Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060: rasterisation performance analysis

How much of a boost over the established 1080p champions?

Review by Richard Leadbetter Technology Editor, Digital Foundry

Updated on 19 Jan 2019

Nvidia's new RTX 2060 is - notionally, at least - a successor to its Pascal-based 1080p champion, the GTX 1060 6GB. I say 'notionally' because in common with the other RTX cards, we're looking at a substantial increase in price from one generation to the next. The GTX 1060 6GB launched in North America with a $250 recommended retail price. Meanwhile, the RTX 2060 is exactly $100 more expensive. So just how much value are you getting for your money over existing offerings in the cheaper price bracket? On this page, you can check out how the RTX 2060 stacks up against the GTX 1060 and AMD's brace of 1080p champions - RX 580 and RX 590.

By and large, gen on gen, your extra 40 per cent of cash translates into a proportionally higher slice of performance. At 1080p, you're generally looking at a 50 to 60 per cent boost to frame-rates, but there are some interesting outliers, with The Witcher 3 delivering a stunning 76 per cent boost at 1080p, rising to 79 per cent at 1440p. Meanwhile, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus really likes the Turing architecture, with a 75 per cent increase from GTX 1060 to RTX 2060. This rises to 92 per cent if you use the Turing-specific variable rate shading feature set to its 'performance' preset. That's a remarkable result, but even the standard 50-60 per cent increase justifies the extra cash - assuming you have the money available, of course.

However, changing the price vs performance equation are the two AMD offerings. The RX 580 appears to be on sale in many locations at the moment, offering excellent value, and frame-rates in line (if not a touch faster) than the GTX 1060. The reason for the discounts is likely the arrival of the RX 590 - a transfer of the 580's Polaris 10 chip to a new 12nm fabrication process, with faster clock speeds to boot. This gives AMD a clear advantage over the GTX 1060 and cuts into the lead delivered by the RTX 2060.

Note that similar to our prior benchmarks, we've tested all of the cards here using a Z390-based PC system running a Core i7 8700K locked to 4.7GHz on all cores and paired with 16GB of 3400MHz GSkill DDR4. All games were run from an SSD. As usual, if you're viewing this page on a desktop or laptop, you can mouse over the bar charts for frame-rates, with a single mouse button press bringing up percentage differentials that are recalculated depending on the GPU you've highlighted.

There's no need for detailed commentary here - the bar charts do all of the talking.