Gigabyte RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G Review

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy (1080p, 1440p, 4K)5. 3DMark Port Royal (1440p DXR)6. Battlefield V (1080p, 1440p, 4K)7. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1080p, 1440p, 4K)8. Far Cry 5 (1080p, 1440p, 4K)9. Ghost Recon: Wildlands (1080p, 1440p, 4K)10. Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, 1440p, 4K)11. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, 1440p, 4K)12. Battlefield V w/ DXR (1080p, 1440p, 4K)13. Shadow of the Tomb Raider w/ DXR (1080p, 1440p, 4K)14. Clock Speed15. Temperatures16. Acoustics17. Power Consumption18. Overclocking: 3DMark and Games19. Overclocking: Thermals, Acoustics, Power20. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

We've spent the last few months focusing on Nvidia's GTX 16-series graphics cards – starting with the GTX 1660 Ti and working down to the more recent GTX 1650. Today, however, our attention turns back to the RTX family, and specifically the mid-range RTX 2060. The particular model in question is Gigabyte's Gaming OC Pro 6G, which comes with a factory overclocked core, triple-fan cooler and RGB lighting. Is it worth the £360 asking price?

When RTX 2060 launched back in January 2019, Nvidia decided that its Founders Edition card would not come factory overclocked – instead, it would be up to AIB partners to ship RTX 2060s with higher clock speeds. Gigabyte has duly stepped up to the plate with its RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G, as this card has a rated boost clock of 1830MHz – an increase of 150MHz over the Founders card.

That means we would expect the Gigabyte to run a bit faster than the Founders Edition, while its triple-fan Windforce 3X cooler should also keep the card both cooler and quieter than the Founders 2060. Priced £31 higher than RTX 2060 MSRP, though, we would expect some improvement for the extra outlay. Whether or not the improvements can justify the higher price, we will have to see.

GPU	RTX 2080 (FE)	GTX 1080	RTX 2070 (FE)	GTX 1070	RTX 2060 (FE)	GTX 1060
SMs	46	20	36	15	30	10
CUDA Cores	2944	2560	2304	1920	1920	1280
Tensor Cores	368	N/A	288	N/A	240	N/A
Tensor FLOPS	85	N/A	63	N/A	51.6	N/A
RT Cores	46	N/A	36	N/A	30	N/A
Texture Units	184	160	144	120	120	80
ROPs	64	64	64	64	48	48
Rays Cast	8 Giga Rays/sec	0.877 Giga Rays/sec	6 Giga Rays/sec	0.65 Giga Rays/sec	5 Giga Rays/sec	0.44 Giga Rays/sec
RTX Performance	60 Trillion RTX-OPS	8.9 Trillion RTX-OPS	45 Trillion RTX-OPS	6.5 Trillion RTX-OPS	37 Trillion RTX-OPS	N/A
GPU Boost Clock	1800 MHz	1733 MHz	1710 MHz	1683 MHz	1680 MHz	1708 MHz
Memory Data Rate	14 Gbps	10 Gbps	14 Gbps	8 Gbps	14 Gbps	8 Gbps
Total Video Memory	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5X	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDRR5
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	448 GB/sec	320 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	256 GB/sec	336.1 GB/sec	192 GB/sec
TDP	225W	180W	185W	150W	160W	120W

RTX 2060 is based on the same TU106 GPU as found in the RTX 2070, but with 6 less streaming multiprocessors (SMs). This means it sports 1920 CUDA cores, as opposed to the 2304 in its bigger brother. It is also very much an RTX card, meaning we do have dedicated RT cores (30 of those) and also the AI-driven Tensor cores (240 there).

Reference specification for the RTX 2060 has a rated boost clock of 1680MHz, but as mentioned this Gaming OC Pro 6G ups the speed to 1830MHz. The 6GB of GDDR6 memory, however, has been left at the stock 14 Gbps data rate.

