RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 Review: Navi makes a solid impression

The past two or three years have been a mixed bag for AMD's graphics wing, unlike its CPU division which has been on a role with Ryzen. The last time it had a major successful launch was three years ago, with Polaris GPUs. The pricey and power hungry Vega, while working as a stopgap solution, never quite took the fight to Nvdia's camp. And considering the 7nm Radeon VII was never meant for pure gaming, AMD had to bring something to table that could not only disrupt Nvidia's Turing line-up but pave the way for future Radeon products.

That something came in the form of 7nm Navi GPU, launched back in July along with 3rd generation Ryzen processors. Apart from bringing all the benefits of a process-shrink, Navi features a new and improved RDNA (Radeon DNA) graphic architecture and replaces GCN (Graphics Core Next) based Vega within AMD's product stack.

While RDNA isn't a complete architectural overhaul, many of its aspects have new elements introduced in almost every level. With RDNA, AMD's focus is on improved single-threaded performance and better utilization of fixed-function hardware. That means RDNA is better suited for gaming whereas GCN was better at handling complex HPC type workloads - part of the reason why AMD still keeps the GCN based Radeon 7 around.

AMD Radeon VII Review: The highend contender

From the center stage of CES last month, AMD gave us the outlines of two major products. One was about Ryzen gen 2 and we expected as much; the other, however, caught many of us off-guard. Not to be out-done by peers from CPU division, RTG (Radeon Technologies Group) announced Radeon VII, world's first 7nm consumer graphics card with 16GB HBM2 video memory. Fast forward a month and the Radeon VII is here with a price tag of $700 (~₹60K). 

AMD Radeon VII and its packaging, click to enlarge

Considering AMD's focus on the mainstream of late, not many anticipated it would be gunning for high-end with its next GPU. But that's exactly what Radeon VII is supposed to do - to take the fight to the likes of Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080. And that's easier said than done as Nvidia has asserted its dominance over the high-end ever since the launch of its RTX 2000 series of graphics cards. Powered by Turing architecture, these GPUs not only routinely outperform AMD's Vega and Polaris based products but also features Real-time Ray Tracing. In our review of GeForce RTX 2060, we saw Nvidia's mid-range card to nibble at the heels of RX Vega64 indicating how desperately AMD needs to update its aging line-up.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Review: Features, performance, value, verdict

Nvidia’s ‘60 series has traditionally produced some of the most sought after GPUs by value seeking gamers and enthusiasts. It probably started with the now legendary GTX 460, a GPU that created a market subspace of its own – the $200(~₹15K) sweet-spot. There is an unwritten rule of short within the world of desktop graphics. It goes like this: the first couple of GPUs in any generation, the x10s and x30s to more precise (ex. GTX 710, GTX 730 – the so-called “display cards”) are a big no-no as they are cut too thin for any serious gaming. The x70s and x80s are high-end flagships that come with a hefty price tag. It’s the x60s that represent the best of both worlds – the mainstream sweet-spot where value and performance converge.

That trend however takes a hit with the introduction of Nvidia’s latest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 2060 which comes with an asking price of $350 for the standard Founders Edition (FE). RTX 2060 is the third GPU based on Turing - Nvidia’s most recent graphics architecture. The company has already released a slew of cards based on high-end Turing GPUs like RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti which currently dominate the enthusiast segment. RTX 2060 on the other hand is supposed to be a mainstream part which makes the pricing a bit confusing and begs the question of whether it’s performance and feature-set justify such a high price. Let’s dive in to find an answer.

Tech and spec: TU106 gets a haircut

Similar to previously launched 2000 series models, RTX 2060 is built on a TSMC 12nm FinFet process designed specifically for Nvidia. Unlike previous generations however, Nvidia’s efforts with Turing aren’t totally focused on delivering raw gaming power.

The USP of Turing based GPUs is Realtime Ray Tracing which Nvidia recognizes to be a gamechanger. To reflect the sentiment and perhaps to instill potential buyers with the same, the company even changed it’s long standing GTX naming scheme to RTX.

