NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Review: $399 Performance Beast

1. Introduction & Pricing
2. Specs: Turing GPU & GDDR6 Upgrade
3. Revised Look, Same Cooler
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Thermals, Power, Noise
11. Overclocking
12. Performance Thoughts
13. What's Hot, What's Not
14. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER offers some truly kick ass performance for $399, with its upgraded 8GB of GDDR6 on a faster 256-bit memory bus making it considerably faster than the RTX 2060 in the right situations and high-res 1440p/4K gaming.

Introduction & Pricing

What's New

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards are virtually Ti releases that are named SUPER, since the original GeForce RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 launched 9 months ago. The new SUPER cards represent the refinement of Turing over these 9 months, and are beefier versions of their predecessors in multiple ways -- especially the RTX 2060 SUPER.

The new GeForce RTX SUPER cards are positioned even better for the future of gaming, including the exciting and constantly expanding range of ray tracing capable games. At E3 2019 when NVIDIA unveiled the new SUPER cards to me, we were briefed ahead of time that Cyberpunk 2077 would feature real-time ray tracing technology on GeForce RTX graphics cards. What a huge way to unveil and present SUPER with one of the hottest games of 2020 and one of the most anticipated games of all time powered by real-time ray tracing on GeForce RTX.

Sadly I didn't have anywhere near enough time to test anything with ray tracing as I had just moved office space in the week of the GeForce RTX release and instead spent my time re-benchmarking everything (all cards, all resolutions) on the new drivers. Once I'm finished this I'll go into some ray tracing benchmarks with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, and Battlefield V.

After that, comes the new Navi cards with AMD's new Radeon RX 5700 series that I will be testing head-to-head against SUPER this week. In the meantime I'll build my new Zen 2-based AMD Ryzen 7 3700X + X570 chipset and PCIe 4.0-capable motherboard and SSD system. I'll test the new SUPER cards and Navi cards all in the Ryzen 7 3700X and verse it against the scores in my Core i7-8700K test bed used here for my graphics card reviews.

Pricing & Availability

NVIDIA is making its new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER available starting July 9, as for pricing we're looking at $399 for the RTX 2060 SUPER and $499 for the 2070 SUPER.

NVIDIA details its new GeForce RTX line up perfectly:

• GeForce RTX 2080 TI lives on as the best gaming GPU on the planet.
• GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER slots in at $699 and offers more performance than the RTX 2080 at the same price. Memory speed has been cranked up to 15.5Gbps. It's faster than Titan Xp.
• GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER is up to 24% faster (avg 16%) than the GeForce RTX 2070 for the same price. It beats a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
• GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is up to 22% faster (avg 15%) than RTX 2060, and it has 8GB of memory instead of 6GB. It's faster than GTX 1080, and it nearly matches RTX 2070 performance, for $399.

Specs: Turing GPU & GDDR6 Upgrade

It's Still TU106, But Now It's SUPER

The new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER uses the same TU106 GPU that was found inside of the normal RTX 2060, but it features some more of its Turing GPU goodness unlocked and an important tweak to the GDDR6 memory: there's now 8GB of it, instead of 6GB.

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Before we get into the GDDR6 memory difference, the TU106 GPU itself inside of the RTX 2060 SUPER is changed in all the right ways. We have 2176 CUDA cores versus the 1920 CUDA cores found in the original RTX 2060, while the new SUPER offering increases its SMs to 34 versus 30 SMs on the original RTX 2060. We have base GPU clocks of 1470MHz on the RTX 2060 SUPER comapred to 1365MHz on the non-SUPER, while GPU boost clocks are at 1650MHz versus 1680MHz on the OG RTX 2060.

NVIDIA making the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER more, uh, SUPER, results in 7.2 TFLOPs over the 6.5 TFLOPs on the original RTX 2060. The Tensor TFLOPs also increase with the new RTX 2060 SUPER packing 57.4 TFLOPs of performance versu the 51.6 TFLOPs of the original RTX 2060, while the RTX 2060 SUPER has 6 Giga Rays versus 5 Giga Rays on the original RTX 2060.

