Nvidia RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition 8GB Review

1. Introduction2. Nvidia RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition Card3. 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. Metro Exodus (1080p, 1440p, 4K)11. Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, 1440p, 4K)12. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, 1440p, 4K)13. Battlefield V w/ DXR (1080p, 1440p, 4K)14. Shadow of the Tomb Raider w/ DXR (1080p, 1440p, 4K)15. Clock Speed16. Temperatures17. Acoustics18. Power Consumption19. Overclocking: 3DMark and Games20. Overclocking: Temperatures, Acoustics, Power21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

We've been hearing about ‘SUPER' ever since Nvidia posted a short teaser video at the end of May. Computex and then E3 came and went, with not a word from the company about what to expect. That all changes today, however, as Nvidia has announced three new ‘SUPER' versions of the RTX 2060, RTX 2070 and RTX 2080.

In this review we will be focusing on RTX 2060 SUPER, but we also have launch day coverage of RTX 2070 SUPER over here if you are interested. What makes this card SUPER, and is it any good?

The first thing you need to know about Nvidia's SUPER line up of cards, is that we are not really seeing anything we haven't seen before. By that I mean, for the 2060 and 2070 SUPER editions at least, Nvidia has simply taken its existing TU106 and TU104 GPUs, shaved off some SMs and called the end results ‘SUPER'. The rumours about faster 16Gbps GDDR6 memory have not turned out to be true for these cards.

In the case of the RTX 2060 SUPER, Nvidia has taken the TU106 GPU and disabled two SMs, giving a total of 34 and therefore 2176 CUDA cores. This positions it closer to the RTX 2070 than the actual RTX 2060, despite the naming. It also keeps the 8GB GDDR6 memory found on its bigger brother, so perhaps it is more accurate to think of it as a ‘2070 Lite' rather than ‘2060 SUPER', but it is what it is.

GPU	RTX 2080 (FE)	RTX 2070 SUPER	RTX 2070 (FE)	RTX 2060 SUPER	RTX 2060 (FE)
SMs	46	40	36	34	30
CUDA Cores	2944	2560	2304	2176	1920
Tensor Cores	368	320	288	272	240
Tensor FLOPS	85	72	63	57.4	51.6
RT Cores	46	40	36	34	30
Texture Units	184	160	144	136	120
ROPs	64	64	64	64	48
Rays Cast	8 Giga Rays	7 Giga Rays	6 Giga Rays	6 Giga Rays	5 Giga Rays
GPU Boost Clock	1800 MHz	1770 MHz	1710 MHz	1650 MHz	1680 MHz
Memory Data Rate	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps	14 Gbps
Total Video Memory	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	448 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	448 GB/sec	336.1 GB/sec
TDP	225W	215W	185W	175W	160W

The decision to present RTX 2060 SUPER as RTX 2070 minus one Texture Processing Cluster (each TPC houses 2x SMs) has other consequences, aside from the reduced CUDA core count. It also means the 2060 SUPER has less RT cores, with a total of 34, while its Tensor core count is bumped down from 288 to 272.

Out of the box clock speed is also relatively slow compared to other Turing cards, with a rated boost clock of 1650MHz. This is the reference speed, meaning the Founders Edition card we are reviewing today is a reference card rather than a factory overclocked model, but the likes of Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI will be releasing factory overclocked cards.

Lastly, as we already touched on, RTX 2060 SUPER has 8GB GDDR6 memory, again clocked at 1750MHz (14000MHz effective) – the same as every other RTX card available. This means memory speeds have not been increased for this SUPER card.

The RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition arrived in the same style of box as our other RTX cards – it's pretty compact, with just some product branding in the bottom left corner.

Inside there's a quick start guide and a support guide.

The card is what we are really here for, though, but aside from some cosmetic changes it is same design as the original RTX 2060 Founders Edition from January. That means we get the same premium build quality, with an almost fully aluminium shroud, and those dual axial fans which help set the RTX 20-series designs apart from the 10-series cards with their blower-style fans.

