Gadgetory

- Right here, on the desk, we have a Nvidia's RTX 2060 graphics card and I've gotta say this is going to be my first time actually hands on with a founder's edition 2000 series card. Now, there has been a bit of controversy surrounding this graphics card. It came out at $349 and people are saying it's too expensive compared to the predecessor the GTX 1060, and also the one before that, the GTX 960. Now, my biggest critique before even going into this review is that it's got 6GB of VRAM, when it's stacking up against the GTX 1070 and also the 1070 TI and 1080 and those graphics cards had 8GB of VRAM. Now, of course it does have GDDR6 versus 5X on those cards but that extra frame buffer on those predecessors does make it more attractive especially if you're playing at 1440p with ultra textures on in some titles, it can get pretty demanding. But regardless we will be taking a look at that today. We'll be comparing it against the RTX 2070 and also the GTX 1070 TI hall-of-fame. This is one of the best 1070 TI's you can get out there and also another thing is this will be my first founder's edition card for the RTX 2000 series I've had come through the channel here. So, we're gonna take it hands on and see what this card's all about first, physically, and then we'll get on to the numbers when we benchmark it. (upbeat electronic music) So, here's the graphics card, right here, measures in at 23 centimeters long, it's a dual slot cooler and weighs in just under one kilogram, coming in at roughly 975 grams. It's got a steel backplate that encompasses the whole card itself with two fans on the bottom, RTX 2060 logo branding, as well as the back of the card you get a 8 pin PCIE connector. And then for inputs and outputs, I do like what they've done here. One dual DVI-I link as well as a USB type-C, two display ports and one HDMI 2 connector, not to mention these cards from the driver updates now will support freesync monitors, which we will be quickly testing in this review too. Also, included the box is a little extra box, which just has two little manuals in it. Nothing to get excited about. Now in terms of this card, specifically itself, it's got 1,920 touring cuticles as well as six gigabytes of GDR 6 VRAM as we mentioned before. And it's got 37T of ray tracing power available. So, it will support ray tracing and DLSS features in certain games that do support it. With all that aside, let's whack this thing on the test bench and see how well it does indeed perform, as well as overclock. (upbeat electronic music) So, now we just finished testing out the RTX 2060 through five different games and also two different simulated bench marks. Now, I did manage to overclock this card, and quite well. We gotta an extra 170 megahertz roughly on the core clock and also 870 megahertz on the memory. This enabled us, not only to get those games in those simulated benchmarks but this also scaled over very well to the five different games that we tested here. However, before I test the other graphics cards out I did manage to test out the fan speeds and also the temperatures on this graphics card. And I'll pull up a graph here for you guys, where the sweet spot is definitely 60% fan speed. So, if you put this on and this is, the good news is here is we actually overclocked this graphics card for doing these fan speed and noise temperature tests. So, this is pretty much a worse case scenario and this is doing extremely well. This is in a 28 degree ambient environment. So, the founder's edition card for the RTX 2060, is performing extremely well. It's gonna be very quiet. So, you're looking at 42 decibels of noise and I'm actually sitting right beside it here now, it's 60% fan speed. So, this is what you can expect gaming all day, everyday, with an overclock and pretty bad ambient temperatures. So, that's the sweet spot for it. If you leave the fan speeds on auto and you just want to overclock, the max you'll see is a 64% fan speed level and this gets you around 43 decibels and this will pretty much hold the same temperatures. I measured 64 degrees in Unigine Heaven after about 10 minutes. And then look here, 80%, there's a massive jump here, from 51 decibels up from either 42 or 43 and this enabled us to get a five degree drop down to 59 degrees during Unigine Heaven. Upping this to 100% fan speeds, we managed to get 55 degrees. So, this scored 57 decibels. So, basically, in a nutshell with the founder's edition card, the cooler that they've implemented does a phenomenal job of cooling, keeping the noise down and also keeping the temperatures down, even when it's overclocked. But, with that aside, we've still got another three different graphics cards here to test and overclock. So let's get that done for you guys. (upbeat electronic music) And here we are now with all the testing done. It actually took me a lot longer than the quick B roll cut that we did, showing the cards being tested. But, we've got now for you guys, normal and overclocked figures and we'll pull up here Shadows of The Tomb Raider because here is where things actually get very interesting for the RTX 2060. It's comfortably beating out the 1070 TI, the RX 590 is behind but that's in a different price bracket and we'll talk about that in the conclusion and then we've got the RTX 2070 pulling ahead. So, all these cards in this graph are very important for the conclusion. But the interesting thing here was the overclocks on the RTX 2060 were performing very well at both 1080p and 1440p and it was beating out the 1070 TI and that was the hall-of-fame edition, this thing here is an absolute beast. It overclocks extremely well, getting over 200 megahertz on the core clock and coming in pretty much with similar performance to a 1080 once it's overclocked. But moving over now to the next graph, 3DMark Fire Striker. It's important to look at these results because here we saw the RTX 2060 only getting around a 10% gain with the overclocks and 1070 I did score a victory here. It's probably the only victory it scored versus the 2060 in today's video. But we look at also times by extreme, we can see a 10% gain. And so, these figures were a little but weird for me because I've never seen this, when I've been testing graphics cards. And that is that the overclocked figures in games were performing better than they were in synthetics. And so we go back to Shadows of The Tomb Raider, the RTX 2060 performing about 13% better with the overclock versus the 10% in the synthetic Fire Strike and also the times by extreme. So, it was just a weird thing. If you guys know why this is happening with this card then let us know in the comment section below. Maybe, it's