Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Leak Tips Price, Launch Date, Specs, and Benchmark Scores

Nvidia will launch its mid-range GeForce RTX 2060 GPU on the 7^th of January and it will be priced at $349 (approximately Rs. 24,337), according to some pretty detailed leaks. That purported launch date would line up with Nvidia's scheduled press conference at CES 2019. GeForce RTX 2060 graphics cards have previously been rumoured to be coming soon, but now at least one such device has been leaked in full, including specifications, photos, and benchmark scores in addition to the price and launch date. Cards based on this GPU would slot in below the GeForce RTX 2070 but would come in at a higher price than the $249 (approximately Rs. 16,858 at that time) that the current-gen GeForce GTX 1060 launched at in July 2016. Prices in India can be expected to be much higher thanks to import duties.

Prolific leak source Videocardz claims to have seen a reviewers' guide for the GeForce RTX 2060, in which all the specifications, features, and performance targets for this GPU are laid out. It will of course be based on the Turing architecture that debuted with the high-end GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in late August 2018.

If these leaks are accurate, the GeForce RTX 2060 will have a base clock of 1365MHz and a boost speed of 1680MHz. The TU106-300 GPU will be pretty much the same as the TU106-400 that the GeForce RTX 2070 is codenamed, but scaled down to 1,920 CUDA cores, 240 tensor cores, and 30 RT cores. Compute bandwidth is rated at 6.5Tflops. The TDP is a reasonable 160W and reference design cards will require one 8-pin PCIe power connector.

There is no information about memory types or capacities in this new leak to either back up or disprove earlier rumours that there could be as many as six variants in the market. It might be that Nvidia will announce one SKU now and further variants at later dates or only in certain markets.

As for performance, Nvidia is said to claim that players can expect 90fps in Battlefield V with RTX ray tracing disabled, and that will drop to 65fps with it enabled. Using Nvidia's DLSS algorithm to upscale a lower resolution, performance can be bumped up to 88fps. What this means is Nvidia is clearly targeting 1920x1080 as the target resolution for buyers of this GPU, at least as far as current-day games are concerned.

Other benchmark scores for the GeForce RTX 2060 include 101fps in Far Cry 5, 122fps in PUBG, 59fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, 81fps in The Division, and 94fps in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. These scores were purportedly achieved by Nvidia in its own testing, but exact details of the test setup and quality settings used are unknown.

Photos of a purported GeForce RTX 2060 Founders' Edition card published by Videocardz appear to show a relatively compact unit with two fans, in line with the rest of this generation rather than the older blower-style stock cooler. The rear panel has two DisplayPorts and an HDMI port as well as a DVI port and one USB Type-C port for the VirtualLink VR headset connector standard.

The GeForce RTX 2060 is sure to run into criticism because of its high price and the relative lack of support for RTX effects in games. The high-end GeForce RTX models have had a lukewarm reception for the same reasons, and this new GPU will have to appeal to buyers more than the existing GeForce GTX 1070.

Nvidia is simultaneously rumoured to be considering launching a parallel "GeForce GTX 11xx" series of Turing-based GPUs minus the RTX cores and features, to appeal to price-sensitive buyers. It should be a busy few months for the company as it will also likely release mobile versions of all four GeForce RTX series GPUs soon.