I had a sense we is perhaps in for a bumpy journey with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 after I was advised there would not be a press driver out there prematurely of the discharge. Why would Nvidia not need evaluations prepared at launch? Primarily based on my testing, the straightforward reply is that this new GPU does not have sufficient VRAM to play one of many newest video games at excessive settings at simply 1,920 x 1,080.
I’ve had the possibility to check a Gigabyte card based mostly on this new Nvidia GPU, and I will be writing a full RTX 5060 evaluation within the close to future. Within the meantime, although, I needed to rapidly run among the most demanding assessments in our benchmark suite to substantiate if my suspicions had been true. Principally, the RTX 5060 specs would possibly make this GPU extra highly effective than the RTX 4060, and it has the advantages of multi-frame gen too, but it surely merely does not have sufficient reminiscence to deal with one of many newest blockbuster video games.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 benchmarks
I am going to begin with the true kicker for the RTX 5060, which is Bethesda’s Indy recreation. This super-demanding launch got here out on the finish of 2024, and the Indiana Jones and the Nice Circle system necessities implement ray tracing at each graphics degree, whereas additionally providing an all-out Full RT mode to run it with path tracing on the newest GPUs. It appears to be like superb if in case you have a GPU that may max it out, as I discovered in my RTX 5090 evaluation, however the RTX 5060 cannot even run it on the Excessive graphics preset with none path tracing, even at simply 1,920 x 1,080.
As commonplace, I run this recreation on the Extremely preset with none of the Full RT options after I take a look at each graphics card. As a degree of comparability, my RTX 5060 Ti evaluation confirmed that even a low-end 16GB card can deal with the sport at this preset and common 91fps with none assist from Nvidia DLSS upscaling or body gen, due to its giant body buffer. Nevertheless, the RTX 5060 fully fell over at these settings at 1080p, operating the sport at simply 23fps, and enabling DLSS and body gen did not assist both, because the beginning body charge was so unreliable, making the sport uneven and stuttery in motion.
To make issues worse, dropping all the way down to the Excessive graphics preset resulted in precisely the identical downside, with uneven motion and 1% lows of simply 13fps, with a mean of 41fps. Even dropping to the Medium preset leads to a warning within the graphics menu saying there is not sufficient VRAM.
In the long run, the one preset that did not lead to a VRAM warning was Low, and even that will get a warning in case you allow DLSS. Fortunately, the sport nonetheless does not look horrible at this setting, and the RTX 5060 averages an honest 110fps. Nevertheless, enjoying one of many newest video games at 1080p with low settings is mightily disappointing for a brand-new $299 GPU.
On the plus aspect, one recreation that’s usually very demanding on the reminiscence entrance does a minimum of run at max settings on the RTX 5060. I’ve seen Doom Everlasting fall over on 8GB playing cards in case you allow ray tracing with the Extremely Nightmare settings, even at 1080p, however the RTX 5060 manages to deal with it.
At these settings, the RTX 5060 averages 185fps with 96fps 1% lows, however the graphics menu confirmed that these settings had been proper on the sting, utilizing 7,563MB out of the 7,807MB out there. Comparatively, the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti averages 278fps on this take a look at, with a a lot increased 1% low of 187fps, regardless of solely having barely extra GPU energy, suggesting that the RTX 5060 could be faster if it had a bit of extra reminiscence.
It isn’t all unhealthy information. If you happen to play a recreation on the RTX 5060 that does not push the VRAM to its restrict, then the brand new GPU is definitely fairly respectable. If you happen to run Cyberpunk 2077 at 1,920 x 1,080 with the Extremely ray tracing preset, for instance, then allow DLSS on the Balanced setting (which nonetheless appears to be like good utilizing the brand new Transformer mannequin), the body charge averages 85fps. That is a strong sufficient baseline to allow multi-frame gen, pushing the body charge as much as a super-smooth 231fps.
In fact, not each recreation wants 8GB of VRAM to run at respectable settings, and I am assured that the RTX 5060 will run a lot of the video games in our take a look at suite at 1080p. Nevertheless, we have clearly already hit that bottleneck in a single recreation, and that state of affairs is barely going to worsen over the following few years. By way of future proofing, the RTX 5060 appears to be like prefer it might wrestle to ship the products all through its lifetime, until you are ready to drop your settings. That is a disgrace, because the GPU itself appears to be like fairly highly effective for the cash.
I will be operating the complete benchmark suite on the RTX 5060 over the following few days, and I am going to publish a evaluation at a later date, however one conclusion is already clear proper now – this card already has one recreation that it struggles to play at 1,920 x 1,080.
Within the meantime, take a look at our information to the perfect graphics card in case you’re seeking to purchase an improve, in addition to my tutorial on how one can set up a GPU, the place I take you thru the entire graphics card becoming course of.
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