got something to do with the dual cores just breathing a lot better with GDR6 but I don't really know the exact reason why but it's a great thing for gamers because this cards going to respond very well, getting pretty much 1080 levels once you overclock it. But, moving on now to the next game. We've got here, Far Cry 5, this is pretty much an even score between the 1070 TI and also the RTX 2060, RX590 and also the RTX are different fields, different price leagues. But, the founder's edition card, once we overclocked it, did edge out the 1070 TI both at 1080p and also at 1440p, so this was a good result for the 2060. And moving into the next game, Rainbow Six Siege, here straight away we saw at 1080 p that 2070 was actually starting to get a little bit CPU bound. So, it didn't respond that well to overclocks. But the 2060 did pull comfortably ahead of the 1070 TI which then did pull comfortably ahead of the RX 590. So, this was a good game to display, I guess the flexing of the 2060 over the hall-of-fame 1070 TI and both 1080p and 1440p saw these numbers and this trend. And move over to Battlefield 5, I saw a similar story with the 2060, yet again pulling ahead at stock levels and also overclocked levels versus the 1070 TI hall-of-fame. But, what about the last game we've got up here for you guys at 1080p and also 1440p, this is Hitman 2 and the RTX 2060 is scoring some very good numbers here, ultra settings. 1440p numbers were also showing that this graphics card was scaling very well in comparison to the 1070 TI, actually slightly losing. Which now leads us on to the last graph and that is the power consumption, these two graphics cards here, this was interesting, the 1070 TI is actually pulling the lowest power consumption out of all the 4 cards here tested today. Coming in at around 250 watts then 275 watts overclocked. RTX 2060 is scoring around 300 watts when you overclock it and about 270 out of the box. Then the RX 590 actually scoring around similar levels. And then the RTX 2070 with its high performance is also juicing more power, getting around 350 watts overclocked. But now we're moving on to conclusion time here, with the price and this is where things get pretty tricky because I'm going to be different recommendations for Australia versus the USA. If you're in America, $350 US, it's a decent price, it's not the best price and it's not the worst price I've seen on a graphics card but it is a decent price considering that's what you can get it for on Amazon.com. Stock is readily available, not just for the founders edition card but also for the B partners, have their cards out. I'm actually very keen to try the gigabyte mini which comes in at 170 mil length for a special project. But this card itself, the founder's edition card, for the lack of the two gigabytes of VRAM, it does make up for that big time with the build quality, with the thermals and also those overclocks. So, if you get one of these cards you can comfortably overclock it and not have to worry about the card getting hot and also not making much noise at all. But also on top of that you are paying extra money for that silicone which a lot of people arguably wouldn't need. But you do get DLSS support, ray tracing support and that is starting to make its way into games. Qwate 2 recently got a massive update full of ray tracing support. Battlefield 5 is also starting to play smoother. But the best thing coming out of the latest update and I've tested with this card, specifically is the G sync compatibility on the XG35 monitor. The 1440p ultra-wide 100 hertz from Asus, this card worked flawlessly in Battlefield 5, it was working with that adaptive sync. So, that is another bonus I guess that Nvidia have recently thrown in. Which I honestly thought is long overdue. But, I'm glad to see that now you get adaptive sync on all those good value for money monitors and it works with Nvidia graphics cards. So, basically, if you're in the US at $350, this card is decent, it definitely would be the card that I would buy, personally. It's the leader in its performance segment. It beats out the RX 590 comfortably, that cost $290 or $280, currently on Amazon and it even beats out, will beat out, I believe a Vega 56, comfortably as well and that costs more than this graphics card. So, the competition do need to step it up in this performance segment. As for the 1070 TI, this thing beats it out comfortably as well, but it just has 2 GB of less VRAM. So, it is a decent buy in the USA but here's where we gonna move over to Australia now, where if you pay $600 Aussie, I don't think it's simply worth it. We've put the RTX 2070 in there for a reason because you can pick one of these up for a little over $700 Aussie, which for that extra price, I believe it offers better value for money. And so I would like to see Nvidia in Australia at the very least, drop the card to 500 asking price. I think that would be a better starting point because the AIB partners on static ice, they're charging around $620 Australian. Which I feel is just a little bit over priced for what you're getting in Australia and especially when you compare $350 US converted to Aussie dollars. It comes well under $600 even if you account for GST. I know the argument of us living overseas, it's more expensive for the parts is a pretty moot point in this case when the RTX 2070 can be had for the price that it's at. So, anyways that was definitely a weird review. I've seen the gaming numbers pull out ahead with the overclocks versus the synthetics. We've seen this be a decent buy in America for 350 US but in Australia, I'd go for the RTX 2070. And with all that aside, if you enjoyed this review then be sure to hit that like button but also let us know in the comment section below what you think of the RTX 2060. Do you agree with what I'm saying? Or do you have another opinion? Love reading your thoughts. As always, drop a comment below. And also if you enjoyed the content and you want to see it the moment it's uploaded. Then be sure to hit that sub button with notifications turned on. And if you want the latest scoop before it hits YouTube's loop, then be sure to check us out on Instagram TechYESCity. Where I post up some of the projects before they hit the channel and that's about it. I'll catch you in another tech video very soon. Peace out for now. Bye. But, I've sort of just been illustrating these cards the whole review by holding them up and I'm pretty jet lagged as well. It's a weird feeling getting back from the US to Australia. This jet lag hit me hard, man. And, I've got this accounting to do and, anyway, catch you in the next one. Bye. (electronic music)