RTX 2060 vs GTX 1160: Ten new leaks that suggest Nvidia will dominate the mid-range
TechSpot is celebrating its 25th anniversary. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust.
Something to look forward to: For quite some time now gamers looking for mid-range solutions have had the same somewhat unexciting options to choose from: the GTX 1060 or AMD’s most recent renaming of the Radeon RX 470. According to an almost endless list of leaks, however, Nvidia is finally set to reveal a new graphics processor and rectify that problem with the RTX 2060 and GTX 1160, both of which should boast performance much closer to the 1070 than the 1060.
Read this update: The GeForce RTX 2060 is now official, «more powerful than a 1070 Ti» and only $349
The GeForce RTX 2060 is set to become the cheapest ray tracing enabled card, and it’s expected to perform at 1070 levels and be priced somewhere in-between the 1060 and 1070 price brackets. The GTX 1160, on the other hand, is for gamers that don’t want to waste money on the dubious value of ray tracing and simply want the best value they can get. It will allegedly come with a different die with no raytracing cores and slightly less CUDA cores than the 2060, with pricing that would match today’s 1060.
Possibly hoping no one would notice because it was Christmas, Gigabyte registered a whopping 39 different models of the 2060 with the Eurasian Economic Commission this week. First spotted by Komachi, the registration shows three different tiers of 2060 differentiated by the amount of VRAM they have: 3GB, 4GB and 6GB. Each of the memory tiers are divided by the type of memory, the older and cheaper GDDR5X or the faster GDDR6, and then each of those are divided by cooler type and PCB design.
If the memory and cooler are the only variables between the cards, performance variation should be limited to 10-15%. There’s no pricing information yet, nor which models could come to which regions, or if Gigabyte will manufacture them at all.
It isn’t uncommon for companies to register designs that don’t end up hitting stores. Images of one model was leaked to VideoCardz a fortnight ago, and it shows a pretty standard design and cooling solution.
More recently they posted images of the Founder’s Edition version of the card, which features the exact same design as the 2070, suggesting that the 2060 is a trimmed-down RTX 2070. Separate promotional images leaked around seem to confirm the RTX branding and design.
A month ago, Tom’s Hardware noticed the RTX 2060 had been entered into the Final Fantasy XV benchmark database, where it performed 30% better than the 1060 and about 6% worse than the 1070. That benchmark was at 4K, however, giving the 1070 an advantage because it has more VRAM. Yesterday, the GPU was also seen in the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database, where it once again achieved 1070-like performance with 49 fps on the 1440p «crazy» setting.
Despite three different leaks claiming to know the specs, they’re still quite nebulous.
Possibly the most reliable is a Geekbench entry for an unidentified laptop, which says RTX 2060 GPU has 6GB of RAM, 30 compute units and a boost clock of 1200Mhz. On the other Turing cards, each compute unit corresponded with 64 CUDA cores, 8 tensor cores and one ray tracing core, giving the 2060 1920 cores, 240 tensor cores and 30 ray tracing cores.
For comparison, the desktop RTX 2070 has 2304 CUDA cores, 288 tensor cores and 36 ray tracing cores. The 2060 could certainly suffer in ray tracing-based titles, given that the RTX 2070 only manages 60 fps with ray tracing on low in many instances in Battlefield V running at 1080p.
According to 3Dmark entries, the base clock of the 2060 laptop will be 975Mhz, while the Max-Q variant will be running at 960Mhz — both of which are substantially lower than the 1100Mhz or so the 1070 Max-Q operates at. The memory speed, meanwhile, drops from 1750Mhz to 1500Mhz when going Max-Q.
Taiwanese laptop manufacturer CJScope accidentally revealed on a product page (which has since been taken down) that the mobile 2060 can boost to as much as 1620Mhz and have a base clock of 1320Mhz when the power limit is less enforced.
That laptop, where the purported 2060 was listed in, carried a full 95W desktop processor and weighed nearly 4kg, so it is a decent indication of what desktop speeds might be like. Confusingly, however, it lists the core count as 1536, which is only 2% higher than the 1060.