GDDR6 Upgrades

The largest change to the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is that NVIDIA has offered gamers 8GB of GDDR6 over the 6GB of GDDR6 on the RTX 2060, as well as putting it on a much faster 256-bit memory bus which offers up a huge increase in overall memory bandwidth over the RTX 2060.

NVIDIA ships the GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of GDDR6 at 14Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus that offers 336GB/sec of bandwidth, the wider 256-bit memory bus and the same 14Gbps GDDR6 sees memory bandwidth skyrocket up to 448GB/sec. If we compare the 448GB/sec from the RTX 2060 SUPER against the GTX 1080 and its 8GB of GDDR5X when it dropped, on the same 256-bit memory bus the GTX 1080 only had 320GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Impressive stuff for a 'mid-range' graphics card, eh?

Revised Look, Same Cooler

NVIDIA upgraded both the hardware and the styling of their Founders Edition coolers with the launch of the GeForce RTX series graphics cards last year, which became on of my favorite-looking GeForce RTX cards of the entire library of cards out there now.

With the introduction of the new GeForce RTX SUPER graphics cards NVIDIA has tweaked the styling just a little, but enough for it to be appreciated. I really dig the SUPER branding on the front of the card with its stylish green box, but it's the mirror finish on the front that really stands out.

Having my gaming PC reflect off the card really looks cool in a system, especially when you've got RGBs blinging out all over the place -- they're now going to reflect on your new RTX 2060 SUPER or RTX 2070 SUPER graphics card.

Detailed Look

NVIDIA changed the look and style of both the retail packaging of its RTX Founders Edition cards, and then made some small but great visual tweaks to the RTX 2060/2070/2080 SUPER graphics cards. The retail packaging is identical to the RTX 2060/2070/2080/2080 Ti:

The new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition with its shiny reflective front and SUPER branding highlighted in green, I really dig the new look FE cards.

On the back of the card we have the same high-quality backplate with green SUPER branding.

Just a single 8-pin PCIe power connector is required on the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition.

NVIDIA has 2 x DP 1.4, 1 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x DVI, and 1 x VirtualLink connector on the RTX 2060 SUPER FE.

Test System Specs

Our New GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

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We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

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Detailed Tech Specs

• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO
• MB: Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933
• SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• SSD: 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
• PSU: InWin 1065W PSU
• Chassis: In Win X-Frame
• OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

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Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike - 4K

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

3DMark TimeSpy

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

Heaven - 1440p

Heaven - 4K

Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Rainbow Six: Siege has been a strong entry into the franchise, popular for its realistic feel and great graphics. Stable as a rock for benchmarking, right up to 3440x1440 and 4K.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Rainbow Six: Siege has been a strong entry into the franchise, popular for its realistic feel and great graphics. Stable as a rock for benchmarking, right up to 3440x1440 and 4K.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Benchmarks - 4K

4K Benchmarks

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

Rainbow Six: Siege has been a strong entry into the franchise, popular for its realistic feel and great graphics. Stable as a rock for benchmarking, right up to 3440x1440 and 4K.

Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

Thermals, Power, Noise

Thermals

After some extensive benchmarking sessions the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition was running at 69-70C max, and would not be making all that much noise from its cooler. Keeping it below 60-65C wouldn't be an issue with some tweaks to the fan speed and/or fan profile.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the new RTX 2060 SUPER is damn good with my entire Core i7-8700K test bed and the RTX 2060 SUPER inside using a total of 250W in Heaven at 4K, comparing this to the 280W of the GTX 1080 for example. Again, I'll go into more detail on power consumption comparisons in the upcoming Radeon RX 5700 series reviews, comparing them against the new SUPER graphics cards in a 12nm vs 7nm GPU battle.

Overclocking

This is something I didn't have much time for since I re-benchmarked every single run of my suite, and will be providing some OC results after this review has gone live. I do know that I could easily hit over 2000MHz on the GPU with a 100-150MHz overclock while the GDDR6 could easily have another 1Gbps pumped into it for a total of 15Gbps. I will do more testing of this versus some of the third-party cards that will be turning up soon.

