The Gigabyte RTX 2060 Windforce OC is one of the cheaper 2060 graphics cards currently
available, so let’s find out what you can expect from it and if it’s worth buying.
Let’s start by taking a look at the card. Like most cards these days it’s pretty much
all black, the neutral colours should help it blend in with most builds. There are two
fans on the front, a plastic back plate with Gigabyte logo, and a single 8 pin power connector
on top.
There’s no lighting at all with this card, perfect if you’re not a fan of RGB.
For the I/O we’ve got three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and a single HDMI 2.0b port.
In terms if dimensions we’re looking at under 27cm in length, 12cm tall and 4cm thick,
it’s a two slot card, it’s not too big but did feel a little on the longer side.
It’s perhaps not as solid as some of the more premium options, though it is also on
the lower end of the price scale which is why I bought it, you can find updated pricing
linked in the description.
Let’s check out the specs. The boost clock with this model is 90MHz above the Nvidia
reference spec of 1,680MHz, so you’re getting a little overclock out of the box, but we’ll
look at overclocking further later. Otherwise the rest of the specs are standard for the
RTX 2060.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5GHz in
an MSI Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard, along with 16GB of T-Force Night Hawk CL16
memory running at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Again check the links in the description for
details on all of the components as well as for up to date pricing. I’ve just tested
a few games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K to give you a rough idea of what to expect in terms
of performance.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer mode as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the same test run. I’ve got the RTX off results shown by the
purple bars, and the RTX on results shown by the red bars. RTX was playable at high
settings at 1080p, otherwise you’ve got to stick to RTX off for decent frame rates.
You could turn the settings down and keep RTX, but in my opinion it looks better with
higher settings with RTX off and performs better too.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, so you can compare
these results with your own as it performs the same test run. This game doesn’t really
need a high frame rate to play, but with max settings the 2060 wasn’t going well at 4K,
but not bad at 1440p, but worth keeping in mind I’m testing with max settings here.
Watch Dogs 2 also doesn’t need a high frame rate to play, and typically needs a lot of
power to run well. I can play it fine with a solid 30 FPS, so even at 4K with very high
settings it was playable.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark using high settings,
so frame rates could be improved by stepping down, though again fairly good results at
1440p and below.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and while by no means a highly GPU demanding
game I just thought I’d show the performance of something else that’s still able to smash
high FPS even at 4K.
Overwatch is another such example, where over 60 FPS was still possible even at 4K epic
settings, with much higher possible at lower resolutions.
From these results we can see that the 2060 is easily capable of 1080p and 1440p resolutions
even in higher demanding games with higher setting levels, 4K is only possible in less
demanding titles, or otherwise with very low settings, I wouldn’t consider this a 4K
gaming graphics card though and would instead be looking at the 2080 or above personally.
For overclocking I’ve retested with Far Cry 5 at high settings with the built in benchmark.
I was able to overclock the GPU core by 100MHz and 1000MHz to the memory, any higher and
it would crash. There were some improvements to be had, at 1080p there was a 4% higher
average FPS once overclocked, 7.6% at 1440p, and 8.1% at 4K. The 1% low was however lower
at 1080p and 1440p once overclocked, though 6% higher at 4K.
So we’re seeing some decent performance, but what are the thermals like in this card?
These are the temperatures I measured with the Heaven benchmark in an ambient room temperature
of 22 degrees Celsius. Despite the acceptable room temperature the thermals were still on
the warmer side while under this test, more than I was expecting as the fan was fairly
quiet even maxed out.
Just for fun I’ve used my thermal camera so you can see how the backplate looks while
the stress tests are running. It was warm to the touch, but nowhere near as hot as some
of the other higher end cards I’ve tested that need oven mitts.
I’ve got the average and maximum clock speeds while running the Heaven benchmark for an
extended period, and with the 100MHz overclock and maximum power limit applied with MSI Afterburner.
Increasing the fan speed only just barely boosted the speeds.
These are the average and maximum fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures
and clock speeds just shown. At idle the fans don’t spin at all, which explains the 49
degree idle temperature. There’s not really a difference between stock and manually maxing
out the fan though, to be fair the card was on the quieter side, but as we saw earlier
the thermals are higher as a result.
I’ll give you a listen so you have an idea of what to expect.
My case has 7 other fans, but you can use the idle result as a baseline and hopefully
tell there’s not much difference.
I’ll also note that while testing I was not able to hear any coil whine with my unit.
Here’s what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same Heaven benchmark,
so once manually overclocked there’s just a 4% increase.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over
time. At the time of recording, in the US the Gigabyte RTX 2060 Windforce OC is going
for around $360 USD, which puts it on the cheaper side of the 2060 options currently
available, and just $10 more than the launch price.
Overall I think the Gigabyte RTX 2060 Windforce OC is alright, it is on the cheaper side of
the 2060’s available which is why I bought it, and you get what you pay for. The card
itself feels a little cheap, it runs quiet, however as a result it runs warm and we couldn’t
improve this much even by maxing out the fans, although despite this there wasn’t any thermal
throttling. In games at 1440p and 1080p though pretty much any 2060 should give you a good
experience.
If you’re deciding between the 2060 and the next options above or below it, check
my comparisons linked in the description, as I’ve compared the 2060 against the RTX
2070 and GTX 1660 Ti as well. Let me know what you thought about the Gigabyte RTX 2060
Windforce OC graphics card down in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed
for future tech videos like this one.