The Gigabyte RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G ships in the same sort of box as all the other Gigabyte cards we have reviewed recently – meaning it is mostly black, with the front taken up by the robotic-styled eye logo.

Inside, Gigabyte hasn't gone overboard with the accessory kit as we find just a quick-start guide and driver disk included.

The card itself is also very clearly a Gigabyte design, as the company has used a similar matte black plastic shroud design across its product portfolio for this current generation. I'm not saying that as a criticism as the colour-neutral aesthetic means you won't have any issues putting this into a colour-coordinated build. Taken on its own, however, it is certainly not the most exciting-looking card we've seen this year.

It's good to see a triple-fan cooler used, though, and here each fan measures 80mm in diameter. These also use Gigabyte's Alternate Spinning technology, where the outer two fans spin counter-clockwise while the inner fan spins clockwise. Gigabyte says this reduces turbulence and thus increases airflow pressure, but we will get to thermal dynamics later in the review.

As for the overall dimensions of this card, it's not quite as big as the ASUS Strix RTX 2060 but it's not exactly small either. It measures 280.35 x 116.45 x 40.24 mm (L x W x H), so it's still just a dual-slot card in terms of thickness, and like we said – at 280mm long it isn't massive but there are smaller 2060 cards out there.

The front side of the card is home to the Gigabyte logo, and this is the only RGB zone on the card. RGB lighting clearly isn't a big focus for the Gaming OC Pro – we've seen cards from MSI and ASUS which have multiple RGB zones across the shroud and backplate – so whether you see this as a positive or a negative depends on your opinion of RGB lighting.

Still, there is a metal backplate – it looks like anodised aluminium – fitted to the card which is good to see. It's again quite plain in design but should help with both heat dissipation and the overall rigidity of the card.

Elsewhere, Gigabyte keeps things standard with a single 8-pin PCIe power connector required.

Display outputs are also as expected, with 3x DisplayPort 1.4 and 1x HDMI 2.0b.

Opening up the card requires removing 7 screws from the backplate, and then we get a look at the PCB. Here, Gigabyte has gone for a 6+2 power phase design, the same configuration as used with the Founders Edition. The GDDR6 memory chips come from Micron – each chip is labelled ‘8WA77D9WCW' – while we can also see the GPU die is labelled ‘TU106-200A', meaning this is a higher-binned chip.

As for the cooler, this is made up of three separate aluminium fin stacks which are connected by four 6mm copper heatpipes. These heatpipes make direct contact with the GPU die, and we can also see plenty of thermal pads have been used for the memory chips and VRM.Our newest GPU test procedure has been built with the intention of benchmarking high-end graphics cards. We test at 1920×1080 (1080p), 2560×1440 (1440p), and 3840×2160 (4K UHD) resolutions.

We try to test using the DX12 API if titles offer support. This gives us an interpretation into the graphics card performance hierarchy in the present time and the near future, when DX12 becomes more prevalent. After all, graphics cards of this expense may stay in a gamer’s system for a number of product generations/years before being upgraded.

We tested the RX Vega64 and Vega56 using the ‘Turbo‘ power mode in AMD’s WattMan software. This prioritises all-out performance over power efficiency, noise output, and lower thermals.

As already noted, this Gigabyte card adds 150MHz to the RTX 2060's boost clock.

Driver Notes

• All AMD graphics cards (except Radeon VII) were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 19.1.1 driver.
• Radeon VII was benchmarked with a pre-released press driver supplied by AMD.
• All Nvidia graphics cards (except GTX 1650, 1660, 1660 Ti) were benchmarked with the Nvidia 417.71 driver.
• GTX 1660 Ti was benchmarked with the Nvidia 418.91 driver supplied to press.
• GTX 1660 was benchmarked with the Nvidia 419.35 driver supplied to press.
• GTX 1650 was benchmarked with the Nvidia 430.39 public driver.