As for the GTX 1160, only two leaks substantiate its existence. The first is from leaker BullsLab Jay, who told VideoCardz that that the 1160 would be based on the TU116 core rather than the TU106 that the 2060 is meant to use. The second is basically a hard confirmation from a Lenovo product page, that lists the 1160 as coming in a new laptop model in 3GB and 6GB configurations. Both leaks agree that the card will be launched somewhere between January 8 (the first day of CES) and the 15th of that same month.
Also worth noting are the rumored GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti GPUs, although information about those is too scarce at the moment, so don’t go placing any bets.
With all these rumors flying around, it won’t be long before it’s all revealed.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is set to take the stage at CES 2019 on January 6, at the MGM Conference Center in Las Vegas at 8 pm Pacific Time (10pm ET, 4AM +1 GMT).
6 Reasons the Nvidia RTX 2060 Is Better Than the RTX 3050
By
Jowi Morales
Updated
It’s a much older GPU, so surely it can’t beat out the shiny new offering from Nvidia?
Image Credit: NVIDIA
When NVIDIA announced the RTX 3050, many were delighted that the company was releasing a more affordable, entry-level card to help gamers on a budget.
However, when they released the specifications, many said getting the previous generation RTX 2060 was better. True enough, when the card was released and testers got their hands on it, the results spoke for themselves.
So, here are five reasons why you should save your money and go for the last-gen RTX 2060 instead.
Specifications
Before going in-depth, it’s good to look at the numbers on both cards. These are the specs for both cards, compiled from data from NVIDIA and TechPowerUp.
|
GeForce RTX 3050 |
GeForce RTX 2060 |
|
|
NVIDIA CUDA Cores |
2,560 |
1,920 |
|
Base Clock (GHz) |
1.55 |
1.37 |
|
Boost Clock (GHz) |
1.78 |
1.68 |
|
VRAM |
8GB GDDR6 |
6GB GDDR6 |
|
Memory Interface Width |
128-bit |
192-bit |
|
Tensor Cores |
80 |
240 |
|
Ray Tracing Cores |
20 |
30 |
|
L2 Cache |
2MB |
3MB |
|
Slots |
1x HDMI 2. |
1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1x USB Type-C |
|
SRP |
$249 |
$300 |
1, 2x DisplayPort 1.4a1. Raw Power
The spec sheet shows that the RTX 3050 has a higher base and boosts clock speed, clocking in at 1,545 MHz and 1,780 MHz, respectively. The RTX 2060 only delivers a 1,365 MHz base clock speed and a 1,680 MHz boosted performance.
Despite that, the latter still defeats the former in processing power, measured in TFLOPS. The base model RTX 2060, with only 6GB RAM, can process 10.483 TFLOPS in half-precision format. When boosted, the values increase to 12.902 TFLOPS. It can also process 25.2 TFLOPS in ray tracing performance.
On the other hand, the RTX 3050 can only manage 7.946 TFLOPS in half-precision format and 9.098 TFLOPS when boosted. It also only has 18.2 TFLOPS ray tracing performance. The RTX 2060’s processing power is 32% greater than the RTX 3050’s.
When boosted, this performance gap increases to 42%.
It also has 38% more ray tracing capability, making the RTX 2060 more capable, despite having less RAM and CUDA Cores.
2. Theoretical Performance
The pixel and texel fillrate measure a graphics card’s theoretical performance. This metric measures the pixels or texture map elements (texels) the card can render and write to memory in one second.
The RTX 2060 can deliver 65.52 GPixels and 163.8 GTexels, while the RTX 3050 only has 49.6 GPixels and 124.1 GTexels. This means the RTX 2060 can render scenes and textures much faster than the 3050.
You can also see the greater bus width of the RTX 2060 delivers better performance over the RTX 3050, despite the latter having more VRAM. The older GPU’s memory bandwidth is 336 GB/s, while the newer one only has 224 GB/s. This results in faster read/write speeds, allowing the video card to process more information quickly.
