GRAPHICSCARDS
ISSUE383|COMPUTER SHOPPER|JANUARY2020 77
NOTTOCOMPLAINabout an already-good
graphics card being relaunched with even
better specs, but the RTX2060 Super risks
taking things abit toofar –with the price,
anyway. The original RTX2060 was already
pushing the definition of ‘mid-range’with its
£329 tag, and this £390 model –Zotac’s
GeForce RTX2060 Super Mini –isone of the
cheapest options available.That’s arisky
move when both the RX 5700 and RX 5700
XT can be had forless.
That said, sometimes you’re paying for
qualities besides performance.This Super
Mini design is abeauty: it’s short enough to
fit in most microATX and Mini-ITX cases, but
still crams in two good-sized open air fans for
optimum cooling. Most of the casing is
plastic, but it has aconvincing matt metal
effect,and there’s astrong aluminium
backplatecovering the circuit board. Besides
contributing to acleaner,more grown-up
look, this backplateprotects the PCB and
makes it easier to wipe awaydust.
LESS FOR MORE
All of this puts it in good stead next to the RX
5700, which in return forthe lowest possible
price,must be bought with AMD’s reference
design, which is alot longer than the RTX
2060 Super Mini, and has aless attractive
blower cooler as well. However,ifyou can
make room forit, the Radeon GPU has ahuge
price advantage: you can buy it directly from
AMD forjust £290, while Zotac’scustomised
card is afull£100 more expensive.
At least hardware-wise,the RTX2060
Super is significantly souped up over the
standard RTX2060. It has 8GB of GDDR6
memory instead of 6GB, bringing it in line
with the RX 5700, and has 256
additional CUDAprocessor cores,
bringing the totalupto 2,176.
Base clock speeds have also
been raised from 1,365MHz to
1,470MHz, and the RTX2060 Super
also has more RT cores –34
instead of 30 –for improved
performance when enabling
ray-traced graphical effects.
The end result is that the
RTX2060 Super Mini has a
performance advantage over the
RX 5700, but the extent will
depend on the game.Dirt
Showdown, forinstance,runs so
quickly on both cards that our test
NVIDIA GeForce
RTX2060Super
★★★★★
£390•From http://www.ebuyer.com
VERDICT
The RX 5700 is cheaper and the RX 5700 XT
is faster,but this is still apowerful and well-
designed graphics card
rig’s CPU became the
bottleneck before either of the
GPUs did; as such, the RTX2060 Super
Mini produced completely identical scores of
111fps at 1,920x1,080, 111fps (again) at
2,560x1,440 and 97fps at 3,840x2,160.
Metro: Last Light, which is much more
GPU-dependent, allows Nvidia’s GPU to open
up alead, producing 95fps at 1080p,57fps at
1440p and 26fps at 4K. This last result might
make it look like 4K is beyond the RTX2060
Super Mini’s capabilities, but disabling SSAA
boosts it to 51fps, which is enough to enjoy.
The RX 5700 sits between 3fps and 7fps
behind, which isn’t ahuge amount but can
make foravisible difference below 60fps.MINDTHE GAP
In Tomb Raider,there’s also only asmall gap
at 4K: the RTX2060 Super Mini averaged
62fps, the RX 5700 58fps. At lower
resolutions, however,the RTX2060 Super
Mini is the clear winner,with 187fps at 1080p
and 129fps at 1440p.The RX 5700 was quick
too, with 168fps and 113fps respectively –
we’re not convinced you could even tell the
difference at 1080p –but forsmooth 1440p,
the Nvidia card has it beat.
Both GPUs are tied in the SteamVR
Performance Test, scoring 11, but the RTX2060 Super Mini is inarguably the
more powerful of the two.Now that a
fewmore games have begun
supporting ray-tracing and DLSS, its
Nvidia-exclusive feature set is also more
appealing than it once was, although don’t
expect ray-traced performance to be
anywhere near as high as that of the RTX
2070 Super,RTX 2080 Super or RTX2080 Ti.
These advantages make the £100 premium
alot easier to stomach, unless you’re likely to
be playing older or less demanding games
that won’t take full advantage of the GPU’s
strength. That said, it’s still alot of cash for
what can sometimes be asingle-digit
advantage,asthere’s also the matter of the
RX 5700’s big brother,the RX 5700XT.
At £329 forthe reference model, this is still
cheaper than Zotac’sGeForce GPU, and while
it lacks ray-tracing or DLSS support, it
overtakes it in core performance.Tomb Raider
provides the best example forthis: the RX
5700 XT produced 199fps at 1080p,166fpsat
1440p and 67fps at 4K, beating the RTX2060
Super Mini on all three counts.COOL INTENTIONS
Consequently,the RTX2060 Super Mini is
stuck between the superior value of the
RX 5700 and the superior performance of
the RX 5700 XT.Intermsofastrictly logical
purchasing decision, then, either AMD
GPU could be the better option.
And yet, it would be unfair to leave the
RTX2060 Super Mini out of the running
entirely.It’s expensive,yes, but it’s also avery
capable 1440p card, and it’s easier to live with
in terms of quietness and coolness: with core
temperatures ranging from 28°C at
idle to 69°C at load, this is a
much better-ventilated
graphics card than either of
AMD’s reference models.
Keep it in mind, especially if
you’re planning amore
compact PC, or want to try
ray-tracing and DLSS.