Performance Thoughts

The new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER has enough grunt in it to easily drive most high-end and esports games on the market at 1080p and over 120/144FPS, perfect for those high refresh rate gaming displays. For those who didn't think there was enough ray tracing grunt in the RTX 2060 then the new RTX 2060 SUPER is definitely worth your attention, the same goes for any of the new tech on show here with Turing like DLSS.

Starting with something like Shadow of War which is VRAM and memory bandwidth intensive, the RTX 2060 SUPER pulls way ahead at 1080p with 130FPS average compared to the regular RTX 2060 with just 100FPS. Compare this to the TITAN Xp which used to retail for $1199 and its 138FPS, the new RTX 2060 SUPER truly is a powerhouse. Even the GTX 1080 Ti only manages 127FPS at 1080p in Shadow of War, while the new RTX 2060 SUPER even blows the Radeon VII away with its 128FPS average.

Rainbow Six Siege is a super-popular esports shooter, and the new RTX 2060 SUPER does well again here with nearly 200FPS at 1080p. We can see most of the cards are doing well at 1080p, with the RTX 2060 SUPER offering nearly the same performance as the GTX 1080 Ti in RSS at 1080p.

New games like Metro Exodus will bring even the highest-end graphics cards to their knees, but the RTX 2060 SUPER survives the benchmark with 65FPS average compared to 57FPS on the RTX 2060. This is slightly behind the GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN Xp, but it beats the Radeon RX Vega 64, and loses to the Radeon VII here in Metro Exodus at 1080p.

1440p Performance Thoughts

8GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit memory bus providing 448GB/sec of memory bandwidth doesn't help too much at 1080p but at 1440p and 4K the performance of the RTX 2060 SUPER comes into play against the RTX 2060 in as big way. This is where the RTX 2060 SUPER should pull away from the original RTX 2060, is in 1440p gaming situations which is where I'm the most excited to see it perform.

Once again we'll start with Shadow of War which is crazy good on the RTX 2060 SUPER with 93FPS average at 1440p, blowing away the RTX 2060 with its 72FPS and even coming to blows with the GTX 1080 Ti and TITAN Xp which are much more expensive cards. It is just 1FPS from beating the Radeon VII, and easily bests both Vega GPUs. An impressive feat, with Shadow of War letting that 256-bit memory bus on the RTX 2060 SUPER stretch its legs.

125FPS average for Rainbow Six Siege at 1440p is nothing to sneeze at with the RTX 2060 SUPER, beating the 111FPS average of the regular RTX 2060. We're coming close to the 140FPS of the TITAN Xp, but much closer to the 128FPS average on the GTX 1080 Ti.

What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

SUPER Performance: NVIDIA really ramps things up in the 'mid-range' GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER graphics card, offering near GTX 1080 Ti levels of performance. The new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is infused with more of that amazing Turing GPU architecture on the still-very-competitive 12nm node, with SUPER performance from its memory bandwidth upgrades. SUPER is definitely the right word when it comes to RTX 2060 SUPER and its performance.

8GB GDDR6 Upgrade: The upgrade to 8GB of GDDR6 on the RTX 2060 SUPER over the 6GB of GDDR6 on the regular RTX 2060 is a welcomed upgrade, but the change to a 256-bit memory bus over the 192-bit memory bus on the RTX 2060. This results in a huge 448GB/sec of memory bandwidth up from the 336GB/sec on the RTX 2060, and a huge upgrade on the previous GTX 1080 flagship which had 320GB/sec memory bandwidth from its GDDR5X at 10Gbps. The GDDR6 inside of these GeForce RTX series pumps along at 14Gbps with headroom for overclocking.

Near GTX 1080 Ti Performance For $399: You're getting near GTX 1080 Ti levels of performance for $399 and with some overclocking and/or the upcoming custom variants of the RTX 2060 SUPER, we should expect equal to, or beating GTX 1080 Ti. This all happens on a single 8-pin PCIe power connector too, remember... and comparing this to the 8+6-pin PCIe requires for the GTX 1080 Ti, this shows the power efficiency of Turing.