3. Actual FPS Output
Despite the greater theoretical output of the Nvidia RTX 2060, the greater numbers will not matter if the graphics card cannot translate that into actual frames.
But, as we’ve seen in the previous result, the older video card still outclasses the new one.
Several benchmark results consistently show the RTX 2060 posting better results across different tests. For example, it returns 114 fps in lighting tests, 117 fps in reflection tests, 134 fps in rendering tests, and 101 fps in particle system tests.
The RTX 3050 only delivered 103 fps, 86.6 fps, 84.5 fps, and 73.4 fps, respectively. That’s an average of 35% better performance for the last-generation video card over the latest entry-level offering. And when both cards are overclocked, this difference further increases to 41%.
We’ve also checked out some FPS results from actual games, as tested by TechSpot.
|
Title |
Resolution, Settings |
Nvidia RTX 3050 (FPS) |
Nvidia RTX 2060 (FPS) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Assasin’s Creed Valhalla |
1080p, Medium |
79 |
86 |
|
1440p, Medium |
58 |
67 |
|
|
Shadow of the Tomb Raider |
1080p, Highest |
87 |
99 |
|
1440p, Highest |
57 |
65 |
|
|
Watch Dogs: Legion |
1080p, Medium |
88 |
104 |
|
1440p, Medium |
64 |
75 |
|
|
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege |
1080p, Ultra |
225 |
252 |
|
1440p, Ultra |
141 |
162 |
|
|
F1 2021 |
1080p, High |
141 |
169 |
|
1440p, High |
98 |
117 |
|
|
Horizon Zero Dawn |
1080p, Favor |
82 |
93 |
|
1440p, Favor |
56 |
66 |
|
|
Far Cry 6 |
1080p, Medium |
96 |
102 |
|
1440p, Medium |
68 |
75 |
|
|
DOOM Eternal |
1080p, Ultra |
178 |
177 |
|
1440p, Ultra |
130 |
115 |
|
|
Resident Evil Village |
1080p, Balanced |
114 |
136 |
|
1440p, Balanced |
78 |
94 |
|
|
Death Stranding |
1080p, Default |
108 |
115 |
|
1440p, Default |
79 |
89 |
|
|
Hitman 3 |
1080p, Medium |
112 |
116 |
|
1440p, Medium |
74 |
68 |
|
|
Cyberpunk 2077 |
1080p, Medium |
66 |
80 |
|
1440p, Medium |
41 |
51 |
With these results, you can see that the RTX 2060 consistently outperforms the RTX 3050, save for one title.
On average, the RTX 3050 gets 115 FPS at 1080p and 79 FPS at 1440p. On the other hand, the 2060 averages 127 FPS for 1080p and 87 FPS for 1440p gaming.
So, whether you’re gaming at 1080p or 1440p, the older card has a 10% performance advantage over the newer GPU.
4. Use in Crypto Mining
While the RTX 3050’s 8GB VRAM allows it to perform better, it is also ideal for mining. When you compare it against the RTX 2060, which only has 6GB VRAM, this makes the RTX 3050 more desirable for crypto mining operations.
Given that, miners are more inclined to use the RTX 3050, as the additional RAM can help with the raw computational load required to mine Bitcoin. So, if you buy a used RTX 3050, you’re more likely to encounter a card that was used for mining. So, before you fork over your hard-earned cash when buying a secondhand, you should check if the GPU was modded for crypto mining.
5. More Port Options
Image source: Nick Stathas/Wikimedia Commons
The stock port options for Nvidia for the 3050 only give you a single HDMI 2.
1 port and two DisplayPort 1.4a ports. On the other hand, the RTX 2060 has an extra DVI and a USB-C port.
This gives you more options, especially if you have an older monitor that only uses a DVI plug. Its USB-C port also allows you to plug in other devices—not just monitors. This will enable you to add the newer standard on a relatively old PC with only USB-A ports.
