Last year’s Nvidia GTX 1060 was a mid-range champion that offered smooth and stable frame rates for a flawless 1080P gaming. Not only was it chasing the coat-tails of its big brother, the Nvidia GTX 1070, but it also locked horns with the AMD Radeon RX 580. The 6GB version of GTX 1060 was on top of the list of my recommendations for 1080P gaming builds.

Before we get started with the review and dip our toes into some benchmarks, let’s talk numbers, shall we? Here are the key specs that should give you an idea of what we are dealing with –

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060: What’s in the Box

As is the case with many other GPUs, the box contents are fairly minimal when it comes to the RTX 2060 Founders Edition. Inside the box, you’ll get the GPU itself along with a standard set of booklets which you’ll end up ignoring if you know your way around computers.

  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition
  • Quick Start Guide
  • Support Guide

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Design and Build Quality

Although the GPU is going to rest inside your PC, it’s essential that your card looks good and has glowing lights to make it look pretty when you peek inside through the cabinet window. Well, I am happy to report that the RTX 2060 looks and feels premium. Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Performance

Alright, it’s the numbers time. In the performance section, we’ll be taking a look at what the RTX 2060 is really capable of. By the time you’ll finish reading this part, you’ll know exactly what you’re actually getting with the RTX 2060.

For the purpose of this testing, I installed the RTX 2060 on a test bench with other components like AMD Ryzen 7 2700 coupled with 16GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM. All the games and the benchmarking tools were loaded on a 500GB HDD, whereas the OS was loaded on a 120GB SSD.

If you’re planning to pair the RTX 2060 with high-end components like we did (which you should BTW), you’ll be plowing through almost every AAA title out there, for real. Here, see the results yourself –

As a part of a standard procedure, I started with some benchmarking tools like 3DMark, PCMark, etc., and I must say that I finished my benchmark tests with some good numbers. In 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme test, our system managed to get a graphics score of 3,327 while maintaining well over 100FPS. The GPU, however, struggled with just over 20FPS when I ran the TimeSpy Extreme 4K test. That’s not really surprising since the RTX 2060 is not ideal for 4K gaming.

We tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Founders Edition with a similar set of benchmarking software and you can find those results in our full review of the RTX 2080 GPU.

First, I ran all the games at 1920×1080 resolution and the highest possible in-game graphics settings (Very High, Ultra, Extreme, etc.) to push the GPU to its limits. You can get better results by going for custom graphics settings and tweak Motion Blur, View Distance, and more as per your needs.

Look, I can keep going with all these numbers to show how powerful the RTX 2060 really is, but I think you already have a clear picture in front of you. Getting stunning visuals with close to 80fps in titles like Battlefield V is certainly impressive in my books.

When Nvidia announced RTX last year, it made a huge deal about Ray-tracing and DLSS support. I for one thought it was overrated until I had first hands-on experience with ray tracing. Though there aren’t many supported titles out there, they do look a lot better with ray-tracing. It’s not something that will significantly change your experience, but the visuals are noticeably better when you play with the ray tracing setting turned all the way up.

Thermals

Without adding too much fluff to this part of my review, I am just going to say that the thermal performance of the RTX 2060 is pretty impressive. With an open air cooler design with dual axial fans, I found the results to be in line with other RTX cards. Much like the RTX 2080, which we tested last year, the RTX 2060 stayed under 75-degrees Celsius, which is quite normal.

Buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition (Rs 31,000)

The RTX 2060 is one compelling card. No, it’s not the Turing stuff that makes it special, but it’s the price tag that makes it a great value offering. All the other RTX cards, be it the RTX 2080, the 2080 Ti or even 2070, are significantly more expensive. The RTX 2060, however, offers as much, if not more, juice than the GTX 1070 Ti at quite a bit less. In fact, I can no longer recommend the GTX 1070 Ti to anyone who’s looking dip their toes in 1440P gaming.