More VRAM, But for Who? Nvidia RTX 2060 12GB Review

[Steve]

Today we're taking a look at the new GeForce RTX 2060, you know, the 12GB model that gamers were hoping would help solve the GPU shortage, but certainly won't. But why, and how does it perform?

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2390-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-12gb/

 

[Irata]

Sadly as expected. Still curious why nVidia did not announce a nice and low MSRP like $250 as unrealistically low msrp worked fine for them so far in duping customers and reviewers.

 

[Daniele 00]

Sorry but I disagree about the memory.
When I bought my gtx 1060 3gb I had followed your review, in which you said it was the best card of the moment for entry level (normal users) and that 3gb was enough, even if there was 6gb model aviable. Im still enjoing my videocard.. but..
After a few years, they start to come out videogame like Apex Legends in which I had to choose the setting with 3gb vram, and in general videogames started to suffer for the luck of v ram.
I started to believe that having more vram than necessary always good, except you planning to switch video card every 1 or 2 years.

 

[Nintenboy01]

Bit of a similar situation with the 3070 Ti - the extra CUDA cores, TMUs, etc barely seem to make a difference but the extra memory bandwidth from the faster GDDR6X memory does help out a bit especially at 4K (1080p and 1440p not so much).

 

[QuantumPhysics]

The 306012GB is the best card that people who would settle for a 1660, 1650 or anything lower than a 3050Ti should be trying to get.

 

[mattferg]

Another absolutely clueless article regarding mining - these cards aren’t REMOTELY for miners. No idea who they are for, though.

The 2060 is extremely undesirable, especially with a markup to 12GB, because the Ethereum DAG is absolutely fine on 6GB.

On top of this, the 2000 series architecture is miles less efficient per watt than the 3000 series, and GDDR6X gives a MASSIVE improvement over previous RAM architectures. On top of this, the 2060 6GB has a cut down bus with compared to the 2060 Super, and this massively impacts mining, making it even more undesirable.

As such, a GDDR6 (non X) last gen inefficient GPU with 2x the VRAM needed for a significant price increase isn’t appealing to miners at all - the ROI is too high.

This card is being sold as an upgrade to the 2060 to justify a high price to gamers in higher resolutions. This card isn’t for miners - please stop being so stupid and being the only tech publication to say this - it paints you as out of touch and unwilling to do research.

 

[Toju Mikie]

Another absolutely clueless article regarding mining - these cards aren’t REMOTELY for miners. No idea who they are for, though.

The 2060 is extremely undesirable, especially with a markup to 12GB, because the Ethereum DAG is absolutely fine on 6GB.

On top of this, the 2000 series architecture is miles less efficient per watt than the 3000 series, and GDDR6X gives a MASSIVE improvement over previous RAM architectures. On top of this, the 2060 6GB has a cut down bus with compared to the 2060 Super, and this massively impacts mining, making it even more undesirable.

As such, a GDDR6 (non X) last gen inefficient GPU with 2x the VRAM needed for a significant price increase isn’t appealing to miners at all - the ROI is too high.

This card is being sold as an upgrade to the 2060 to justify a high price to gamers in higher resolutions. This card isn’t for miners - please stop being so stupid and being the only tech publication to say this - it paints you as out of touch and unwilling to do research.

Did you look at the hashrate of this card? If you look at the hashrate and the hashrate per watt of this card, you'll find that it is actually higher than most people expected it to be. The 12GB vram maybe in case of doing something else while mining or by mining 2 coins at once, which will use more vram. It really is a desirable card for miners like what the reviewer is saying, but they don't want to go into depth of mining capability here

 

[Achaios]

Another absolutely clueless article regarding mining - these cards aren’t REMOTELY for miners. No idea who they are for, though.

The 2060 is extremely undesirable, especially with a markup to 12GB, because the Ethereum DAG is absolutely fine on 6GB.

On top of this, the 2000 series architecture is miles less efficient per watt than the 3000 series, and GDDR6X gives a MASSIVE improvement over previous RAM architectures. On top of this, the 2060 6GB has a cut down bus with compared to the 2060 Super, and this massively impacts mining, making it even more undesirable.

As such, a GDDR6 (non X) last gen inefficient GPU with 2x the VRAM needed for a significant price increase isn’t appealing to miners at all - the ROI is too high.

This card is being sold as an upgrade to the 2060 to justify a high price to gamers in higher resolutions. This card isn’t for miners - please stop being so stupid and being the only tech publication to say this - it paints you as out of touch and unwilling to do research.

Cool story, except someone is already buying these cards by the palette of 120 which means it ain't QuantumPhysics that's doing it, it must be well, MINERS.

 

[Irata]

Sorry but I disagree about the memory.
When I bought my gtx 1060 3gb I had followed your review, in which you said it was the best card of the moment for entry level (normal users) and that 3gb was enough, even if there was 6gb model aviable. Im still enjoing my videocard.. but..
After a few years, they start to come out videogame like Apex Legends in which I had to choose the setting with 3gb vram, and in general videogames started to suffer for the luck of v ram.
I started to believe that having more vram than necessary always good, except you planning to switch video card every 1 or 2 years.

Checking their review of MSI‘s 3 GB 1060, they said this:

If you are the kind of gamer that upgrades every generation or so, I feel the 3GB model might be the better buy. It seems for the vast majority of games the 3GB model is less than 10% slower, which should produce highly playable performance for folks targeting 1080p in today's latest titles.
…..
You could point to Mirror's Edge Catalyst and suggest that this is how future games will look, and you might even be right. I personally feel this is an extreme example and it will still be some time before it becomes the norm.