NVIDIA is still on 12nm and shows it can continue to kick ass with power efficiency compared to AMD about to hit the new 7nm road with Navi on the RX 5700 series. We'll talk about power consumption on Navi in a few days.

Ray Tracing: I'm only warming up to ray tracing and will have a larger article that dives into ray tracing performance of Metro Exodus, Battlefield V, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I still think having the ability to play ray tracing-capable games is a good one, and with the additional muscle that the RTX 2060 SUPER brings, ray tracing now matters. I wouldn't have purchased a normal RTX 2060 for ray tracing games, but the RTX 2060 SUPER on the other hand can handle it much better. Expect more on this in the next week or two.

Game Bundle: NVIDIA is giving away copies of two massive games in Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Control with all RTX SUPER series graphics cards, with Control launching on August 27 and featuring some of the best real-time ray tracing effects yet. I personally tried out Control running on a GeForce RTX SUPER series graphics card at the SUPER unveiling event during E3 2019 a couple of weeks ago and spent time turning RTX off and on. The results were nothing short of amazing in Control, so that's a nice bonus game with SUPER cards to get.

Custom Cards Will Be Fun: If we're seeing this type of performance out of the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, then I'm keen to see what the likes of MSI, ZOTAC, ASUS, and other AIB partners can do with custom coolers and overclocking. I have some custom MSI cards coming, as well as some ZOTAC cards in the works and will have a re-look at SUPER when they arrive, the same goes for RTX 2080 SUPER when it launches later this month.

What's Not

RTX 2060/2070 Will Be Phased Out: It looks like there won't be a price drop of the current GeForce RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 as whatever is left of them will be it, as they'll slowly be replaced with the newer, and much better SUPER versions. This doesn't mean the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 are discontinued immediately, but it would've been nice to have cards at $50-$100+ increments from the RTX 2060 through to the RTX 2080 Ti.

Final Thoughts

NVIDIA has a really good product in its hands with the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, offering near GTX 1080 Ti levels of performance for just $399 and on a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. There's an upgraded and much faster 8GB of GDDR6 on the RTX 2060 SUPER making it much better in high-res situations compared to the slower 6GB of GDDR6 on the regular RTX 2060.

The inclusion of Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Control makes the deal even sweeter, as you'll be saving over $100 on those games alone. I'm not someone who recommends buying a graphics card for the bundled game, but Control is a great game to giveaway with an RTX graphics card as it's the perfect real-time ray tracing showcase game. Control isn't coming until August, so you'll have a couple of months to wait before you can crank RTX on the game.

NVIDIA sneaking in the release of its new SUPER cards day before the NDA lifts on AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards is a very strategic move, as they get their cards into reviewers' hands and reviews published days before Navi is detailed. My discussion on price is only valid until 7/7 when my reviews of the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT go live, and then I'll write another article up battling the two new cards from each camp in their own article. The price is going to be a big one for AMD to swallow post-SUPER.

Another area where the new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER will kick some serious ass is in 21:9 aspect ratio UltraWide gaming monitors with native 3440x1440 at 60-100Hz. I will be doing some 3440x1440 testing in the coming days on both the new SUPER cards and AMD's new Radeon RX 5700 series cards. Expect some more on UltraWide gaming SUPER soon.

Overall, the new GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER represents the last 9 months of Turing in a kicker that shows NVIDIA doesn't even need to be on the 12nm node to continue expanding on its domination of graphics cards. We're looking at cool operating, power-sipping cards for the amount of GPU horsepower inside of the new GeForce RTX and RTX SUPER cards and it's all on the 12nm node.

The next card to get excited for after this is my review on the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, and then the release of the GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER at the end of the month. The new RTX 2080 SUPER is going to sit perfectly between the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti, and should be quite the monster when it drops later this month for $699.

Summing up: If you're in the market for a new graphics card to power your games throughout the year like Control, the reboot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with RTX features, esports games like Apex Legends and Overwatch or even AAA titles like Battlefield V and Metro Exodus -- you're in safe hands with the hew RTX 2060 SUPER.