Graphics card	RTX 2070	GTX 1070	RTX 2060	GTX 1060	RX Vega56	RX590	RX 580
GPU/Codename	TU106/Turing	GP104/Pascal	TU106/Turing	GP106/Pascal	Vega/Vega10	Ellesmere/ Polaris 30	Ellesmere/ Polaris 20
Shader cores	2304	1920	1920	1280	3584	2304	2304
Base clock	1410 MHz	1506 MHz	1365 MHz	1506 MHz	1156 MHz	1469 MHz	1257 MHz
Boost clock	1620 MHz	1683 MHz	1680 MHz	1708 MHz	1471 MHz	1545 MHz	1340 MHz
Memory clock	1750 MHz	2002 MHz	1750 MHz	2002 MHz	800 MHz	2000 MHz	2000 MHz
Memory Bus	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	2048-bit	256-bit	256-bit
V-RAM	8GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR5	8GB HBM2	8 GB GDDR5	8 GB GDDR5
ROPs	64	64	48	48	64	32	32
Texture Units	144	120	120	80	224	144	144
Power(TDP)	185w	150w	160w	120w	210w	175w	185w
Price	₹ 55000	₹ 35000	₹ 34000	₹20000	₹40000	₹28000	₹22000

Unlike its faster and costlier siblings though, RTX 2060 faces some serious competition most of which come from Nvidia’s own camp. In terms of price and specs, RTX 2060 sits much closer to GTX 1070 than GTX 1060 -the card it’s supposed to succeed.

TU106 - logical diagram, click to enlarge

At the heart of RTX 2060 lies the TU106 GPU, the same piece of silicon that drives the enthusiast grade RTX 2070. With 2060 however Nvidia disabled six of TU106’s original 36 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) resulting in a total of 1920 Shader cores along with 48 ROPs,120 texture units and an192-bit wide memory interface. While the founder’s edition’s base clock is slightly lower at 1365, the boost speed is up there with the rest of Nvidia’s recent offerings.


Introduction of GDDR6 memory is one of the key highlights of 2000 series. GDDR6 is capable of 14Gbps data transfer which is much faster than GTX 1060’s 8Gbps GDDR5. On a 192-bit bus, this generates a bandwidth around 336GB/s - plenty to feed the hungry CUDA cores.

The only negative here is Nvidia’s decision to stick with 6GB V-RAM with the mainstream card. This could be point of concern as most modern games have a good appetite for frame buffers and the rule of thumb is the more the merrier. Tittles with high-res texture pack and texture mods tend to gobble video memory like nobody’s business. Also, when you pay around 35K for a graphics card you’re not just thinking about today’s tittles, are you? Going forward, 6GB could fall a little short.

And that’s not the end of story for 2060’s memory capacity. Remember how Nvidia released GTX 1060 in two variations – the 6GB and the 3GB models? Turns out, it’s at it again, only this time there shall be no less than 6 different memory configurations to deal with! Have a look -

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6 (Founder’s Edition)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6GB GDDR5
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 4GB GDDR6
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 4GB GDDR5
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 3GB GDDR6
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 3GB GDDR5

At this point we don’t know if lower memory variants will also see a reduction in other resources like CUDA cores like GTX 1060 3GB did last time around. Everything in this article is based on the 6GB GDDR6 Founder’s Edition. We’ll update this space with more informations about pricing and performance of other variants once they become available.

Features: Ray Tracing and DLSS explored

Ray Tracing is an advanced rendering process that brings a huge difference in how light is perceived within a 3d-world. Often used by movie studios to create life-like 3d imagery, it traces the path of light to create a more accurate and realistic interaction of light-rays with other 3d objects.

Reflections with and without RTX, click to enlarge

Computer or console games however use a method called Rasterization where light is mapped in a 2d plane and stored as Raster files to be used by complex shader algorithms on different shapes (polygons).