Test System

We test using the Overclockers UK Germanium pre-built system, though it has been re-housed into an open-air test bench. You can read more about it over HERE.

CPU	Intel Core i7-8700K Overclocked to 4.8GHz
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming
Memory	Team Group Dark Hawk RGB 16GB (2x8GB) @ 3200MHz 16-18-18-38
Graphics Card	Varies
System Drive	Samsung 960 EVO 500GB
Games Drive	Crucial M4 512GB
Chassis	Streacom ST-BC1 Bench
CPU Cooler	OCUK TechLabs 240mm AIO
Power Supply	SuperFlower Leadex II 850W 80Plus Gold
Operating System	Windows 10 Professional

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• MSI RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z 11GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) 11GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
• Gigabyte Aorus RTX 2070 Xtreme 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB
• MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC 6GB
• MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X 6GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4GB
• Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) 11GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming 8GB
• Palit GTX 1070 Ti Super JetStream 8GB
• Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
• Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB
• AMD Radeon VII 16GB
• AMD RX Vega 64 Air 8GB
• AMD RX Vega 56 8GB
• ASRock RX 590 Phantom Gaming X OC 8GB
• Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB
• ASUS RX 570 ROG Strix Gaming OC 4GB

Software and Games List

• 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
• Battlefield V (DX12)
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DX12)
• Far Cry 5 (DX11)
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands (DX11)
• Middle Earth: Shadow of War (DX11)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present averages in our graphs.3DMark Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today’s high-performance gaming PCs. It is our [FutureMark’s] most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

As expected considering its higher clock speed, the Gigabyte Gaming OC Pro comes in faster than the Founders RTX 2060 across all three 3DMark benchmarks. It's not a big difference, around 3.5% in Fire Strike, for example – but it's a lead nonetheless.3DMark Port Royal is the world’s first dedicated real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers. You can use Port Royal to test and compare the real-time ray tracing performance of any graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX Raytracing. As well as benchmarking performance, 3DMark Port Royal provides a realistic and practical example of what to expect from ray tracing in upcoming games.

A similar trend can be observed from the Port Royal benchmark, which is specifically designed to test a card's ray tracing abilities. Here, the Gigabyte 2060 outperforms its Founders Edition cousin by a larger margin, in the region of 9%.Battlefield V is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts. Battlefield V is the sixteenth instalment in the Battlefield series. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 20, 2018. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Ultra preset with the DX12 API.

 

The Gaming OC Pro outperforms the Founders Edition by 7FPS when gaming at 1080p, though this gap does decrease as the resolution is increased. Even so, RTX 2060 performs really well at 1440p in Battlefield V, with this Gigabyte model averaging almost 85FPS.Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is set in the year 2029, two years after the events of Human Revolution and the “Aug Incident”—an event in which mechanically augmented humans became uncontrollable and lethally violent. Unbeknownst to the public, the affected augmented received implanted technology designed to control them by the shadowy Illuminati, which is abused by a rogue member of the group to discredit augmentations completely. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Very High preset, with MSAA disabled. We use the DirectX 12 API.

 

Moving to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the Gigabyte Gaming OC Pro again outperforms the RTX 2060 FE by a small margin – around 4FPS at 1080p. Interestingly, this is one of the titles where Vega 56 is faster than RTX 2060 – at 1080p and 1440p at least, though they are effectively tied at 4K.Far Cry 5 is an action-adventure first-person shooter game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is the eleventh entry and the fifth main title in the Far Cry series, and was released on March 27, 2018.

The game takes place in the fictional Hope County, Montana, where charismatic preacher Joseph Seed and his cult Project at Eden’s Gate holds a dictatorial rule over the area. The story follows an unnamed junior deputy sheriff, who becomes trapped in Hope County and works alongside factions of a resistance to liberate the county from Eden’s Gate. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Ultra preset, with AA and motion blur disabled.

