The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB Founders Edition Review: Not Quite Mainstream
by Nate Oh on January 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTClosing Thoughts
As we bring this to a close, we are again revisiting the central themes of the GeForce RTX 20 series across the launches: forward-looking featuresets that are not widely available, premium pricing based on those hardware features, and competition with existing Pascal products due to comparable conventional gaming performance. This time, however, the last two have played out a little differently. Pascal-based GTX 1080, 1070 Ti, and 1070s are not so readily available and/or are at higher prices. And although the price premium pushes the GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB) out of the traditional mainstream home of the x60 part, it puts it firmly in contention against the Radeon RX Vega cards and to a lesser extent the recently-launched Radeon RX 590.
As a whole, in developing Turing and the GeForce RTX 20 series, NVIDIA has invested heavily in hybrid rendering, offering less price-to-performance for conventional gaming than usual for new GPU architectures. This has been compounded by excess Pascal inventory, a result of the cryptocurrency mining demand of the past year or two. The RTX 2060 (6GB) is no exception, and while it is a better price-to-performance offering relative to its older siblings, it’s simply no longer a ‘mainstream’ video card at $350, instead occupying the ‘value-enthusiast’ space.
For conventional gaming, if the RTX 2080 is akin to the GTX 1080 Ti and the RTX 2070 like the GTX 1080, then the RTX 2060 (6GB) truly performs like the GTX 1070 Ti. By the numbers, the RTX 2060 (6GB) is 2-3% faster than the GTX 1070 Ti at 1440p and 1080p, though comparison becomes a wash at 4K. In turn, reference-to-reference the RTX 2060 (6GB) is around 11% faster than the RX Vega 56 at 1440p/1080p, narrowing to 8% at 4K. There are hints that the 6GB framebuffer might be limiting, especially with unexpectedly low 99th percentile framerates at Wolfenstein II in 4K, though nothing to the extent that older 4GB GTX 900 series cards have experienced.
Potential VRAM bottlenecks is something that needs further investigation, but more to the point, this is a $350 card featuring only 6GB VRAM. Now it is admittedly performing 14-15% ahead of the 8GB GTX 1070, a card that at MSRP was a relatively close $379, but it also means that NVIDIA has essentially regressed in VRAM capacity at this price point. In terms of the larger RTX lineup, 6GB is a bit more reasonable progression compared to the 8GB of the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, but it is something to revisit if there are indeed lower-memory cut-down variants of the RTX 2060 on the way, or if games continue the historical path of always needing more framebuffer space. The biggest question here isn't whether it will impact the card right now, but whether 6GB will still be enough even a year down the line.
Generationally, the RTX 2060 (6GB) does bring more to the table, offering roughly 86% of the performance of the RTX 2070 for 70% of the price. Or against its direct predecessor, the GTX 1060 6GB, it’s faster by around 59%. In context, the GTX 1060 6GB was 80-85% faster than the GTX 960 (2GB) at launch, where presently that gap is more along the lines of 2X or more, with increased framebuffer the primary driver. But at $200, the GTX 960 was a true mainstream card, as was the GTX 1060 6GB at its $249 MSRP, despite the $299 Founders Edition pricing.
What makes the $350 pricing at least a bit more reasonable is its Radeon competition. Against RX Vega at its current prices the RTX 2060 (6GB) is near-lethal, so if AMD wants to keep their Vega cards as viable market competitors, they are going to have to reduce prices. Reference-to-reference, the RTX 2060 (6GB) is already bringing around 95% of RX Vega 64 performance, so card pricing will make all the difference. The same goes for the RX 590, whose position in the ‘performance gap’ between the RX Vega 56 and RX 580 is now shared. And alongside potential price changes, there are still the value-adds of game bundles and FreeSync compatibility.
At least, that would have been the straightforward case for AMD if not for yesterday’s announcement of game bundles for RTX cards, as well as ‘G-Sync Compatibility’, where NVIDIA cards will support VESA Adaptive Sync. That driver is due on the same day of the RTX 2060 (6GB) launch, and it could mean the eventual negation of AMD’s FreeSync ecosystem advantage.
Like the RTX 2070, the RTX 2060 (6GB) is less suited as an option for most high-end GTX 10 series owners, and with 6GB VRAM as it’s a little less tempting than it could be as a move up from the GTX 1060 6GB or GTX 980 Ti. The card offers known performance along the lines of the GTX 1070 Ti and at very similar power consumption, but brings better value than existing higher-end RTX 20 series models. And this time, there’s less of a spoiler effect from older Pascal models.
Compared to previous generations, it’s not breaking the price-to-performance curve, as it is still an RTX card and pulling double-duty as the new entry-point for RTX platform support. That being said, there is no mincing words about the continuing price creep of the past two GeForce series. The price-to-performance characteristics of the RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti is what renders the RTX 2060 (6GB) a better value in comparison, and not necessarily because it is great value in absolute terms. But as an upgrade from older mainstream cards, the RTX 2060 (6GB) price point is a lot more reasonable than the RTX 2070’s $500+, where there more of the price premium is from forward-looking hardware-accelerated features like realtime raytracing.