Ray Tracing on the other hand treats light like more like “real world” light resulting in more realistic reflections, diffusions and shadows. But those come at a cost of compute resource. Despite of it’s inferior visuals, Rasterization is a mature and well entrenched tech. It’s well optimized to take leverage of modern GPU’s massive parallel processing power. Where as Realtime Ray Tracing calls for dedicated hardware and as such Nvidia has dedicated a big chunk of its Turing die space to RT cores which exclusively handles tracing duties. As for Ray tracing and computing RTX 2060 gets 30 RT cores and 240 Tensor cores.

Another piece of Turing puzzle is DLSS or Deep Learning Super-Sampling. Super-Sampling is a technique that involves rendering frames in higher than native resolution and downscaling it. With DLSS Nvidia utilizes Turing’s Tensor cores to create a deep learning network, one that will sample as many frames as possible to identify the best pattern that suits a game. The process gets better overtime. The idea is to infer a final output image to the monitor which is smoother and free of aliasing artefacts. Nvidia claims DLSS should increase performance compared to conventional TAA (Temporal Anti Aliasing).

RTX 2060 also fully supports Nvidia’s variable refresh rate technology – G-sync; which makes it ideal for any G-Sync compatible monitors and even some AMD Free-Sync compatible ones too, if the reports are true.

Performance: The little card that can do

This is where every mainstream product earns its bread and butter. Thanks to Turing’s advanced and efficient graphics architecture and the fact that Nvidia didn’t trim TU106 too thin, the newest GeForce on the block performs very well. Here are key performance highlights -

• On average RTX 2060 is faster than both RX Vega 56 and GTX 1070 while it treads blow with GTX 1070 Ti. All of these are costlier cards but expect some price drops under changed circumstances.
• Depending on the game, RTX 2060 is 10-15% faster than GTX 1070 in FHD and QHD. The gap shrinks in 4K but that’s not a target resolution for this card.
• On a generation to generation basis RTX 2060 is around 50% faster than GTX 1060 6GB. The later however was around 85% faster vs. GTX 960. We’d still have taken 50% increment gladly except for the price hike!
• RTX 2060 effortlessly plays most modern games at 1920×1080 (FHD) and does surprisingly well at 2560×1440 (QHD). This makes it a good choice for those who already have 1440p monitor or considering one down the future.
• Faster GDDR6 combined with Nvidia’s very efficient tile based color compression algorithm seems to have offset the V-RAM deficiency, for now.
• Compared to previous gen the power consumption has gone higher thanks to a larger die and more computing hardware in form of RT and Tensor cores. But it’s still more efficient than competing AMD GPUs.
• The FE design looks and works very well with good heat dissipation and low noise. It features the same PCB design used in RTX 2070 FE. It draws power with one 8-pin PCIE connector which is well within the grasp of a good quality 500w PSU.
• Overclocking is capped by power limit. Reviewers are able to get ~10% on core/engine clock which is not that much. Memory overclocking seems to work better.
• As for Ray Tracing, RTX 2060 FE is capable of ~60 FPS gameplay in Battlefield 5 with RTX set on “High/Medium” @1080p. Framerates fall below 60 in QHD.

GeForce RTX 2060 FE, click to enlarge

We have gathered and analyzed lots of benchmark data from reliable tech sites around the web. Here is how RTX 2060 performs on average @1440p:

• Tom’s Hardware found RTX 2060 to be 15% faster vs. GTX 1070, 11% faster vs. RX Vega and 2% faster vs. GTX 1070 Ti.
• Anandtech benched their sample to be 14-15% faster vs. GTX 1070, 11% faster vs. RX Vega, 2% faster vs. GTX 1070 Ti and a whooping 59% faster vs. GTX 1060.
• HardwareCanucks found RTX 2060 is 12% faster vs. GTX 1070, 6% faster vs. RX Vega, 48% faster vs. GTX 1060 and slower by 2% vs. GTX 1070 Ti
• TechPowerup found RTX 2060 to be 15% faster vs. GTX 1070, 10% faster vs. RX Vega, 40% faster vs. GTX 1060.

