The end result is a chip with 1,920 stream processors (the same number found in the GeForce GTX 1070), compared with 2,304 in the RTX 2070. Firstly, six of the streaming multiprocessors (SMs) are switched off, giving you a total of 30. The RTX 2060 is based on the same 12nm TU106 Turing GPU found in the RTX 2070 (see Issue 184, p28), with an identical 445mm² die containing 10.8 billion transistors, but with some parts disabled. It’s undoubtedly still expensive, but it’s also a long way from the stratospheric prices of the RTX 20 Ti. We’re hesitant to describe that as a good price, given that this card’s predecessor, the GTX 1060 6GB, could be bought for just £239 (or £279 for the Founders Edition) when it launched. Speaking of which, the prices are now starting to become affordable, with the GeForce RTX 2060 arriving with a £329 inc VAT price tag. We were highly impressed with real-time ray tracing in Battlefield V (see Issue 186, p92) – it just needs some more game support to justify a costly hardware upgrade.
Real-time ray tracing how now made its way into Battlefield V, and this game is also promising support for Nvidia’s deep-learning accelerated anti-aliasing system, DLSS, which is also supported by Final Fantasy XV and Anthem.
That situation is thankfully changing now, though (at least a bit, anyway). There were no real games to show off their new abilities, and their prices bordered on the nonsensical. Rather than igniting the graphics landscape with an explosive bang, Nvidia’s first RTX GPUs seemed to wander around their designated landing site looking lost and bewildered.