual Fan

Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060

Sliding down the product stack a bit further, Asus also announced three graphics cards that use a dual-fan thermal solution. These three are the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 OC Edition, the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060 Advanced Edition, and the Asus Dual GeForce RTX 2060. These cards have a 2.5-slot design that supports a large aluminum heatsink; Asus claims that this results in a 50 percent increase in surface area. Asus also includes an aluminum backplate that reinforces the PCB and prevents the card from being damaged under the weight of its own thermal hardware.

A single eight-pin PCI Express power connector provides additional power to these cards, which should be more than sufficient, though it also means that these cards won’t have quite as much overclocking headroom as their triple-fan counterparts. The clock speed for these cards is also unknown.

Asus Turbo GeForce RTX 2060

Asus Turbo GeForce RTX 2060

The final RTX 2060 that Asus announced during CES is the Asus Turbo GeForce RTX 2060, which uses a blower-style cooler to vent hot air from the graphics card out the back of the case. The 80mm fan that drives the airflow uses dual ball bearings and is designed for a long lifespan. Asus’ Turbo GeForce RTX 2060 is a true dual-slot card and doesn’t extend into adjacent PCI Express slots like Asus’ dual- and triple-fan RTX 2060 cards. This model also doesn’t come equipped with a metal backplate, but it does have a small RGB strip on the side.

Again, here we see a single eight-pin PCI Express power connector, which fully meets the requirements of powering the RTX 2060 and should have some room left over for overclocking. We know that this card’s base clock is aligned with Nvidia’s Founders Edition at 1,365MHz, but Asus didn’t disclose the boost frequency for the Turbo card, either.

Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 2060 Ultra OC

Colorful iGame GeForce RTX 2060 Ultra OC

Colorful is better known in Asia for its motherboards and graphics cards, but the company has been working to grow its business in other parts of the world, including the U.S. If its goal was to stand out with its iGame GeForce RTX 2060 Ultra OC, then it certainly succeeded. This card doesn’t come with the most powerful thermal solution, nor the highest factory overclock, but it has the highest power limit of all the RTX 2060 graphics cards currently in the works. Two eight-pin PCI Express power connectors work with the PCI Express slot to make for a whopping 375 watts of power available to the card, 75 watts above any competing solution and more than double the Founders Editions TDP.

Details are slim on the card’s other aspects, and we don’t know the quality or number of power phases this card has at its disposal, but if it is well equipped then it may have the highest overclocking potential of all the RTX 2060 graphics cards so far, at least on paper. The card has a long triple-fan cooler that should be suitable for normal operations. If you plan to overclock this one to its limits, however, you may need to upgrade the card with a liquid cooling heatsink.

Out of the box, this card will operate at the reference clock speeds set by Nvidia, but it supports a one-key OC feature that will push the boost clock up a bit, to a modest 1,755MHz. Beyond that, it is up to you.

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC Ultra (and XC Ultra Black)

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC Ultra Black

Top of the line for EVGA in the RTX 2060 market segment will be the GeForce RTX 2060 XC Ultra and GeForce RTX 2060 XC Ultra Black. Don’t let EVGA fool you, though: The Black edition of the card isn’t any darker than its non-Black counterpart. These cards are physically identical, with the Black model featuring a substantially lower boost clock. EVGA was more forthcoming here than some of its competitors in the early going: The XC Ultra will have a boost clock of 1,830MHz, which gives it roughly a 9 percent edge over Nvidia’s Founders Edition. The XC Ultra Black is set to match the Founders Edition, at 1,680MHz.

Both of these graphics cards will benefit from an eight-phase power design that will help keep them stable while overclocking. They may not have quite as much overclocking headroom as Asus’ competing triple-fan GeForce RTX 2060 graphics cards, though, as EVGA used just a single eight-pin PCI Express power connector that caps the card’s power at a maximum of 225 watts. However, as the RTX 2060 has a TDP of 160 watts, this should be plenty of power for most overclockers to play with.

EVGA equipped these cards with its venerable dual-fan cooler. EVGA opted to make the thermal solution longer instead of wider. The cooler extends past the edge of the PCB, but the entire card fits neatly into a conventional two-slot design. Neither of these graphics cards features an aluminum backplate.

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC and XC Black

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC Black

The EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC uses a single-fan thermal solution that makes the card significantly thicker than the XC Ultra. This super-chunky card is 2.75 slots thick, and it fills a full three slots on the case’s rear. A dense aluminum heatsink is responsible for the increase in girth, which should help keep the heat at bay.

This card matches Nvidia’s recommendation and includes six power phases to maintain stable power for the graphics card. The EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 XC comes with a mild factory overclock to its boost frequency, which sits at 1,755MHz and represents an increase of roughly 4.5 percent over the Founders Edition. Similar to the XC Ultra cards, the Black version is identical to its non-Black counterpart, apart from clocks. EVGA clocks its GeForce RTX 2060 XC Black at just 1,680MHz.