Value and verdict: The vanishing sweet-spot

It’s not easy to find value within a market that lacks competition. Pascal based GPUs were already more than competitive against AMD’s senescent Vega and Polaris parts. With Turing Nvidia has not only broaden the rift in performance but also pricing. An average customer might mistake RTX 2060 for a mainstream part curtsey of its x60 branding while the $350 price tag is there to remind them of that reality. The following chart will make clear of that.

Price of Nvidia 60-series cards over the years, click to enlarge

We expect to see the RTX 2060 Founders Edition at around ₹34K on various e-trailers. Street price should be lower by a couple of thousands but it may take a while.

Clearly we can’t associate RTX 2060 with the value that x60 series is known for. It performs like an updated GTX 1070 and the price reflects that. On the plus side it delivers better performance to price ratio than any other Turing based graphics card. RTX 2070 particularly looks overpriced at more than ₹50K, delivering just about 15% faster frame-rates at a 30% price premium, when compared to its cheaper sibling.

With only 30 RT-cores, RTX 2060 isn’t quite the poster child of Ray Tracing but it’s still the cheapest gateway to the scene. While very promising, Both Ray Tracing and DLSS, lack game adoption at this point. Battlefield 5 is the only game that currently supports DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and DLSS is yet to be adopted by a AAA tittle. Going forward there might come a day bearing fruition of Nvidia’s formidable developer collaboration, when these techs see a high degree of adoption and optimization but it’s not today.

Also, We know mainstream Indian gamers are more about FPS/₹ than they’re about eye-candy! And we can’t blame them. The last couple of years have been quite hard on average Indian PC gamers with a trident of GST, falling rate of Rupee and Bit-coin mining skyrocketing the price of gaming hardware. It’s only recently that things have started to revert to normal with the bursting of crypto-mining bubble and a somewhat steady Rupee.

So, with all said and done, here goes the final verdict:

• RTX 2060 is well beyond the budget of most mainstream gamers. Those looking for a sweet-spot GPU for 1080p gaming, look elsewhere. AMD’s RX 580 or RX 570 cards represent superb value for money at around ₹18, 000 and ₹13, 000 respectively. Green team’s own GTX 1060 6GB is another viable option. Don’t buy a higher resolution monitor and you’ll be fine.
• Those who already have a GTX 1070 or RX Vega 56, won’t gain much buying into RTX 2060. The slim performance gain isn’t enough to justify an upgrade.
• If you already have a 1440p display or planning to get one and have a budget of ₹31K-34K, RTX 2060 fits the bill perfectly. Go ahead and buy it! If you’re upgrading from something like a GTX 970, you’ll see a huge uplift in your FPS.
• For the deal-hunters among you, keep your eyes open for some heavy discounts on Vega 56 and outgoing GTX 1070 (Ti).
• For the rest of you, sit tight and watch how Radeon VII pans out.

Optimization matters: Ryzen gets a performance boost in Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity was the first PC game to come out with full DirectX 12 support and now it has also become the first Ryzen optimized title out there. In an interesting turn of events, Oxide Games – the studio which created Ashes of the Singularity – has released a patch update to improve the game’s performance on AMD’s recently launched Ryzen processors. Independent reviewers with access to game’s latest beta version have already run benchmarks and results demonstrate a performance boost of around 20%. This not only improves the in-game standings of Ryzen 7 CPUs but more importantly, it gives us an idea of what could be done if game developers are willing to tap into Ryzen’s ample resources.

“PREPARE FOR BATTLE” bundle now includes GeForce GTX 1060: Free games for midrange Pascal

NVIDIA has some good for performance-mainstream gamers. According to its website, the company’s “Prepare for Battle” gaming bundle now includes the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards. What it means is that if you buy a GTX 1060, you also get to download a free copy of “For Honor” or “Ghost Recon: Wildlands” by using the promotional code. Prior to this, the “Prepare for Battle” bundle was exclusive to the GTX1080ti, GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 – the upper-tier Pascal based GPUs. So, it’s good to see the free goodness trickling down to the midrange of things. The offer is also available on laptops and pre-built systems equipped with aforementioned parts.