The RTX 2060 Outperforms the 3050, But You’ll Have to Pay the Price
While most would say newer is better, that is not always the case. This is especially true with the RTX 3050 and the RTX 2060. The former is an excellent upgrade if you’re coming from the GTX 1650 or 1050. But if you already have the RTX 2060, the RTX 3050 is actually a downgrade from it.
After all, the RTX 3050 is Nvidia’s current-generation entry-level GPU in early 2023, while the RTX 2060 is its previous-generation mid-range offering. So, if you want to retain a similarly powerful video card for the current generation, go for the RTX 3060 instead.
But if you want to get into the ray tracing bandwagon with an RTX GPU, and have only the budget for a 3050, consider finding a used RTX 2060 with a decent history instead. You’ll get more bang for the buck for this card while you’re waiting for the mid-range 4000-series GPUs to come out.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Related Topics
- Technology Explained
- Gaming
- Graphics Card
- Nvidia
- Building PCs
- Hardware Tips
About The Author
John William Morales, better known as Jowi, is a writer, a career coach, a professional photographer, and a leisure pilot.
He’s been using, discovering, and exploring PCs since Windows 3.1 and has been on board the Android bandwagon since Froyo. In 2023, he also invested in an iPhone and a Mac, allowing him to cover a wide spectrum of consumer technology.
Jowi started writing part-time in 2015 and transitioned to it full-time in 2020. He also finished a university degree with related units in journalism in 2012. But even before he received higher education, he’s been known by his friends and family as the go-to person when anything computer-related requires explanation.
Page not found
Page not found
We did not find such a page on our site: /ru/video/geforce-rtx-2060-protiv-geforce-rtx-2060-super%23item-vote
Popular video card comparisons
GeForce RTX
3060 Ti
vs
GeForce RTX
3060
GeForce RTX
2060 Super
vs
GeForce RTX
3060
GeForce GTX
1060 6GB
vs
Radeon RX
580
GeForce RTX
3060 Ti
vs
GeForce RTX
3070
GeForce GTX
1660 Super
vs
GeForce RTX
3050 8GB
GeForce GTX
1660 Ti
vs
GeForce GTX
1660 Super
Popular video cards
GeForce RTX
4090
Radeon RX
580
GeForce GTX
1650
Radeon RX
Vega 7
GeForce RTX
3060
GeForce GTX
1050 Ti
Popular
processor comparisons
Ryzen 5
5600X
vs
Core i5
12400F
Ryzen 5
3600
vs
Ryzen 5
5500
Core i5
10400F
vs
Core i3
12100F
Ryzen 5
3600
vs
Core i5
10400F
Ryzen 5
3600
vs
Core i3
12100F
Core i5
12400F
vs
Core i5
13400F
Popular processors
EPYC
9654
Core i3
1115G4
Ryzen 5
5500U
Core i5
12400F
Core i5
1135G7
Core i5
1235U
Compare NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super
Comparative analysis of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super video cards by all known characteristics in the categories: General information, Specifications, Video outputs and ports, Compatibility, dimensions, requirements, API support, Memory, Technology support.
Analysis of video card performance by benchmarks: PassMark — G2D Mark, PassMark — G3D Mark, 3DMark Fire Strike — Graphics Score, Geekbench — OpenCL, CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Face Detection (mPixels/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Ocean Surface Simulation (Frames/s) ), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — T-Rex (Frames/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Video Composition (Frames/s), CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Bitcoin Mining (mHash/s), GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Frames), GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Fps), GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Fps), GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps).
