Today we're taking a expect at the new GeForce RTX 2060, you know, the 12GB model that gamers were hoping would assist solve the GPU shortage. Well, I doubtable near of you didn't have high hopes on that i, and those that did have probably already lost hope.

That's because after the official annunciation 3 weeks ago, there's basically no stock to exist had, and the very few you can find at retail are grossly overpriced, even when compared to the 6GB models (!).

Equally of writing, it'due south possible to purchase a 6GB RTX 2060 from retailers like Newegg for $620, which is nearly a 80% premium over the $350 they sold for back in 2022. We could find a single 12GB model on offer for $830. That's a 34% premium over existing 6GB cards, and information technology'southward a similar story in other markets where we checked. In short, it's incommunicable to find one at a reasonable price. So of class, Nvidia was clever in not including an MSRP for the new 12GB variant in the formal announcement and we doubtable that was all office of their strategy.

You see, nosotros've ever thought it'd brand sense for Nvidia and AMD to spin up past production lines on older nodes to help convalesce the supply bug, but as Nvidia appears to exist finally doing with the 12GB RTX 2060. However, we were mistaken in thinking they'd do this considering they cared about gamers, the customers that got them where they are today.

After all, these are businesses and their chief objective is to make coin, maximize profits and please shareholders. Thus, flooding the market with affordable previous-gen products isn't in their all-time interest, particularly when they can simply sell those products at unheard of margins to miners instead.

Put simply, the 12GB RTX 2060 was never intended to be sold to gamers, instead Nvidia is looking to capitalize on the current state of affairs and increase supply to miners. The longer this goes on, the less important gamers will get to GPU makers as their intended market. But what choice practice gamers accept?

Moreover, the minute there's a crypto crash and things get-go to go back to normal, gamers volition exist stampeding over one some other to get that shiny new GeForce graphics carte. Nvidia knows this and their just concern is managing business organization later the inevitable end of the electric current cryptocurrency blast.

Arguably, the best style to do this is to sell equally many not-competitive gaming graphics cards as they can to miners, and then when they eventually flood the second hand market place, they'll be almost worthless. So again, that'south why the 12GB RTX 2060 exists, and why information technology's unlikely yous'll always buy ane for gaming. Be that as information technology may, if past some miracle it ends up making sense for yous, how exactly does information technology perform? To notice out, nosotros purchased a (grossly overpaid) Zotac 12GB RTX 2060 we briefly discussed in this month's GPU pricing update.

Before we jump into the benchmarks, let's quickly go over the 12GB RTX 2060's specs, as well as the test organisation. Unlike the original 6GB carte, the 12GB version features 2176 CUDA cores, which is the same amount every bit the 2060 Super, which would arrive a 2060 Super merely with more VRAM.

Simply there'due south more to information technology, unlike the 2060 Super which uses a 256-scrap broad retentivity bus, the 12GB 2060 uses the same 192-fleck motorcoach of the original 2060, reducing the retention bandwidth from 448 GB/s to only 336 GB/s, a big 25% reduction. This ways that the 12GB 2060 should perform betwixt the 6GB 2060 and the 2060 Super, and depending on the game and quality settings used it may be closer to either model. As for testing, nosotros're using our Ryzen 9 5950X GPU test system featuring 32GB of dual rank, dual channel DDR4-3200 CL14 memory. Let's get into the data…

Benchmarks

Starting with Assassin's Creed Valhalla at 1080p and please notation these results have been updated with the latest version of the game which greatly enhanced the performance of high-cease GeForce GPUs, with more mild gains for the mid-range or lower-end models, similar the RTX 2060.

Hither the 12GB model is no faster than the 6GB version, which is obviously disappointing and information technology meant both were slightly slower than the 5600 XT.

The situation at 1440p is no different with both 2060 models averaging only 49 fps, making them slower than the 5600 XT.

Next nosotros have Cyberpunk 2077 and nosotros're looking at very similar performance to the 6GB model. Actually at this point you lot tin can call what we're seeing at 1080p 'identical functioning', with 64 fps on average using slightly dialed down quality settings.

The numbers at 1440p won't exactly impress, and despite the larger buffer, performance goes largely unchanged when compared to the erstwhile 6GB model.

We're looking at 2060 Super-like functioning in Death Stranding at 1080p with 119 fps on average, making the 12GB 2060 just 5% faster than the 6GB version.