It needs to be said that the review was made 5 1/2 years ago.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Shame, really. But it goes to show that more RAM doesn't mean more performance in a case like this. Even with the 2060 12GB having all the specs of a 2060 Super (minus the faster memory bandwidth) it doesn't really get any better performance over the 2060 6GB.

 

[pcnthuziast]

I know a more powerful gpu will beat a less powerful gpu with more vram in almost every scenario. I find it odd though how so many game engines like to load up vram when it's available, but don't understand why. I have a 3060 and quite a few games I've played load the vram completely. Deathloop and Godfall for example will use all of it at the settings I run. If there is no performance advantage and if 8gb cards suffice just fine and can easily outperform my gpu if they are higher tier skus, why load the ram?

 

[Sausagemeat]

Another absolutely clueless article regarding mining - these cards aren’t REMOTELY for miners. No idea who they are for, though.

The 2060 is extremely undesirable, especially with a markup to 12GB, because the Ethereum DAG is absolutely fine on 6GB.

On top of this, the 2000 series architecture is miles less efficient per watt than the 3000 series, and GDDR6X gives a MASSIVE improvement over previous RAM architectures. On top of this, the 2060 6GB has a cut down bus with compared to the 2060 Super, and this massively impacts mining, making it even more undesirable.

As such, a GDDR6 (non X) last gen inefficient GPU with 2x the VRAM needed for a significant price increase isn’t appealing to miners at all - the ROI is too high.

This card is being sold as an upgrade to the 2060 to justify a high price to gamers in higher resolutions. This card isn’t for miners - please stop being so stupid and being the only tech publication to say this - it paints you as out of touch and unwilling to do research.

Quite a venom filled comment you’ve written there, it’s also incorrect, the card is for miners, that’s why there is no LHR version. And its not that bad at mining, they can be doing over 31MH/s at about 75watts if configured correctly. That’s very useable and only slightly worse than a 1660ti which is regarded as one of the best. Its also considerably better than the LHR RTX 3060. In fact no LHR card will mine anywhere near as efficiently as this part. Most coins dont need more than 6GB of memory to mine on but I think Nvidia added the extra memory just because they can, maybe they have surplus GDDR6? I think this is a situation where Nvidia are just trying to get more products to market to meet demand, all the cards sold out on minute one so there are people out there who want them.

I think a lot of people falsely believe that the most expensive cards are what miners want the most. But its actually mid range that usually provides the best efficiency, currently I believe the 3060ti is the most desirable card amongst miners as it can output about 60MH/s but only has a TDP of 200W. Rising energy costs are pushing miners towards these cards.

 

[gamerk2]

Sorry but I disagree about the memory.
When I bought my gtx 1060 3gb I had followed your review, in which you said it was the best card of the moment for entry level (normal users) and that 3gb was enough, even if there was 6gb model aviable. Im still enjoing my videocard.. but..
After a few years, they start to come out videogame like Apex Legends in which I had to choose the setting with 3gb vram, and in general videogames started to suffer for the luck of v ram.
I started to believe that having more vram than necessary always good, except you planning to switch video card every 1 or 2 years.

3GB back when the 1000 series came out was already getting *very* long in the tooth; I don't remember the TS review, but I'd be shocked if they outright said get the 3GB model over the 6GB one.

 

[Nobina]

I don't know what's worse: Nvidia spitting in our faces by releasing this card and LHR or AMD doing absolutely nothing about anything.

 

[Jpe1701]

Brings back memories of the arguments people had over the 2GB or 4GB gtx 960.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Brings back memories of the arguments people had over the 2GB or 4GB gtx 960.

Got folks that went through a bunch of posts on TPU about if the 3060 12GB was more future proof over the 3060Ti 8GB card.

Had a good handful of folks swearing up and down that 12GB means you'll get better performance over the 8GB, 4 years down the road.

2 years later after the RTX 2060 6GB released and going up against a slightly improved 2060 12GB and all you get is a measly 5% gain..... just goes to show that more VRAM doesn't mean better longevity and/or performance from a card.

 

[Mr Skeptic]

This a great budget card for Machine Learning which relies mostly on CUDA cores and VRAM.

 

[Xausejo]

Shame on Nvidia & Amd for doing this to gamers, that puts them in this business. All they're thinking only profits. Our only hope is intel saving us from this situations. I this works out for intel, maybe people goes to the third player. Nvidia & AMD will lost their customers.

 

[Fastturtle]

This card isn't for miners. It's a "cut em off at the pass" move by Nvidia against AMD since AMD is going to a full chiplet design with seperate memory controller. It means AMD can't use committed capacity for the 2060 chips for Zen4 as there have been rumours about. Sorry Lisa, but I'm a major **** and don't want the women being worth more then me.

 

[Dimitrios]

Great article. From the color layout of the dark midnight purple ( one of my street bikes was that color) to the writer being seriously blunt and not sugarcoated, I can feel every word and I to getting tired of these two companies favoring miners vs their long time faithful customers.

MY ADVICE TO NVIDIA & AMD : Better wake up because MINING will probably die out before GAMING and you will be begging your loyal customers back.If INTEL has a decent card and has nicely written GO FUC** YOURSELF NVIDIA & AMD title I would buy it lol. Great article by the way.

 

[Bamda]

Another money laundering scheme from the Nvidia. LOL