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB
versus
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super
Benefits
Reasons to choose NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB
- Newer graphics card, release date difference 2 year(s) 5 month( s)
- Maximum memory size approx. 50 % more: 12 GB vs 8 GB
- 4010 times more performance in 3DMark Fire Strike — Graphics Score: 8020 vs 2
| Issue date | 7 Dec 2021 vs 2 July 2019 |
| Maximum memory size | 12 GB vs 8 GB |
| 3DMark Fire Strike — Graphics Score | 8020 vs 2 |
Reasons to choose NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super
- Approximately 5% less power consumption: 175 Watt vs 184 Watt
- 8 times more memory frequency: 14000 MHz vs 1750 MHz, 14 Gbps effective
- Performance in PassMark — G2D Mark benchmark approximately 3% more : 869 vs 846
- Performance in PassMark — G3D Mark about 5% higher: 16587 vs 15865
| TDP | 175 Watt vs 184 Watt |
| Memory frequency | 14000 MHz vs 1750 MHz, 14 Gbps effective |
| PassMark — G2D Mark | 869 vs 846 |
| PassMark — G3D Mark | 16587 vs 15865 |
Benchmark comparison
GPU 1: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB
GPU 2: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super
| PassMark — G2D Mark |
|
|||
| PassMark — G3D Mark |
|
|||
| 3DMark Fire Strike — Graphics Score |
|
| Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super |
|---|---|---|
| PassMark — G2D Mark | 846 | 869 |
| PassMark — G3D Mark | 15865 | 16587 |
| 3DMark Fire Strike — Graphics Score | 8020 | 2 |
| Geekbench — OpenCL | 85408 | |
CompuBench 1. 5 Desktop — Face Detection (mPixels/s) |
246.191 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Ocean Surface Simulation (Frames/s) | 3885.018 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — T-Rex (Frames/s) | 27.053 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Video Composition (Frames/s) | 165.463 | |
| CompuBench 1.5 Desktop — Bitcoin Mining (mHash/s) | 1271.757 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Frames) | 20969 | |
GFXBench 4. 0 — Manhattan (Frames) |
5567 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Frames) | 5026 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Car Chase Offscreen (Fps) | 20969 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — Manhattan (Fps) | 5567 | |
| GFXBench 4.0 — T-Rex (Fps) | 5026 |
Performance comparison
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Turing | Turing |
| Codename | TU106 | TU106 |
| Production date | 7 Dec 2021 | July 2, 2019 |
| Place in the ranking | 57 | 122 |
| Price at first issue date | $399 | |
| Type | Desktop | |
| Boost core clock | 1650 MHz | 1650 MHz |
| Core frequency | 1470 MHz | 1470 MHz |
| Process | 12nm | 12nm |
| Peak Double Precision (FP64) Performance | 224. 4 GFLOPS (1:32) |
|
| Peak Half Precision (FP16) Performance | 14.36 TFLOPS (2:1) | |
| Peak Single Precision (FP32) Performance | 7.181 TFLOPS | |
| Number of shaders | 2176 | 2176 |
| Pixel fill rate | 79.20 GPixel/s | |
| Texturing speed | 224.4 GTexel/s | |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 184 Watt | 175 Watt |
| Number of transistors | 10800 million | 10. 8B |
| Number of CUDA conveyors | 2176 | |
| Maximum temperature | 89C | |
| Render output units | 64 | |
| Video connectors | 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, 2x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1x USB Type-C | |
| DisplayPort | 1.4 | |
| DisplayPort 9 support0292 | ||
| Dual-link DVI support | ||
| G-SYNC support | ||
| HDCP | ||
| HDMI | ||
| Multi-monitor support | ||
| Number of simultaneous monitors | 4 | |
| Form factor | Dual slot | |
| Height | 35 mm, 1. 4 inches |
4.435” (112.6mm) |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | |
| Length | 229 mm, 9 inches | 9.0” (228.60mm) |
| Recommended power supply | 450 Watt | 550 Watt |
| Additional power connectors | 1x 8-pin | 8 pin |
| Width | 113 mm, 4.4 inches | 2-Slot |
| DirectX | 12 Ultimate (12_2) | 12.1 |
| OpenCL | 3. 0 |
|
| OpenGL | 4.6 | 4.5 |
| Shader Model | 6.7 | 6.4 |
| Vulcan | ||
| Maximum memory size | 12GB | 8GB |
| Memory bandwidth | 336.0 GB/s | 448 GB/s |
| Memory bus width | 192 bit | 256bit |
| Memory frequency | 1750 MHz, 14 Gbps effective | 14000 MHz |
| Memory type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Ansel | ||
| HDMI 2. |