The first cosmetic change with 2060 SUPER is immediately noticeable, as the central section of the shroud – between the two fans – is no longer black, but is instead a silver plate with a mirror finish, and it is very reflective. You will also note the green ‘SUPER' branding printed on this section of the card.

Given it is a near replica of the 2060 Founders card, the 2060 SUPER is accordingly quite small. It measures 228.6mm long and 112.6mm tall, with a standard dual-slot thickness. It should fit in all but the most compact cases on the market.

2060 SUPER also keeps the stylish silver backplate we have seen on other RTX cards, but again this now has the ‘SUPER' branding printed in green. This may not be to everyone's taste, but there will be a wide selection of partner cards available so you can pick a more colour-neutral option if you like.

As always, the ‘GeForce RTX' branding on the front side of the shroud lights up green when powered on.

The card receives power from a single 8-pin PCIe connector, again positioned on the end of the card. 2060 SUPER has a rated TDP of 175W, 10W less than 2070 Founders Edition and 15W more than 2060 Founders Edition.

Lastly, display outputs consist of 2x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI-D, as well as 1x USB-C VirtualLink connector.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.

RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition is a reference card, so its boost clock is rated at 1650MHz and its 8GB GDDR6 memory runs at 1750MHz (14000MHz effective).

Driver Notes

• All AMD graphics cards were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 19.6.2 driver.
• All Nvidia graphics cards (except 2060/2070 SUPER) were benchmarked with the Nvidia 430.86 driver.
• Nvidia RTX 2060/2070 SUPER cards were benchmarked with the 431.16 driver supplied to press ahead of launch.

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	Corsair AX1500i 80+ Titanium PSU
Operating System	Windows 10 1903

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition (FE) 11GB
• Nvidia RTX 2080 Founders Edition (FE) 8GB
• MSI RTX 2070 Armor 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Gaming OC 6G
• Palit GTX 1650 StormX 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
• Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+ SE 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)
• 3DMark Port Royal (DXR Synthetic)
• Battlefield V (DX12)
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DX12)
• Far Cry 5 (DX11)
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands (DX11)
• Metro: Exodus (DX12)
• 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.

It's a strong start for the RTX 2060 SUPER in these 3DMark tests – it comes very close to the scores of MSI's RTX 2070 Armor, which is itself a reference-clocked 2070. In Fire Strike Ultra, for instance, the 2060 SUPER is not even 30 points behind the 2070.3DMark 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.

Port Royal is specifically designed to test the ray tracing abilities of a graphics card, and here we can again see 2060 SUPER performing within a fraction of the MSI 2070 – the difference between the two is barely 100 points.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.

Battlefield V is our first game of the day, and here we can observe a similar trend that we saw during the 3DMark tests – that 2060 SUPER performs very close to the RTX 2070. It's just a 2.5FPS difference at 1080p, while at 1440p this shrinks to 1.4FPS. There's not a lot in it at all.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 test using the DX12 API.

It's more of the same when testing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, with RTX 2060 SUPER never more than two frames slower than the RTX 2070. It also edges ahead of GTX 1080 and 1440p and 4K resolutions.

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.

RTX 2070 comes in 3.7FPS faster than 2060 SUPER at 1080p when playing Far Cry 5 – but this gap shrinks as the resolution is increased, with the difference being a single frame at 4K. 2060 Super is faster than GTX 1080 across all three resolutions tested.

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.

We had an interesting result at 1080p when playing Ghost Recon: Wildlands – 2060 SUPER was just beating the RTX 2070. It wasn't by much at all – not even a full frame – but it was just faster at this resolution. The 2070 retook the lead at 1440p and 4K resolutions, however, but clearly there is not much between these two cards at all.

Metro Exodus is a first-person shooter video game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver in 2019. It is the third instalment in the Metro video game series based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novels, following the events of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light. (Wikipedia)

We test using the Ultra preset, but with Hairworks and Advanced PhysX turned off. We test using the DX12 API.