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SC

EVGA’s GeForce RTX 2060 SC also uses a single-fan cooler and looks almost exactly the same as the company’s RTX 2060 XC. The only notable difference: the letters “SC” (not “XC”) on the corner of the card’s enclosure. The only notable difference in specs between EVGA’s RTX 2060 XC and RTX 2060 SC lies in their clock speeds. The RTX 2060 SC has a slightly lower boost clock (1,710MHz), a mere 30MHz above Nvidia’s Founders Edition.

EVGA GeForce RTX 2060

No, it’s not the same card again. it just looks the same. At the bottom of EVGA’s RTX 2060 lineup is a simple “EVGA GeForce RTX 2060.” It comes clocked identically to Nvidia’s Founders Edition, which makes it essentially the same as EVGA’s GeForce RTX 2060 XC Black. It was not entirely clear the difference between these two cards at this writing.

Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 2060 Xtreme

Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 2060 Xtreme

Of all the RTX 2060 graphics cards announced at the outset, Gigabyte’s Aorus GeForce RTX 2060 Xtreme looks to be the most power-packed. A key feature of this card is its bulky cooler that extends past the typical dual slots to fill part of a third PCI Express slot. The densely packed cooler has a solid-copper baseplate that makes direct contact to the graphics core and GDDR6 memory chips. A series of copper heatpipes connects to the baseplate and is intertwined with two large aluminum heatsinks. Above the heatsinks sit three 100mm fans.

This card’s power-regulation circuitry consists of eight power phases devoted to the GPU core and two more dedicated to the VRAM. The MOFSETs are also actively cooled. This is the beefiest power design we have seen so far on an RTX 2060, and it should prove beneficial for overclocking. Gigabyte also placed a six-pin PCI Express power connector on this card, in addition to the standard eight-pin connector, which should provide more than enough power to push this graphics card to its limit.

Gigabyte also equipped this card with a metal backplate to strengthen and cool the card, and the card is covered in RGB LEDs. In addition to lights on the card front and side, a prominent Aorus RGB LED is located on the backplate. This is one of the more visually striking features of the card.

The boost frequency is set at 1,845MHz, giving it roughly a 10 percent advantage over Nvidia’s Founders Edition. The VRAM is also clocked slightly higher, at 14,140MHz.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro

Gigabyte equipped its GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro with a somewhat less bulky triple-fan cooler than the one on its Aorus GeForce RTX 2060 Xtreme. This thermal loadout uses three smaller 80mm fans over four composite copper heat pipes and a large aluminum heatsink. This model also doesn’t come with a solid copper baseplate. Instead, the copper heatpipes make direct contact to the GPU core. A metal plate helps to cool the VRAM and MOSFETs. Gigabyte mounts a metal backplate on this card, but it’s noticeably less decorative. RGB LEDs adorn the side.

This card doesn’t benefit from an extra power connector, and as such has a hard power limit of 225 watts. (That should still leave decent headroom for overclocking, though.) Gigabyte went above and beyond in the power department by utilizing a 62 power-phase design, and this card should overclock reasonably well. The GPU core comes factory overclocked to 1,830MHz.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC

On the surface, Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC looks identical to the OC Pro model, but some notable changes are under the enclosure. Instead of four copper heatpipes, this model has just two. These two cards are otherwise identical and even come with the same factory overclock, but the OC Pro model will likely overclock somewhat better and remain somewhat cooler thanks to the additional heatpipe hardware.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Windforce OC

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Windforce OC

Sliding further down Gigabyte’s RTX 2060 line, we see a couple of dual-fan cards, starting with the GeForce RTX 2060 Windforce OC. This graphics card has two copper heatpipes that make direct contact to the GPU core and pass through an aluminum heatsink that is actively cooled by two 100mm fans. No RGB LEDs here, but you do get a metal baseplate. Gigabyte equipped this card with the standard 42 power phases, which means it doesn’t have any major benefits over Nvidia’s Founders Edition on that front. It does come factory overclocked to 1,770MHz, though.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC 6G

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC 6G

This card is similar to the Windforce OC, in that it also uses a thermal solution with two fans and two copper heatpipes. The fans are slightly smaller on this card, at 90mm, but this card maintains the metal backplate. Gigabyte also clocked this card slightly lower (1,755MHz).

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Mini ITX OC

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Mini ITX OC

The last RTX 2060 announced at CES by Gigabyte is the company’s GeForce RTX 2060 Mini ITX OC. This snub-nosed graphics card uses a short dual-slot single-fan thermal solution. The cooler has three copper heatpipes that make direct contact to the GPU core and pass through an aluminum heatsink. The lone 90mm fan is tasked with keeping the card from overheating.

This card also comes overclocked, but the meager 15MHz boost over Nvidia’s Founders Edition will have a negligible impact on performance. This card’s all about the space-saving aspect; it’s just 6.7 inches long.

MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z