 

Far Cry 5 puts the RTX 2060 back ahead of AMD's Vega 56, and this Gaming OC Pro is actually within touching distance of GTX 1080. As expected, it comes in 3FPS faster than the Founders Edition when gaming at 1080p.Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is a tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft. It was released worldwide on March 7, 2017, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as the tenth instalment in the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon franchise and is the first game in the Ghost Recon series to feature an open world environment. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Very High preset.

 

Ghost Recon: Wildlands massively favours Nvidia hardware over AMD cards, and at 1080p this Gaming OC Pro is outperforming Vega 56 by 12FPS, and even beats Vega 64 by 7FPS. It's also consistently faster than the RTX 2060 FE.Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an action role-playing video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the sequel to 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 10, 2017. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Very High preset.

 

This RTX 2060 again does very well with Shadow of War, edging ahead of Vega 64 across all three resolutions tested. It's about 5FPS faster than its Founders Edition counterpart at 1080p, too.Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series. The game released worldwide on 14 September 2018 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Highest preset, with AA disabled. We test using the DX12 API.

 

As for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, things come out pretty much as expected. The Gaming OC Pro outperforms the RTX 2060 FE by almost 5FPS at 1080p, and Vega 56 is another 5FPS behind the Founders Edition. At 1440p, the card still averages over 60FPS.Battlefield V is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts. Battlefield V is the sixteenth installment in the Battlefield series. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 20, 2018. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Ultra preset with the DX12 API. Battlefield V was the first game released with Nvidia RTX ray tracing features (called DXR in game) and we present average frame rates for the game with DXR Off, and then again with DXR set to Ultra.

 

RTX 2060 is a decent card for playing ray traced games at 1080p, as demonstrated by Battlefield V where it averaged 77FPS with DXR set to Ultra. It's still a big performance penalty compared to DXR off, however – in the region of 35-40% – but you can still get very playable frame rates with ray tracing turned on.Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series. The game released worldwide on 14 September 2018 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (Wikipedia).

We test using the Highest preset, with AA disabled. We test using the DX12 API. For these ray tracing benchmarks, we present average frame rates for the game with ray traces shadows (DXR) off, and then again with ray traced shadows set to Ultra.

 

Ray traced performance is again decent at 1080p, with the Gaming OC Pro averaging almost exactly 60FPS. That's another 40% performance hit when compared to no ray racing, however, so it really depends how you'd rather play the game.Here we present the average clock speed for each graphics card while running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. We use GPU-Z to record the GPU core frequency during the Fire Strike Ultra runs. We calculate the average core frequency during the entire 20-run test to present here.

With its rated boost clock of 1830MHz, the Gaming OC Pro actually exceeds this by another 108MHz – with its real world average frequency coming in at 1938MHz. This is 106MHz faster than the Founders Edition, and explains why it performed that little bit better across our suite of games.For our temperature testing, we measure the peak GPU core temperature under load, as well as the GPU temperature with the card idling on the desktop. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.

This card's strong performance continues when we look at GPU temperatures. The core ran no hotter than 64C during our testing which is a fabulous result. Granted, RTX 2060 doesn't tend to run that hot but this is still great to see and marks a 5C improvement over the Founders Edition.

Things are also looking great when we measure the card's hot spots using our thermal gun. Here, the hot spot on the back of the card didn't reach 55C, and the side of card proved just 1C hotter. Clearly, the Windforce 3X cooler is more than capable of dissipating the heat from the TU106 GPU.We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the sound floor to be 34 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled.

A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times. An idle reading comes after leaving the system on the Windows desktop for 30 minutes.

In terms of noise levels, the Gaming OC Pro is similarly excellent. It's the quietest RTX card on our chart and comes in around 2dB quieter than the Founders Edition. It's simply very hard to hear when it is actually working, so put this in a case and it will effectively be silent. Hats off to Gigabyte on this one.We measure system-wide power draw from the wall while the card is sat idling at the Windows 10 desktop for 30 minutes. A reading under load comes from running the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra stress test 20 times.