There's no doubt the Metro Exodus benchmark is unreasonably demanding, but it provides a very consistent reference point to compare other cards. RTX 2070 is exactly 1 frame faster at 1080p, and even less at 1440p and 4K. GTX 1080 is consistently a couple of frames slower than 2060 SUPER.

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.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War shows a difference of 3.6FPS between RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 when gaming at 1080p – which works out to be one of the biggest gaps between the two cards across all of our games. That just shows you how close the two cards actually are.

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.

Lastly we come to Shadow of the Tomb Raider. This just confirms what we have seen throughout this review – RTX 2060 SUPER comes very close to RTX 2070, and is generally a little faster than GTX 1080.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.

 

Ray tracing performance in games is much more of known quantity now than it was at the end of 2018 – to the point where it is not really a surprise to see the figures churned out by 2060 SUPER. Its framerate is more than halved at 1080p when moving from DXR off to DXR Ultra, producing a playable but significantly reduced average frame rate of 53FPS. At 1440p, the card averaged just over 40FPS with DXR Ultra.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.

 

The performance hit isn't quite so bad with ray traced shadows in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but it's still a drop from 110FPS to 68FPS when gaming at 1080p. As expected, overall ray tracing performance of the 2060 SUPER slots in between RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.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.

As a reference card, with a rated boost clock of 1650MHz, we don't see spectacularly high frequencies from the 2060 SUPER. It does exceed its rated boost clock by 131MHz, but I would expected aftermarket cards to be running up to 200MHz faster out of the box.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.

Thermal performance from the Founders Edition card is excellent, with a peak temperature of just 70C. This is 1C hotter than the RTX 2060, which uses the same cooler, but obviously 2060 SUPER has more cores to cool so the result makes sense. Even so, it's still a fantastic result and it will be interesting to see what partner cards can do to reduce temperatures even further.

Our thermal imaging camera shows similarly impressive results, with a peak temperature of 63.3C on the card itself. The backplate is also doing a good job at spreading the heat produced from the rear of the PCB, with a 55C hotspot just to the side of the RTX logo.We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 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.

It's another very quiet Founders Edition card from Nvidia. The move to dual axial coolers has really paid off for the RTX 20-series cards as they are noticeably quieter than the previous designs. It makes life harder for Nvidia's partners, too, as it becomes difficult justifying the increased cost for an aftermarket card when the Founders Editions themselves are so good.

One thing that could be improved, however, is the idle noise. The fans don't stop spinning in low-load situations, so there is always a slight whirr from the card – it's barely noticeable, but I am certain Nvidia could get away with implementing a ‘fan stop' mode for its Founders cards.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.

As expected, the 2060 SUPER sits directly in between RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 in terms of power draw. Our system pulled 9W more with 2060 SUPER than with the 2060 installed, and 14W less than with the 2070 installed. This is means the 2060 SUPER is pulling 41% less power than Vega 64, despite being the faster card on average. The upcoming AMD RX 5700 and 5700 XT cards certainly have their work cut-out when it comes to power efficiency.

I used MSI Afterburner to overclock the 2060 SUPER Founders Edition. My best result came with +125MHz to the GPU core and +950MHz  to the GDDR6 memory.

Average clock speed under load

In real world terms, this saw our average clock speed increase to 1951MHz which is not a bad result at all. It's not quite past the 2GHz mark but should still result in a decent performance increase.

3DMark and games

Sure enough, our Fire Strike score increased by almost 2000 points, while our games testing at 1440p saw frame rate increases between 5 and 7 FPS. Not bad at all.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

The card did show the effects of this overclock, but nothing terrible. Temperatures increased by 5C, up to 75C, and noise levels also rose by 4dB. The latter was noticeable, but still not painfully annoying.

