Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060: rasterisation performance analysis

And so begins our battery of performance analysis tests for the RTX 2060, incorporating a range of game engines old and new. Our test system consists of a Core i7 8700K running at an all-core turbo speed of 4.7GHz. This is paired with two 8GB sticks of 3400MHz DDR4 supplied by GSkill, with all titles running from solid state storage. To ensure that the power-hungry 8700K doesn't overheat, a Corsair H110i all-in-one liquid cooler is used, which does a remarkably effective job.

Depending on how you view this page, our performance metrics are presented in one of two ways. If you're reading this on a mobile device, you'll get a table with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements. However, if you're on a desktop or laptop, you get the full-blooded Digital Foundry experience. Play the YouTube videos to see frame-rate and frame-time metrics running in parallel to the video (you can even navigate around the video with the graphs adjusting to match). Beneath that you'll see our barcharts, dynamically generated from the frame-time metrics - mouse over for various stats and press the mouse button to swap over to the more useful percentage differentials.

It's a system designed to give you as much in-depth data as you want - or indeed as little, for at-a-glance viewing - all derived from video captures of each respective GPU. No internal frame-rate measurements here, it all comes from the video output of the card, the best way to ensure accuracy.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

We kick off with Assassin's Creed Odyssey - the latest series entry and a performance monster for a number of reasons. First all, even with an i7 8700K running with a 4.7GHz all-core turbo, we can hit CPU limitations at 1080p and even 1440p resolutions. Secondly, the game poses some fundamental challenges for Vega hardware, especially at lower resolutions (possibly down to AMD's DX11 driver). Results with the RTX 2060 are fascinating. It's on par with the GTX 1070 Ti at 1080p resolution, but equalises with GTX 1080 at 1440p. However, it loses pace at 4K, where it returns to effective parity with GTX 1070 Ti.

Assassin's Creed Unity

We love this game and its habit of tripping up hardware, so this legacy title is likely to remain in our GPU testing line-up for some time. Performance is actually relatively easy to get a handle on with this game - the RTX 2060 delivers performance that's almost point-for-point in line with the GTX 1070 Ti, which I suspect was the performance target for the new RTX product. The GTX 1080 is basically around 10 per cent faster in this title.

Battlefield 1

We re-benched both Vega 56 and Vega 64 for this review in the wake of the major AMD driver revision that dropped at the tail-end of 2018. By and large, performance hasn't budged much. Both cards fall a little short, but there are occasional examples that truly show off what the architecture is capable of. Battlefield 1 is one such title, but what's curious here is that the game does enjoy running on the Turing technology, with RTX 2060 delivering performance that sits nicely between the Vega products. It's also one of the few titles that actually breaches the performance threshold set by GTX 1080.

Crysis 3

Origin tells us that we've played Crysis 3 for over 300 hours, which is almost entirely comprised of benchmarking. We've been running this 'highly explosive materials' sequence for years now and it has a habit of challenging new GPU architectures, be it Vega or Turing. This legacy title sees the GTX 1080 deliver a commanding lead over the RTX 2060 of up to 16.7 per cent and even GTX 1070 Ti can inch ahead. Across the benches, there's the sense that Turing achieves its best results with more modern game engines.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Analysis

• Introduction, Hardware Breakdown
• DLSS - Deep Learning Super-Sampling and Variable Rate Shading: Performance Analysis
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Unity, Battlefield 1, Crysis 3 - Rasterisation Analysis Part 1 [This Page]
• Far Cry 5, Far Cry Primal, Ghost Recon Wildlands - Rasterisation Analysis Part 2
• Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3, Wolfenstein 2 - Rasterisation Analysis Part 3
• Battle of the 1080p Champs - RTX 2060 vs GTX 1060, RX 580, RX 590 - Rasterisation Analysis Part 4
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 - the Digital Foundry verdict