Given its clock speed advantage over the Founders Edition, it's not surprising to see the Gaming OC Pro draw 20W more power under load. This is still less than even the RX 570, however, and Vega 56 also draws 70W more. Nvidia is clearly still streets ahead when it comes to power efficiency.

For overclocking, we used Gigabyte’s Aorus Master utility. We managed to add +95MHz to the GPU cores and +1000MHz (2000MHz effective) to the GDDR6 memory.

Average clock speed under load

This wasn't quite as good as I was hoping, though it still brought our average clock speed beyond 2GHz, with a real-world increase of 70MHz. The ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2060 did overclock to 2045MHz, however, so it's not the best result we've seen from a 2060.

3DMark and games testing

This overclock did bring some decent gains to our real-world performance, though, with a 5% increase to our Fire Strike score. Our games, tested at 1440p, also saw frame rate increases of between 3-5FPS which is definitely something, even if we couldn't get the clock speed as high as I would have liked.Here, we take a further look at the impact of our overclock, looking at the increased temperatures, acoustics and power draw.

Temperatures

Acoustics

Power consumption

Overview

While not the biggest overclock for the RTX 2060, the upside is the card didn't suffer as a result of the extra frequency. GPU temperatures rose by just 1C, and noise levels didn't even increase by a single decibel. As for power consumption, this rose by just 6W, another trivial increase.Turning our attention back to Nvidia's RTX cards, today we have assessed the Gigabyte RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G. If you're looking for a new mid-range graphics card, it is definitely going to be high on your shortlist.

Gigabyte has taken a ‘no frills' approach to the design and feature-set of the Gaming OC Pro. Its shroud is a stealthy matte black design, and while the card does have a metal backplate, this is again quite plain. There's only a single zone of RGB lighting, and even this is relatively subdued compared to other RTX 2060 cards we have looked at.

Instead of a flashy design, Gigabyte has focused on the fundamentals, creating a very effective cooler that saw the GPU run no hotter than 64C. It's also very quiet, with only the lower-power GTX 16-series cards making less noise. It's seriously impressive stuff.

As for actual performance, it is pretty much what we'd expect from a factory overclocked RTX 2060. It has a 150MHz clock speed advantage over the Founders Edition and accordingly it runs, on average, 4% faster. This means performance is effectively on par with other aftermarket solutions from the likes of ASUS and MSI, and makes it a great card for both 1080p and 1440p gaming.

You do pay for that extra performance, however, as this Gigabyte card is currently selling for £360. That's £31 more than the Founders Edition, and £60 more than some baseline RTX 2060s which can now be found for £300, though how good those cheaper models are I couldn't say.

You also have to factor in Vega 56 now, as price cuts have made that a very compelling option for £279. Vega 56 is on average 7-8% slower than RTX 2060, though that doesn't tell the whole story as it is actually marginally faster in some games (like Deus Ex), but then considerably slower in others (like Ghost Recon: Wildlands), so it's not quite as cut-and-dried as just looking at the average figures.

Still, as RTX 2060s go, Gigabyte's RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G is definitely up there with the best. I do feel it would more attractive with £10-20 knocked off the price tag, but it is an improvement over the Founders Edition in every way and still comes in cheaper than the ASUS ROG Strix and MSI Gaming Z cards we already mentioned, making it well worth buying.

You can buy the Gaming OC Pro 6G from Amazon for £359.99 HERE.

Pros

• Colour-neutral design.
• Triple fan cooler is very effective.
• 150MHz factory overclock.
• Very easy on the ears.

Cons

• £31 more expensive than the Founders Edition.
• My sample didn't overclock as well as I'd like.

KitGuru says: RTX 2060 is a great mid-range GPU and Gigabyte has improved on the Founders Edition in every way with the Gaming OC Pro 6G. I would like to see it come in a bit cheaper, but it is an all-round excellent graphics card.

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