Nvidia’s RTX 2060 could release with six variants
Nvidia’s RTX 2060 could release with six variants
Now, thanks to EEC (European Economic Commission) entries, it looks like Gigabyte is preparing over 40 RTX 2060 SKUs, offering a range of VRAM configurations as well as Gaming OC, Aorus and ITX series models.
The GTX 1060 was already a confusing graphics card series, offering 3GB, 5GB and 6GB models, as well as GDDR5 and GDDR5X, powered variants. CUDA core counts also varied thanks to the 3GB models, creating a strange performance curve which makes GTX 1060 models incredibly variable.
It looks like the RTX 2060 is going to be an equally confusing SKU, with Videocardz reporting that 3GB, 4GB and 6GB models are in the works, as well as versions which use GDDR6 and GDDR5/GDDR5X memory, generating six potential models. Note that 14Gbps GDDR6 memory can offer a 75% boost in memory bandwidth over the 8Gbps GDDR5 memory used in most GTX 1060 graphics cards.
(Image from Videocardz)
Just to place an opinion here, but I honestly think that Nvidia shouldn’t release a 3GB RTX 2060. The era of 2GB graphics cards is quickly coming to an end, and there are already plenty of cases where games can use almost 4GB of VRAM at 1080p high settings. This is the reason why Nvidia created their 3GB GTX 1050 models, as 2GB isn’t enough for peak performance in a lot of modern games.
3GB is the minimum that we would expect to see on a new gaming graphics card, but on a mid-range SKU like an RTX 2060, this capacity is too small to ensure long-term usability in new AAA titles. When it comes to new graphics cards, 4GB (or larger) models are preferable.
You can join the discussion on Nvidia’s rumoured RTX 2060 3GB, 4GB and 6GB models on the OC3D Forums.