46 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2019REVIEWS NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 FOUNDERS EDITION
GTX 1070 it replaces in the pricing stack, but
quite a bit less than other GPUs that offer this
level of performance. The Radeon Vega 56
and GTX 1070 Ti deliver less oomph while
sucking down about 40 more watts of power
than the RTX 2060 FE.Thermals and noise
We test thermals by leaving HWInfo’s sensor
monitoring tool open during the F1 2018
five-lap power draw test, noting the highest
maximum temperature at the end.
The move away from a single-fan, blower-
style design to a dual-axial setup that expels
your GPU’s hot air back into the case has
done wonders for the RTX 2060. Topping out
at a mere 67 degrees Celsius after a sustained
load, Nvidia’s Founders Edition is downright
frigid, and by far the coolest graphics card
compared here. It runs relatively quiet, too.Again: It’ll be hard for third-party
custom designs to challenge the
Founders Edition at the RTX
2060’s $350 MSRP.BOTTOM LINE
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Founders Edition offers a ton of
bang for your buck, delivering
outstanding 1440p performance
and enough frames to satisfy
high refresh rate 1080p displays,
as well as the ability to tap into
the Turing GPU’s RTX ray tracing
and Deep Learning Super Sampling
technologies. The RTX 2060 runs cool and
quiet, too, and Nvidia’s metallic, self-
contained Founders Edition design remains
stunning. This is a very good graphics card.
It’s also a much more expensive graphics
card than the one it’s theoretically replacing,
the $260 6GB GTX 1060, maintaining the RTX
20-series pricing trend. At $350, the GeForce
RTX 2060 is better viewed as a GTX 1070
successor. Through that lens, this new
graphics card is only 10 to 20 percent faster
depending on the game—a bit of a bummer
after more than 2.5 years of waiting. Still,
while the RTX 2060 can’t quite topple the
GTX 1080 or Radeon Vega 64, it trades blows
with the $450 GTX 1070 Ti.
I wish the performance leap over the GTX
1070 was bigger, and I wish that this card
included 8GB of on-board RAM for betterAMD Radeon
Vega 56)
Nvidia GTX
1070 Ti (FE)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (FE)
AMD Radeon
Vega 64
Nvidia GeForce
GTX 1080 (FE)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 (FE)Maximum GPU temperature
under load (Celsius)SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE758582836773