So the RTX 2060 (6GB) would be the most suitable for gamers that aren’t gung-ho early adopters or longtime enthusiasts. The caveat is on the 6GB framebuffer, keeping in mind that the 4GB GTX 980 and 970 now punch below their weight in certain games, given the trends of HDR, HD texture packs, high-refresh rates, and more. Beyond that, the RTX 2060 (6GB) and RTX 2070 comes with a choice of Anthem or Battlefield V, as part of the new bundle. For a prospective buyer, this might not justify $500 but might outweigh $350, especially as realtime raytracing can be immediately tried out with Battlefield V. In the same way, upcoming support for adaptive sync could do the same for those looking to upgrade to a monitor with variable refresh rate.
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zepi - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
Watching with disgust due to high power usage and noise. I won't upgrade to something that sounds as bad as my current AMD card.eva02langley - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
HBM2 and GDDR6 are fairly at the same price even without the actual numbers. GDDR6 is 70% more expensive than the GDDR5.But yeah, Koduri mistake was to push HBM2 on Vega, it should have been GDDR5 or GDDR5x.
CiccioB - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
This legend that HBM costs like the other kind of memory is in place since people stated that HBM cost like GDDR5 (then it was against the lowly available GDDR5Xm produced only by Micron) and that using it against 12 chip of GDDR5/X/6 and the complexity needed for the PCB layout to handle them was almost the same.Unfortunatelty nothing of this is true.
HBM costs more per chip (and by GB) by itself for its construction that requires a high end process for stacking up all those layers.
Moreover, it requires a big silicon interposer that is expensive enough to cover the cost of any GDDRn memory type based PCB.
Third it requires a different path for mounting and aligning it on the interposer that is also an expensive procedure (see the problems AMD encountered for it) and that can't be done in the AIB fabs where GDDRn chips are usually mounted and soldered for 0,01$ each chip.
What AMD fanboys constantly states is their hope that AMD is not going to loose so much money for any Vega that they are selling. Unfortunately, they are, and this new video card by nvidia will make even more hard pressure on Vega as we already have announcements of further price cuts on such an expensive piece of crap that can't compete with anything in any market it has been presented and has required the constant price cut even before it was launched. In fact Vega FE cards started discounted by $200 at day one with respect to the former announced MSRP price... what a marvelous debut!
Ratman6161 - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
Totally beaten in raw performance, yes. But I don't want it anywhere near badly enough to pay $349 for it. What you can actually buy for what I would be willing to spend is the Rx580 or GTX1060 at under $200.mapesdhs - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
zepi, if all one wants is normal 1080p gaming then an RX 580 is a much better buy, especially used. Mine only cost 138 UKP. The real joke here is the price hiking of the entire midraange segment. The 2060 is what should have been the 2050. People are paying almost double for no real speed upgrade compared to two years ago at the next teir up (which should have been what the 2070 is now). Tech sites know this, some talked about it early on, but now they've all caved in to the new 2x higher pricing schema, the only exception being Paul at "not an apple fan" who continues to point out this nonense. If people go ahead and buy these products then the prices will keep going up. And AMD will follow suit, they'd be mad not to from a business standpoint.Opencg - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
I would not expect the 2060 to be anywhere near msrp considering its the only turing card with a reasonable msrp/performance ratio the demand will be high. And we all know what happens when demand is high.Bluescreendeath - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
@Benedict, Did you even read the article? The GTX2060 is more than 50% faster than the RX580 and the GTX1060. Furthermore, the GTX1060 6GBs cost around the same as the RX580 - the 1060 is not "much more expensive."mapesdhs - Monday, January 28, 2019 - link
Feel free to spend 100% more than what x60 cards used to cost, for a performance level that should be the tier below, but don't complain when the prices get hiked again because consumers keep buying this ripoff junk.kpb321 - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
If you want the best price/performance you need to go a little bit lower than the 580. The 570's have been ~$130 AR pretty regularly with a couple dips below that. Personally, I picked up an 8gb 570 for $190 with three stacked rebates/GCs for a total of $90 off bringing the cost of the card down to $100. I also sold off my old video card and one of the games from the bundle for another $50 bringing my upgrade cost down to ~$50. I had been wanting to upgrade for a while and was hoping for a 580 or a 1060 3gb or 6gb but the 570 looked like such a good deal I couldn't resist. Yes it was quite a bit of rebates but at this point I've gotten all of them so that is my final AR cost. Granted this even further down the performance curve but a 8gb 570 is certainly going to be a lot better than %50 of the performance of an 8gb 580 but that's what I paid for mine.zaza - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
the rx 570 can be found for 140$-150$ now and comes with your choice of 2 games out of three (unreleased games) (devil may cry, divison 2 and Resident evil 2 remake). for that price i think fir 570 is best GPU for the price, great for 1080p gaming.