Power draw also increased by more than I was anticipating, with a 45W increase at the wall. Considering the gains we saw in-game, I'd say it was worth it.In what can only be viewed as a thinly-veiled attempt to render AMD's upcoming RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT cards dead on arrival, Nvidia has today announced the RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER. This review is focused on the 2060 SUPER, but if you want to read more about the 2070 SUPER, you can head over to our dedicated review of that card here.

RTX 2060 SUPER is, despite the name, positioned closer to the RTX 2070 than it is to the RTX 2060 which debuted not even 6 months ago. This is because it is built on the TU106 GPU, but with 2 SMs disabled – giving it a total of 2176 CUDA cores. For reference, RTX 2060 has 1920 CUDA cores, RTX 2070 has 2304. 2060 SUPER also has 8GB of VRAM, so you could think of this card as a ‘2070 Lite', though I'm not surprised Nvidia decided against that name!

Being so close to RTX 2070 on paper meant it wasn't too much of a surprise when I got into the benchmarks and discovered 2060 SUPER performing effectively the same as a stock-clocked 2070. It is consistently a couple of frames slower than 2070, yes, but really nothing that you'd notice when actually playing games. In fact, across all of our testing, this 2060 SUPER Founders Edition performed, on average, just 2% slower than MSI's reference-clocked RTX 2070 Armor 8G.

Putting things into context further, the original RTX 2060 is on average 12% slower than this SUPER version, while both GTX 1080 and AMD Vega 64 come in 5% slower. GTX 1080 Ti is still 16% faster across the board, with RTX 2080 increasing that to 23%.

So it's overall a very solid gaming graphics card. You'll be pushing very high frame rates if you want to game at 1080p, while the card will also maintain frame rates over 60FPS with ease if you bump the resolution to 1440p.

As for the Founders Edition card we have been looking at today, aside from some added bling, it is the same as the original RTX 2060's cooler – so it is no surprise to see it perform so well. The GPU core peaked at just 70C, for instance, while noise levels also proved highly competitive for a reference card. Nvidia's partners will really have to be on their game to justify the cost of spending extra on a custom card versus this Founders Edition.

Speaking of cost, the RTX 2060 SUPER is well-placed for mid-range buyers. With an MSRP of £379, we are now getting what is essentially RTX 2070 levels of performance, for £80 less. How much of a good thing this is really depends on your viewpoint. If you're an RTX 2060 or 2070 owner, this is a definite kick in the teeth as your card is pretty much obsolete already. If you were holding off buying a new card, however, you can now get more bang for your buck which is a definite win.

That said, I do feel Nvidia deserves some stick for the SUPER refresh as a whole. Considering neither of the two SUPER models are actually built on new chips – TU106 launched with RTX 2070 last October, while TU104 launched with RTX 2080 last September – to me, it seems like there is no real reason why these ‘SUPER' cards couldn't have just been the original cards. Nvidia had the chips already, and considering the relative price-to-performance increase we are seeing from SUPER versus the original models, with hindsight it seems obvious that Nvidia was holding back on us.

Of course, it makes perfect sense from a business perspective to hold back and see what the competition will do, and it is no coincidence these cards are launching just before AMD's 5700 and 5700 XT cards. From a consumer standpoint, however, gamers will certainly feel a bit short-changed about the whole situation.

So to sum up, if you were going to spend around £380 on a new graphics card, RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB is now bringing what is effectively RTX 2070 performance for an £80 discount. It's nothing new or really that exciting, but it's good for consumers. What AMD has in response with the upcoming Navi cards, we will have to wait and see.

RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition has a MSRP of £379 and will be available from July 9.

Pros

• Effectively as fast as RTX 2070 for less money.
• Founders Edition cooler is very competent.
• Significantly more power efficient than AMD's current cards.
• Overclocked well.

Cons

• It's a refresh, not anything new.
• SUPER makes sense from a business perspective, but RTX early adopters will feel like it's a kick in the teeth.

KitGuru says: It's essentially a mid-cycle refresh of the RTX line up, but RTX 2060 SUPER seems well placed to take on AMD's RX 5700.

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