LET’S JUST GET this out of the way
right at the beginning: We think the
Super branding could quite possibly be
one of the dumbest things we’ve seen
in recent years. We’re definitely looking
forward to the redundant naming
that’s bound to come from EVGA: the
GeForce RTX 2060 Super SSC (Super
Super Clocked). But complaints about
naming aside, we’re looking at modestly
improved core counts.
The Turing architecture behind the
new Super RTX cards is identical to
existing RTX cards. That means the
hardware includes RT cores for DirectX
Raytracing and Vulkan-RT, Tensor cores
for DLSS and other machine-learning
workloads, variable rate shading, mesh
shaders, and concurrent integer and
floating-point execution pipelines.
The 2060 Super has 8GB of
GDDR6, which equates to 33 percent
more bandwidth—the same as the 2070
Super. The TU106 has up to 36 SMs
(Streaming Multiprocessors), and the
2060 Super has 34 enabled. That puts it
right between the old 2060 and the 2070.
In terms of performance expectations,
the RTX 2060 Super should be just a tad
slower than the RTX 2070, but it should
also be quite a big jump in performance
over the vanilla RTX 2060. The pricing
reflects this, with the new RTX 2060 Super
selling for $399 while the RTX 2060 will
continue to be sold for $349. That price8
VERDICT Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 SuperSUPERHERO Good 1080p and
1440p performance; better
value than other RTX cards; 8GB GDDR6
beats the vanilla 2060.
SUPERVILLAIN Not many ray-tracing
games; didn’t inherit the 2060 price;
super-dull name.
$399, http://www.nvidia.comSPECIFICATIONSGPU Turing TU106
Lithography TSMC 12nm FinFET
Transistor Count 10.8 billion
CUDA Cores 2,176
Texture Units 136
ROPs^64
Core/Boost Clock 1,470/1,650MHz
Memory Capacity
& Type
8GB GDDR6
Memory Speed 14GT/s
Memory Bus 256-bit
TDP 175W
Display Connectors DisplayPort 1.4,
HDMI 2.0B, DVI-DLmakes this one of the best graphics cards
in terms of value.
The RTX 2060 Super works best as
a card for 1080p or 1440p gaming. 4K is
often possible at lower quality settings (or
with DLSS), but more demanding games
tend to be a bit out of reach. Overall,
performance is right where you’d expect,
based on the specs. The RTX 2060 Super
outperforms the RTX 2060 by 10 percent
and nearly matches the RTX 2070.WATCH THE GAP
Nvidia pitches the RTX 2060 Super as a
graphics card built for 1440p gaming,
and provided we’re talking about 60fps,
it does generally succeed. With the
higher resolution, the added memory
bandwidth, thanks to the additional
2GB of GDDR6, starts to show up more
when comparing the 2060 Super with
the regular RTX 2060. Now the gap is 15
percent on average, with a few games
showing even larger gains.
Many felt underwhelmed by Nvidia’s
RTX 20-series launch—or overwhelmed
by the comparatively high pricing. With
no games leveraging the new ray-tracing
hardware at launch, sales weren’t as
good as Nvidia hoped. One year later,
things are improving, and the 2060 Super
is perhaps the best of the RTX line in
terms of bang for buck.
There are two ways of looking at the
RTX 2060 Super, and how you ultimatelyfeel about the new graphics card will
depend on which perspective you take.
One view is that it’s a slightly faster card
than the RTX 2060 and it costs $50 more.
That’s not super-exciting. The other
perspective is much more enticing: It’s
effectively replacing the RTX 2070 level
of performance for $100 less.
If you haven’t felt the need to jump on the
ray-tracing RTX bandwagon yet, the 2060
Super isn’t likely to change your mind. It’s
arguably more a question of getting the
killer ray-tracing app than the hardware,
though. Metro Exodus looks better with
ray-traced global illumination, but it still
looks good without it. Until a game comes
out that looks so amazing with ray tracing
that everyone wants to upgrade, RTX is
more of a nice extra than a must-have
feature. And maybe it will remain that
way for years to come.
The RTX 2060 Super is still a good card.
It’s faster than a GTX 1080, at a lower
price, with new features that may benefit
future games. We wouldn’t recommend
upgrading from a GTX 1080 to an RTX
2060 Super, but if you’re running an older
GPU and are looking to spend $300 or
more on a high-end graphics card, it’s a
worthy pick. And it makes the prospect
of buying AMD’s RX 5700 series more
difficult. –JARRED WALTONNvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (Avg fps) 95 / 64 83/55
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Avg fps) 63 / 53 62/48
Far Cry 5 (Avg fps) 121 / 90 109/78
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Avg fps) 110 / 82 100/72
Middle Earth: Shadow of War (Avg fps) 103 / 73 88/57
Metro Exodus (Avg fps) 76 / 56 65/48
Total War: Warhammer II (Avg fps) 97 / 76 92/68GPU BENCHMARKSBest scores are in bold. Our test bed consists of an Intel Core i7-8700K, 16GB of G.Skill DDR4-3200, a Gigabyte
Z370 Aorus Gaming 7, and a 1TB Samsung Evo M.2 SSD. All games are tested at their highest graphical profile
with AA turned on, at 1080p and 1440p respectively.This card just cut the price of
2070 performance by $100
Nvidia GeForce
RTX 2060 Super
in the lab
78 MAXIMUMPC OCT 2019 maximumpc.com