Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition

[HEXUS]

A new premium mainstream champ in the making?

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[jimbouk]

Solid card, but about £150 too rich for me to consider purchasing. Mainstream is now over £300? Just for Nvidia I think...

[ET3D]

Must be a driver update in the works for some of these performance anomalies. Shadow of War 16 FPS min? Even the 1060 has almost double that.

[Tabbykatze]

The big hullabaloo is the performance in BF:V and it's not there, why?

Nor are you making any initial distinction on your graphs and notes that there will be 6 variants of the RTX2060 with varying performance levels. This is the 2060 at its best, this does not highlight the perf of the other 5 models.

Or does your Nvidia reviewing agreement not allow you to have negative connotations that conflict with their marketing materials?

[Tarinder]

The big hullabaloo is the performance in BF:V and it's not there, why?

Nor are you making any initial distinction on your graphs and notes that there will be 6 variants of the RTX2060 with varying performance levels. This is the 2060 at its best, this does not highlight the perf of the other 5 models.

Or does your Nvidia reviewing agreement not allow you to have negative connotations that conflict with their marketing materials?

BFV is an ever-evolving game-update cycle that is proving difficult to benchmark. An update renders previous results semi-useless. There continue to be lots of updates, so we reckon it makes most sense to take a look at it when it is more final.

As to the other models, Nvidia is only releasing this version for now. It hasn't spoken about others either privately or publicly. When it does, we will fill you in.

[Tabbykatze]

BFV is an ever-evolving game-update cycle that is proving difficult to benchmark. An update renders previous results semi-useless. There continue to be lots of updates, so we reckon it makes most sense to take a look at it when it is more final.

As to the other models, Nvidia is only releasing this version for now. It hasn't spoken about others either privately or publicly. When it does, we will fill you in.

I disagree with that response, all the other games can receive updates and driver optimisations of which how often does yourself or any reviewer go back and re-review new updates with driver optimisations?

BF:V is the big kid on the block and the mainstay of Nvidia advertising for Ray Tracing, to not include it in the benchmarking here looks dubious/nefarious to me.

[Iota]

and one may argue that the 6GB framebuffer is not in keeping with the times

So much so that I'd completely overlook the RTX 2060, purely due to the frame buffer it's working with. It certainly isn't forward looking, as alluded to in your review it seems to also be holding the card back at higher resolutions. So purely on that I'd ignore this card, regardless of the price.

Now if Nvidia had released this card with an 8GB frame buffer and hadn't gimped the backend to a 192 bit bus? At that price I'd purchase one. Seems they can't get this series launch right at all.

[cptwhite_uk]

Priced better than I feared, and performance is better than I expected, but I'd still not buy anything until AMD have shown their hand. I think this would have been a massive win if the price could have nudged below £300.

Still, it's the best option for 1080p 100+ fps / 1440p 60fps right now, if prices do hold at £330, but until the full picture is known it's hard to recommend buying anything.

Edit: as a side note, can you believe the GTX1080 is 3 years old in a few months...spectacular lack on innovation in that time scale.

[Zatoichi]

so finally my 1070 might actually devalue.

[Stukes]

Vega 56(ish) performance for $50 less?
I mean, its more sensible pricing than their previous stuff, but it's not exactly in "must buy" territory.
It could do with being $50 cheaper IMO, but I can see how they can't do that based on the size of the die.
Waiting to see what Navi brings is still the sensible move - it's hard to imagine the 2060 will compete. 6gb, a huge die and 12nm gives AMD a good opportunity to control the midrange.

[spacein_vader]

BFV is an ever-evolving game-update cycle that is proving difficult to benchmark. An update renders previous results semi-useless. There continue to be lots of updates, so we reckon it makes most sense to take a look at it when it is more final.

The same is also true of World of Tanks, which updates a couple of times a month and had a brand new graphics engine introduced with update 1.0 last March.

Your benchmarks don't mention which version of World of Tanks was used for testing but hopefully you've no reused old benchmarks from previous cards that would have been performed on the old engine.

[Tabbykatze]

The same is also true of World of Tanks, which updates a couple of times a month and had a brand new graphics engine introduced with update 1.0 last March.

Your benchmarks don't mention which version of World of Tanks was used for testing but hopefully you've no reused old benchmarks from previous cards that would have been performed on the old engine.

That is why i am not happy with Tarinders response, the only thing being tested are the standard Pascal features of the card, not what it is made for. Which means either there is a mandate not to or there is some other reason within Hexus

[kalniel]

Nice performance bump, but shame about the price increase over here - £329 was the RRP for the 1070 if I remember rightly, so I guess we're waiting for the 2050 or something for a mainstream these days.

Interesting that it's still fighting the Vega 56.. which was RRP'd at only a bit more some time ago. So old 1070 was the vega competition, now it's the 2060, and they're all around the same price. Actually not such a great performance bump after all looking at it like that.

[philehidiot]

I think the difference between WoT and BFV is that one is an evolving, established engine and the other is frankly experimental. Whilst I would very much like to see what ray tracing performance is like on this card, it must be made utterly clear that there will be breakthroughs in software optimisation like we have seen recently which may take this card from being ray tracing retarded to actually useful. I can see why Nvidia doesn't want ray tracing benchmarks on this card just yet as it's not really ready for prime time.

They must accept the repercussions of this in that without this data, the evidence for futureproofing this card is slim and it is really quite a pathetic step up from older models, selling cheaper.

As for the other "models" (read 2070s with various degrees of brokenness / gimpage) that'll be available, it just creates a minefield of uncertainty that is going to further disuade potential customers. I was quite happy with the performance when I was comparing 1060 to 2060 but it was quickly pointed out to me that I was bieng an idiot and that the release price makes this comparable to a 1070. As an upgrade from last generation then, without knowing whether the RT performance is any good, this card is possibly the worst way you could choose to spend £320 right now.

[Corky34]

It certainly isn't forward looking, as alluded to in your review it seems to also be holding the card back at higher resolutions. So purely on that I'd ignore this card, regardless of the price.

From what I've seen anything higher than 1080p with RTX on makes BFV near on unplayable, at least for anyone look to get above 60FPS, it's OK at more than 1080p without RTX but if you're turning it off because you want higher resolutions that raises the question of why buy a card with RTX if you're just going to turn it off.

I've not poured over a load of reviews so maybe someone can correct me but, it seems if you want playable (60 FPS+) RTX on any resolution above 1080p then £350 isn't going to cut it.

[EvilCycle]

From what I've seen anything higher than 1080p with RTX on makes BFV near on unplayable

Nearly but not quite, I am hitting 60 with ultra ray tracing at 1080p or medium ray tracing at 1440p on a 2080, the 2080ti can obviously do better, but still no 4k 60fps with ultra ray tracing, so not unplayable at 1440p unless you want competitive style fps of 120+

I have been hearing that BFV is a bad example and that Metro and Resident Evil 2 remake have far better performance with their DXR implementations, so they are the games to watch really.