NVIDIA’s Super announcement was no surprise. Ever since the teaser was released last month, speculations about a Turing refresh have been running rampant. It finally confirmed them, and as I’m sure you’ve already heard, the Super cards really are super-b.
The basic gist is that the RTX 2060 Super is a slightly slower RTX 2070 while the 2070 Super is a cheaper 2080. Along with the basic shading (and rasterizing) capabilities, the cards’ ray-tracing muscles have also been beefed up, with each card essentially getting the same number of RTCores as the next higher-end non-Super. In this post, we review the GeForce RTX 2060 Super and see how it performs compared to the RTX 2070 and the 2060 and if it’s really worth the extra 50 bucks.
Testbench
- CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K
- Motherboard: Asus Maximus Hero X
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM @ 3200MHz
- HDD: WD Black 4TB
- PSU: Corsair HX1000i
RTX 2060 Super Review: Gaming Benchmarks
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DX12)
Deus Ex Mankind Divided has the honor of being one of the first DirectX12 titles, and such scales well across multi-core CPUs. The GeForce RTX 2060 Super is just a tad bit faster than the RTX 2070 and a good 15-20% faster than the older RTX 2060. The RTX 2080 is still quite out of reach though and looks like it’ll be up to the RTX 2070 Super to dethrone it.
The Division 2 (DX12)
The Division 2 is an AMD sponsored title but even NVIDIA cards perform better using the newer DX12 API. It features one of the best implementations of the low-level API, leveraging various technologies like Asynchronous Compute, soft shadows, spot shadows, fog, reflections, etc. But with great graphics comes the need for even greater graphics cards. The RTX 2060 Super takes on that role admirably and is only behind the RTX 2080 as far as sheer performance is concerned.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was one of the initially marketed RTX titles, and for a while it seemed like NVIDIA had forgotten about it. Surprisingly though, it did get RTX and DLSS support almost six months after launch, in the form of ray-traced shadows. While not quite as taxing, it’s also nowhere as impressive as the next game.
Metro Exodus
4A’s Metro Exodus is undoubtedly the most gorgeous PC game in the market, and the integrated of RTX only makes it better. You’ve got ray-traced shadows, reflections and ambient shadows which have a significant impact on the immersion (and performance). Here, the RTX 2060 Super is an ideal option for QHD and even 4K if you are willing to drop RTX and some of the more taxing visual effects. DLSS was kind of broken at launch blurring the textures but most of it has been taken care of now.
The Witcher 3
The Witcher 3 is almost five years old, but we how can we forget Geralt’s monster-hunting adventures across the breathtaking world created by CD Projekt Red. And so we put on our silver swords and benchmarked the game at QHD and 4K in search of the nastiest critters. It’s remarkable how much we’ve progressed in the last five years. When the game was first launched even the most powerful GPUs couldn’t run it at 4K. Now you’ve got a mid-range part running it rather well.
Shadow of War
Shadow of War isn’t one of the prettiest games nor the most optimized. While most GPUs don’t run into any issues, multi-core CPUs especially the Ryzen parts suffer from poor utilization. Despite that, the game isn’t demanding. Here again, with some minor compromises in quality, you can yield playable frame-rates at 4K using the RTX 2060 Super.
Assassins’ Creed Odyssey
Assassins’ Creed Odyssey is infamous for being CPU intensive, but it’s doesn’t go easy on the GPUs either. Even the higher-end RTX 2080 barely manages to hit 50FPS at 4K. However, at QHD both the RTX 2060 Super as well as the 2070 deliver 60+ FPS with the latter being marginally faster. There’s a notable improvement compared to the RTX 2060 across the board.
Overclocking and Thermals
In case of the original RTX cards, if you got a board partner variant then overclocking most likely wasn’t feasible, unless you bought one of them super-expensive ones. That’s because NVIDIA had its partners use inferior quality silicon for the base versions, while the Founders Edition and Extreme Edition models got most of the overclocking action. In case of the Super cards, it’s going to be fair game.
We were able to overclock the GPU core by +150 and the memory by a rather significant +1000. This essentially increased the memory speed from 14Gbps to 16Gbps, putting it on par with the higher-end RTX parts. In terms of real-world benefits, take a gander:
That translated into a 10% FPS gain across three major AAA titles. Not exactly Maxwell-clockable, but it’ll do. You can get some extra oomph out of the card in case you’re a bit short of that magical 60 FPS figure. As for thermals, the Founders Edition card runs well on stock settings staying in the 75-ish range but once you overclock it, you’ll start crossing into the 80 degrees territory which results in throttling, essentially undoing your overclock. Strangely, we weren’t able to increase the voltage which would have garnered another few frames out the Super.
Conclusion: Super Indeed!
The GeForce RTX 2060 Super is basically an RTX 2070 in disguise and a cheaper price tag. It looks like when AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 launches in a few days, it’ll have a two-pronged attack from Jensen. On one hand, you’ve got the RTX 2060 Super and on the other the RTX 2070. In order to keep the latter from becoming redundant, NVIDIA will have to drop the prices of the vanilla RTX GPUs as the refreshed Turing cards essentially undo them for $100 less.
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Further Reading:
4k gaming? That barely touches 45fps.
AC Odyssey @1080p Ultra 58fps with 2060 and 64fps with 2060 super.
The above mentioned benchmark is of Very high settings not the Ultra.
I didn’t say best for 4K. At medium high it delivers more than playable (50 AVG) in most games at 4K.
35k?really?are you forgetting custom duty and VAT
It’s been confirmed in the press release