MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z review (Page 32)

MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z review

Graphics cards 1049 Page 32 of 32 Published 2019-01-15 14:09 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Conclusion

Final words and verdict

MSI has a lovely offering at hand with the new GAMING Z revision of the GeForce RTX 2060. This 6GB card offers proper performance and is boosting to 1830 MHz right out of the box. And that gives it a 4% advantage over the reference card from NVIDIA while still having room left to be tweaked. It's also an awesome looking card (although that is subjective). The build quality is top notch in components, it shows a very clean PCB and the card has been reinforced with front and backplates. The fun thing about the RTX 2060 is that the factory tweaked products as shown today, close in at the RTX 2070 performance level, in fact, it's a shy 5% away from it. As such any GeForce RTX 2060 series positions will sit best in the FullHD and (W)QHD resolution monitor ranges. And yes, that latter one is the new mainstream these days. At 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 or something close you'll see very decent game performance, it, however, will not be a card suitable in the Ultra HD range for all modern game titles. At Full HD the RT and tensor cores will be sufficient enough, at WQHD that will become more challenging (but that depends on the game title). How the new technologies and the actual engine will behave (is it powerful enough) is something only the future will tell. Performance wise you are looking at the GTX 1070 (Ti) / 1080 on raw shader perf, added benefits are of course the RT and Tensor cores. If you stick to the aforementioned resolutions your games will run at proper framerates with the very best image quality. The 6 GB graphics memory is sufficient here. In terms of multi-GPU setups, NVIDIA does not allow SLI for the RTX 2060 and 2070 series.

Aesthetics

Well, I expressed my personal opinion on this topic in the previous paragraph already. With a dark design, the TwinFrzr 7 cooler once powered on just looks amazing. It sits in the Gaming line, was made a little darker to look at with new gunmetal elements, and that works for me. The RGB lighting effects are funky to see. That LED inclusion that has been done subtly and can be configured in any manner you prefer with Mystic Light software, the choice is yours. While I always will remain skeptical about backplates (they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB) MSI does have vents there. The flip-side is that they can look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. I have to admit, this is looking very nice but looks are always personal, of course. So in the end, on looks, you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality.

Cooling & Noise Levels

The card tops out at roughly only 65 Degrees C while gaming. So that's not bad at all, the acoustics I'd rate as silent, we doubt you'll ever hear the card once mounted into a chassis. We've heard no noticeable coil whine. But I do want to note that any graphics card at a high-enough FPS can make some coil-whine.

Overclocking

We've been able to push another 9% of extra perf out of the card compared to the reference card. Both traditional overclocking, as well as the OC Scanner reach roughly that level. The combination of memory, power and voltage settings will bring you a proper overclock. Once you've applied it, you get a few percent more performance. Nice to see is that we have been able to reach roughly 16 Gbps on the memory, and that does help.

Concluding

We think the new GAMING Z is a terrific looking product. The baseline performance with the factory tweak is sweet as well. It did tweak a little less than the Palit card we tested yesterday, but remember each and every card can differ a bit due to components used and GPU ASIC quality. You do get an A revision GPU with this one, so that is the 'OC' part. The GeForce RTX 2060 is what the market needs. The GeForce RTX 2060 is plenty fast for any day gaming up-to say the Quad HD monitor resolution of 2560x1440. The added benefit is a handful of Tensor cores and the ability to put the RT cores to uses. This way at a relatively safe amount of money (349 USD) you get that good shader engine performance at 1070 Ti / 1080 performance levels and also the option to check out, try & see what the RayTracing hype is all about. The GPU that resides inside the RTX 2060, really is the RTX 2070 that is cut down. The 6 GB of graphics memory seen over 8 GB really isn't a hindrance either as long as you stick to that (Wide) Quad HD domain. Looking at it towards a competition point of view, the card positions itself in-between the two Vega cards, with it's the closest opponent being the Radeon Vega 64. The Raytracing and AI feature like DLSS is, of course, interesting but remain are a proof of concept and a bit of a gimmick until more games support it properly. The product as-is is really good, the big question, however, will remain this: what will the store prices do. At 379 USD this card would be priced fairl. But is just cannot be any higher than that as otherwise people will simply not buy is, as the RTX price premium throughout the product line is already too steep for most people. So if priced right, yeah .. highly recommended as your first card to try out RTX / DXR / raytracing and a bit of Tensor AI. But man, what a good looking graphics card eh?