Oddly, as we increase the resolution the 12GB 2060 drops closer to the 6GB version as information technology would appear retentiveness bandwidth is more than of an result here, opposed to retentivity capacity.

Testing with Horizon Zero Dawn we meet the new 12GB 2060 is positioned between the 6GB version and the 2060 Super with 83 fps on boilerplate.

And then at 1440p the margin is decreased every bit the larger retentiveness capacity isn't required and instead memory bandwidth becomes more relevant.

We're looking at upwardly to a 5% heave in Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, which is about equally expert every bit it gets for the 12GB 2060 over the 6GB board.

Increasing the resolution to 1440p reduces the margin between the 6GB and 12GB models due to both having the same 336 GB/southward bandwidth.

Finally, we'll take a brief look at the Watch Dogs Legion results and here the RTX 2060 is rather unimpressive, regardless of which version we look at as performance is the same, falling well short of 60 fps as they trail the RX 5600 XT.

The 5600 XT was also faster at 1440p and although the 12GB 2060 was upwards to 9% faster than the 6GB variant, both fell brusque of a forty fps boilerplate.

Power Consumption

In terms of power consumption, the 12GB model is no different to the 6GB version. Both pushed total system usage to 358 watts when gaming, most the same power usage equally the faster RTX 3060.

Operation Summary

It's off-white to say the 12GB version of the GeForce RTX 2060 performed equally expected, or maybe a fiddling worse than expected. It's clear that the express memory bus is choking the GPU a trivial, especially at 1440p. Simply earlier we wrap this upwardly let'southward accept a look at the average performance seen at 1080p and 1440p, as well as a look at the thermal performance of the Zotac Gaming Twin Fan model...

Starting with the 1080p results we meet that on average across the 12 games tested, the 2060 12GB was ~4% faster than the original 6GB model, which is nothing to write home most. This as well fabricated it the second slowest GPU in our exam, or technically information technology was tied with the 5600 XT, another slow GPU by today'due south standards, merely certainly proficient enough for 1080p gaming.

1440p was a fleck more than of a struggle but even here we saw over lx fps on average across the games tested, which is decent. Again, the 12GB 2060 was 4% faster than the 6GB model and roughly on par with the 5600 XT.

After 30 minutes of gaming in a 21 C room within an enclosed case, the Corsair Obsidian 500D, the Zotac Gaming RTX 2060 Twin Fan 12GB peaked at 68 C, which is a cracking result, though the fan speed was a trivial high at 2200 RPM.

The carte remained relatively placidity at 43 dBA and non much louder than our exam system'south case fans. This is a stock model, so information technology operates at the reference specification and that saw a core clock of 1875 MHz on boilerplate with the retentivity at 14 Gbps.

What Nosotros Learned

There you have it... the super unexciting 12GB version of the GeForce RTX 2060. Of class, had this graphics bill of fare managed to come in at a lower cost point with stiff supply we'd be super excited about its release, but that was never going to be the case. This product was e'er intended for miners.

Frankly, gamers don't demand a 12GB version of the RTX 2060. Just requite the states the old model at a one-half decent toll and information technology'southward happy days, as sad as that may be. And while information technology's non a good situation for PC gamers or builders, it's bang-up news for Nvidia and AMD.

Generally speaking, the 12GB 2060 is irrelevant for gamers. For united states though it was at to the lowest degree interesting to compare a similar spec 2060 with 6GB and 12GB of VRAM, and it's an interesting give-and-take that heated up back in early 2022. At the fourth dimension, many criticized the RTX 2060 for its lack of VRAM, just we felt overall it was a solid production and certainly one of the improve offerings in the Turing series.

Nonetheless, the pushback was strong, so we investigated retention usage in 37 games and found that the 2060 worked fine relative to the RTX 2070 at not but 1440p, just also 4K and this lead us to conclude that retention usage for the 2060 wouldn't exist an issue for years to come. Crystal ball stuff, merely information technology's been 3 years since we published that review, and it's fair to say the 6GB 2060 is still fine for 1440p gaming.

If y'all appreciated this depressing review, spread the word and share this feature, then more than gamers can learn why they should avert the 12GB 2060. And of course, stay tuned for more than new GeForce and Radeon product reviews that you lot probably won't exist able to buy early side by side year.

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  • AMD Ryzen five 5600X on Amazon
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  • Corsair Obsidian 500D Case on Amazon