The Nvidia RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 are both decent gaming graphics cards, but which should
you pick, and is it worth upgrading? In this video we’ll test out a bunch of games at
4K, 1440p, and 1080p to help you see the performance difference between them.
Let’s quickly take a look at how the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 actually differ in terms
of specs, note that things like clock speed and power will vary between specific cards,
these are just the reference specs for each model. The 2070 has more CUDA cores, higher
base clock, but slightly lower boost clock, though again that will vary by card. Otherwise
the 2070 has 8GB of GDDR6 memory while the 2060 has 6GB, and while 6GB is currently fine
for most games, in the future we may start to see more being required in future titles.
For the testing I’m using the Gigabyte RTX 2060 Windforce OC and the Zotac RTX 2070 mini,
so my 2060 does have a small factory overclock while the 2070 is stock, however overclocks
generally only equate to a couple FPS here and there in most games.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU in an MSI Z390 Gaming Pro
Carbon motherboard running at stock speeds, along with 16GB of T-Force Night Hawk CL16
memory from Team Group running at DDR4-3200 in dual channel. Check the links in the description
for details on all of the components as well as for up to date pricing. The same Windows
version and Nvidia drivers were used for the testing, so let’s get into the results.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark using high settings.
In all of the upcoming graphs I’ve got the RTX 2070 results shown by the green bars,
and the RTX 2060 shown by the blue bars underneath, with the 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions listed
on the left. Down the bottom at 1080p we’re looking at a 4.6% improvement to average FPS
with the 2070. At 1440p this rises to a 9% boost, and then a larger 12% boost at 4K,
though not much of a change to 1% low.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run, and it seems to be more graphically intensive.
This game consistently saw the largest improvement between the two graphics cards. Starting with
RTX off at 1080p the 2070 was giving us 13% higher average FPS when compared with the
2060, 12.6% more at 1440p, and then at 4K there was a 17% boost, with some nices increases
to 1% low too.
I’ve also tested Battlefield 5 with RTX on, and although overall the results don’t
look great and I probably wouldn’t want to play with either option, at least with
the high settings that I’m testing with, there was a larger boost to performance, with
the 2070 getting 16% higher average FPS compared against the 2060 at 1080p and 1440p, and then
a large 23% increase at 4K, the largest out of all my tests.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark with high settings. At 1080p and 1440p resolutions
I was actually seeing slightly lower 1% low results, however the average FPS from the
2070 was consistently higher. At 1080p the 2070 was around 5% faster, then 8% faster
at 1440p, then finally 10% higher at 4K, improving as we step the resolution up.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested using the built in benchmark. At the bottom
of the graph for our 1080p results the 2070 was getting almost 10% higher average frame
rate when compared to the 2060. Stepping up to 1440p this rises slightly to an 11% improvement,
then finally at 4K we’re seeing just under a 13% boost using the 2070.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested using the built in benchmark at high settings. I’ve found
this game to favour Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards in previous testing so we’re seeing
pretty nice results here compared to GTX cards. At 1080p there’s a 9.5% boost to average
FPS when we use the RTX 2070, a 7.6% improvement at 1440p, and then at 4K the game saw the
smallest change for this resolution, with an 8.6% improvement over the RTX 2060.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and at 1080p there was a 6% improvement to
average FPS, 5% at 1440p, and then a larger 13% increase at 4K with the RTX 2070, but
realistically either of these cards will play this game extremely well at about any resolution.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range as I can easily perform the same test run
compared to playing with bots or other players which will differ every time. The RTX 2070
was getting us a 10.6% improvement at 1080p, and then a 14% improvement at 1440p and 4K,
making this consistently one of the best games tested on the 2070 when comparing with our
2060. There were much more improvements seen to the 1% low, 24% at 1080p, 20% at 1440p,
and then 15% at 4K, where the 1% low was only just below the average frame rate of the 2060.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay at high settings. At
1080p the RTX 2070 was seeing an 11% improvement to average FPS, making it the second highest
improved game tested behind Battlefield 5. PUBG got second place again at 1440p, with
a 16% increase to average FPS over the 2060, and then a 13% rise at 4K with no real change
to 1% low at this resolution.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource intensive game, and I can play it alright with a solid 30
FPS, so it was actually playing ok for me even at 4K with very high settings, though
ideally I’d use lower settings at that resolution. At 1080p there was the smallest improvement
out of all games tested, with just a 4% improvement to average FPS with the 2070, and not much
difference to 1% low. Next there was an 8.5% rise at 1440p, and finally a 12% increase
at 4K, with larger improvements to 1% low now at these higher resolutions.
In terms of overall improvement, over all 10 tests with a 1080p resolution on average
the RTX 2070 is performing 9% better than the RTX 2060 in average FPS. More CPU demanding
games like Watch Dogs 2 are left down the bottom, while others like Battlefield 5 seem
to really benefit from the increased GPU power.
At 1440p on average over the same games the RTX 2070 was now scoring almost 11% higher
average frame rates when compared with the RTX 2060, so a slight improvement as we increase
the resolution, however we can see the results really vary between games.
At 4K the RTX 2070 was now on average 13.6% better than the RTX 2060 in these games. The
average frame rate difference improves further as we step up in resolution as we start becoming
less CPU bound and really start to see what these graphics cards are capable of.
I haven’t tested overclocking here, as results aren’t guaranteed and will vary between
hardware based on what overclocks you can get, realistically it generally only makes
a couple of FPS difference, but I’ll cover overclocking in the full review videos for
each of these cards, so get subscribed for that.
Now for the final difference, the price. I suggest checking updated prices using the
links in the description, as prices will change over time. The Gigabyte RTX 2060 I’ve used
here goes for around $370 USD, while other 2060’s seem to currently start at around
$350. The 2070 I’m using is around $530 USD, but others start around $500. Going on
these best case current prices, going from $350 for the 2060 to $500 for the 2070 is
a 43% increase to price, which I don’t think is really worth it for the 13% average improvement
seen at 4K. You might find better prices on the second hand market, but as RTX graphics
are still fairly new supply there may be limited.
Based on the performance difference there’s no real reason to upgrade from the 2060 to
the 2070 either, unless you’re happy with the 10 to 13% improvement on average that
the 2070 offers for that price, personally I’d want an upgrade to count for more and
would instead be looking at something higher, assuming of course the 2060 wasn’t cutting
it anymore at some point in the future.
It really comes down to what sort of games you want to play, what resolutions you want
to play at, and what frame rates you want to target. If I was buying new today I’d
go for the 2060, it’s a much better bang for the buck. Buying the 2060 with RTX in
mind at this time probably isn’t a good idea, it seems a bit weak to really give a
good experience, at least going by Battlefield 5, although I wasn’t really getting all
that great FPS out of the RTX 2070 either.
Let me know which card you’d pick down in the comments, the 2060 or 2070, and don’t
forget to subscribe for more comparisons and future tech videos like this one.