NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB Makes Official Debut, A Turing Graphics Card 2 Years Later For The Gaming Market?

NVIDIA's board partners have officially launched the GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB graphics card in several custom flavors.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB graphics card should make for a nice mainstream graphics card until the entry-level Ampere graphics cards arrive. It still packs a punch and with double the memory capacity, it should make for a decent gaming graphics card if priced below the $ 329 US MSRP of the RTX 3060 12 GB.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB Graphics Card Specifications

Specifications wise, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB will carry the TU106 GPU plotted on the 12nm process node with 2176 CUDA cores, 136 Tensor Cores, and 64 RT cores. The GPU is clocked at 1470 MHz base and 1650 MHz boost. Due to being based on the Turing GPU, the new card won't be as feature-rich as the Ampere cards that have more RT / Tensor cores, PCIe Gen 4.0 support, a brand new NVENC encoder, or even a Resizable Bar.

The same GPU was featured on the RTX 2060 SUPER however the main difference is the memory. The card will retain a 192-bit bus versus the full 256-bit bus featured on the SUPER variant. This will allow the card to hit 12 GB GDDR6 memory capacity running at 14 Gbps pin speeds for a total bandwidth of 336 GB / s. It will also come with a similar TDP of 185W, the same as the RTX 2060 SUPER variant. The card will be available in custom models from NVIDIA AIB partners but there is not going to be any Founders Edition variant

So far, almost all AIBs including ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, GALAX, ZOTAC, Inno3D, Gainward, Colorful, etc have started to introduce their custom variants which boast dual/triple fan cooling solutions and feature a single 8-pin power connector to boot at the very least. You can see some of the variants below.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB Custom Model Graphics Cards:

We are happy to introduce a new member to the RTX 2060 family! ???? The INNO3D GeForce RTX 2060 Twin X2 OC!

Reach out to your local retailers today! ????#brutalbynature #inno3d #rtx #2060 #overclock #gamingpc #pcgamer #GPU #NVIDIAGeForce pic.twitter.com/BtD4Ceuzgd

— INNO3D (@Inno3D) December 7, 2021

Get ready to jump in the game to play with the all-new ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2060 with 12GB GDDR6 memory

Learn more at https://t.co/HRqRg3julw#ZOTAC #ZOTACGAMING #RTX2060 #12gb #Tech #PcHardware #PcComponents pic.twitter.com/FXcYashWBn

— ZOTAC (@ZOTAC) December 7, 2021

GALAX RTX2060 12GB Plus 1-click OC

3000シリーズになって久しいですが、まだまだ頑張る2000シリーズお父さん！

家族のために俺たちはまだやるぜ！と言わんばかりに満を持しての登場です！

団塊の世代ジュニアに突き刺さる！#だけどお小遣いは月15000円 #あかん泣けてきた pic.twitter.com/UzaQvzjWEP

— GALAX JAPAN (@GalaxJapan) December 7, 2021

The main question for this launch that arises is whether NVIDIA's partners will have these cards actually landing in the hands of gamers or will they be gobbled up by the ever-hungry crypto GPU miners. We have already seen a few listings of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB graphics cards which fall at around $ 400- $ 450 US which means that even the 2-year old Turing GPU with a VRAM upgrade still costs around the same as the MSRP of the RTX 3070. There are even places where the card is currently being sold at over 600 Euros. In China, the Colorful variant has been listed for a price of 3999 RMB or $650 US.

NVIDIA produced a large chunk of TU106 GPUs for crypto mining and they still have a surplus of stock of these chips that are either heading out in dedicated CMP cards or sitting in their warehouses. So to get rid of that stock quicker, NVIDIA will try to push out the RTX 2060 12 GB as a gaming card but considering that it can be resold after mining to gamers, it will be seen as a more valuable offering over CMP cards by miners. Looking at the mining performance figures shared by PCMarket, the card looks very efficient against the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT which means that the mining community definitely has eyes on this one.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB graphics card is also currently supported by the latest 497.09 WHQL drivers which include a range of features and bug fixes. More details here .