NVIDIA announces GTX 1080 Ti: A smaller Titan-X for $699

We were expecting it and now it’s official. Yesterday, at the GDC (Game Developers Conference) NVIDIA made the announcement regarding its upcoming high-end consumer graphics card – the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Based on the company’s highly successful “Pascal” architecture and build on a cutting edge 16nm process, this new flagship should deliver almost 35% higher performance gain over the existing GTX 1080, according to the presentation slides. The card is expected to hit the stores worldwide during the first week of March, 2017 with a price tag of ~$700 and sits in-between the GTX 1080 and the prosumer GTX Titan-X.

Intel core i3-7350K performance analysis: unlocked, overclockable and overpriced?

One of the more interesting highlights of the Kaby Lake launch was the introduction of a multiplier unlocked core i3-7350K. Traditionally, the “K”-stamping which denotes the unlocked status of an Intel CPU is reserved for much costlier chips, namely the highest range i5s and i7s; dual-core i3 processors on the other hand represent excellent value thanks to their lower prices. So, when the news broke of an overclockable i3 - many enthusiasts, especially those on a budget, thought they’d found the dream chip. After all, not everybody can afford a 21K i5-7600K to entice their overclocking urge! We however wasn’t particularly captivated by its price tag and decided to hold our opinion for a later day. Meanwhile some of the leading hardware review-sites have recently published benchmark results of i3-7850K and that gives us ample reasons to go back and tackle the question of whether or not this is the right processor for you.

MSI Unveils New FM2+ Gaming Motherboards

During my overview of MSI's gaming series I came out highly impressed for what the firm has done with its newest range of motherboards. I liked the clean and clutter free layouts, striking color scheme along with all the game-centric features that MSI has packed in these boards. I also couldn't deny the value that was in offer. My only complain was the lack of availability on AMD side of things and that too seems to have remedied with Micro Star International unveiling two brand new mainboards for AMD's APU platform! Based on FM2+ socket, these boards are - A88X-G45 GAMING and A88XM GAMING!

Do SSDs improve your FPS? The answer is still NO!

Modern PC games are getting hungrier for resources each year. A gamer is known to the fact and as such often willing to walk the extra mile in order to get the extra performance out of his/her PC. While upgrading to a faster graphics card based on a newer GPU architecture provides the most surefire way of getting more in form of FPS, moving to a faster CPU or even a specialized network solution often boosts gaming performance. But whether or not an SSD (Solid state Drive) can be perceived as a potential upgrade for a gamer has remained a debatable topic over the years! If you ask the question to a manufacturer/vendor, they would possibly tell you that SSDs are the best thing that could happen to a gamer; but in reality things aren’t that simple! From time to time we have seen benchmarks clearly proving that games for the most part don’t benefit from SSDs. The latest dataset in this regard comes from HardOCP and goes inline with our prior observations!

ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition: The Dark Dreadnought!

Right now if you are looking for the ultimate performance in a desktop system, your options are quite limited. With AMD not pursuing the performance crown anymore, Intel is left battling itself for quite sometimes in the high-end enthusiast segment. So when it comes down to choosing a platform for your next HEDT (High-End Desktop) build, it’s either Intel’s mainstream socket LGA1150 or the higher-end socket LGA2011. With the later, you will not only get the chance to opt for Intel’s 6core/12thread Ivy Bridge-E CPUs but you’ll also encounter some of the finest (and largest!) samples of motherboard engineering. Take a look on the new Rampage IV Black Edition and you'll know what I'm talking about!

Enter the Dragon: A look at MSI gaming series motherboards

Here is a tough one for you – what is common between a hardware manufacturer, RPG developer and a Chinese calendar maker? The answer is, along with many other things that come with their respective trades, they all make good use of Dragons! The Dragon, as a mighty myth of mass-marketing, always has good commercial value and as such, seldom fails to inspire the extra bucks out of the pocked of an overwhelmed enthusiast, gamer or tourist! But as with every other creature of legend, they are not easy to work with and it surely takes a little more to tame a Dragon than, say, your average house-cat! MSI, however seems to have mastered this arcane art as this leading motherboard manufacturer now has a formidable line-up in form of it's latest gaming series!