Nvidia RTX 2060 Price, Performance, Design Details Leak

The RTX 2060 is the latest entry in Nvidia’s RTX refresh series. We’ve known the card was coming for some time; its launch was likely delayed to give the company time to clear inventory and bring new cards to market. Now, the entire GPU’s specs, launch performance, and expected price have all leaked.

The design and specs appear fairly straightforward. In several ways, the RTX 2060 is a straightforward update to the 1060. It retains the latter’s 6GB RAM buffer and 192-bit memory bus. The overall core configuration is 1920:120:48 (cores, texture units, ROPs), with 240 tensor cores and 30 ray tracing cores. Total memory bandwidth would be substantially boosted by the advent of GDDR6, with an estimated 336GB/s of bandwidth, up from 192GB/s on the baseline GTX 1060.

These specs suggest substantial performance improvements for the RTX 2060 relative to the GTX 1060, and benchmark data proves this out. Videocardz has published a full set of data for both 1080p and 1440p. We don’t want to give out all the data the site has compiled, so here’s the set of 1440p results alone.

These benchmarks show the RTX 2060 trading shots with the GTX 1070 Ti, which it nominally replaces. With a $350 price tag, the RTX 2060 would cost almost exactly what the GTX 1070 Ti does. The RTX 2060 does not appear to offer any additional performance over the GTX 1070 Ti, simply the promise of RTX support. Whether this is particularly attractive as an upgrade option for gamers with Pascal cards remains an open question, but Nvidia’s decision to stick to its guns on pricing implies that its happy with the product sales it’s getting from the RTX family. The best-selling list at Amazon shows just one RTX card in the Top 10 and two in the Top 20. Newegg shows a similar distribution. GPUs like the GTX 1070 are vastly over-represented compared to RTX GPUs.

Of course, GTX-class GPUs like the 1070 are also quite a bit cheaper, which means it may not be terribly unusual to see RTX GPUs selling in lower numbers overall. Either way, Nvidia is going to be making money — the company is basically competing with itself at this point until AMD brings Navi to market.

Continue reading

NASA: Asteroid Could Still Hit Earth in 2068

This skyscraper-sized asteroid might still hit Earth in 2068, according to a new analysis from the University of Hawaii and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

MSI’s Nvidia RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio Review: 2080 Ti Performance, Pascal Pricing

Nvidia's new RTX 3070 is a fabulous GPU at a good price, and the MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio shows it off well.

Nvidia: RTX 3000 GPUs Will Remain Hard to Find Into 2021

There's no hope for a near-term improvement in RTX 3000 GPU availability. Shortages will likely continue through the end of this year and into the beginning of 2021.

SpaceX Starlink Beta Could Expand As Soon As January 2021

SpaceX has been launching Starlink internet satellites for the last 18 months or so, and all they managed to do for most of that time is tick off astronomers. However, the first users have been able to log onto SpaceX's Starlink internet service, and their impressions are good. This is just a small beta test, but SpaceX is apparently planning a wider test early next year.