Meet Maggie, PCMag'sNvidia's GeForce RTX 5060 is arguably one of the most exciting graphics cards in its RTX 50-series lineup. Why? Past Nvidia RTX xx60-tier cards (like the RTX 3060 and RTX 4060) have wielded a couple of solid pluses: potent-enough performance, and a relatively low price. Small wonder they sell so well. Plus, the new GeForce RTX 5060’s spec sheet suggests it should handily outperform the preceding RTX 4060 while costing the same. (Models start at $299; we tested a $329 card in Asus garb.) Sounds great—so how does the card handle the real world?
The Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GDDR7 OC Edition we have under scrutiny in this review retails for $30 more, due to a slight factory overclock and a large triple-fan thermal solution. We need to note, however, that we haven't tested one of the RTX 5060's competing cards yet—the 8GB version of AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT—so we can't say definitively if the RTX 5060 is the best performer for the price. We did, however, test the 16GB version of the RX 9060 XT, which outshines the RTX 5060 for not much more money. All of that said, the RTX 5060 is a respectable option that can deliver an enjoyable high-frame-rate 1080p gaming experience, and serviceable 1440p play with many titles.
On paper, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 is a significant step up from the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. It's built on a more advanced microarchitecture—Nvidia "Blackwell"—and the graphics chip inside the RTX 5060 is just bigger, with a lot more resources than its predecessor. We don’t have an exact measurement of how big the RTX 5060 GPU die is, but it has 3,840 CUDA cores to the RTX 4060’s 3,072 CUDA cores—a 25% advantage right out of the gate, all else being equal. Still, those shaders should be somewhat faster, thanks to the new architecture.
The RTX 5060 outguns the older model on some other measures, too. It packs a higher count of texture mapping units (TMUs) and raster operation processors (ROPs), giving the RTX 5060 yet another performance edge over the RTX 4060. Clock speed is a smidge better, as well, with the new turbo clock stopping at 2,500MHz. The GPU base clock got a much bigger boost, but in all honestly, that's not a huge deal; graphics cards tend to operate closer to their turbo clock than base clock.
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Another substantial improvement: The old RTX 4060 had 8GB of GDDR6 RAM with a 128-bit memory interface. The new RTX 5060 also has 8GB of RAM and a 128-bit memory interface, but it uses GDDR7 RAM instead—giving the RTX 5060 significantly more speed and nearly 65% more bandwidth than its predecessor.
Bottom line: I have little doubt that the RTX 5060 will run circles around the older RTX 4060. Alas, that's not the only competitor on the market. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT also serves up an 8GB RAM option for $299, placing it in direct competition with the RTX 5060. As I said earlier, the 16GB AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT model delivered impressive performance, but we'll need to wait and see how the 8GB variant stacks up. I'm guessing they'll end up roughly the same, outside of gaming at high resolutions like 4K.
The Asus version of the RTX 5060 we received for review is a higher-end RTX 5060 SKU that comes factory overclocked to 2,595MHz. This shouldn’t have much impact on performance: It's just a 3% increase in clock speed over the reference model. The card also has a large triple-fan thermal solution that should easily keep it cool.
Asus' rear I/O panel has the most common mix of ports, with three DisplayPort outputs and a single HDMI port. To deliver the juice, you’ll need a standard 8-pin PCIe power connection and a power supply rated for 550 watts or higher.
Our current graphics-card test bed uses a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, with a 360mm Cooler Master liquid cooler to keep the temperature in check. The system also has 32GB of DDR5 RAM set to 6,000MHz in a dual-channel configuration and two 2TB Crucial PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs. The whole setup works off a 1,500-watt Corsair power supply. For the OS, we conduct all tests using the latest version of Windows 11 Pro available.
The RTX 5060's main competitor will be AMD’s similarly priced Radeon RX 9060 XT, but some other cards, like the Intel Arc B580 and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, could put up a good fight.
3DMark’s synthetic test results gave us mixed signals regarding the RTX 5060. In the Port Royal and Steel Nomad tests, the RTX 5060 couldn't keep up with the Radeon RX 9060 XT and the older RX 7700 XT. Things got even bleaker for the RTX 5060 in the Time Spy Extreme test, where it also fell behind the Intel Arc B580. The RTX 5060 did a better job than the RTX 4060 Ti here, though, and the old RTX 4060 trailed in the dust.
In the Solar Bay test, the RTX 5060 tied with the Radeon RX 9060 XT. The RTX 5060 did show a notable edge in the Speed Way test, but winning one out of several 3DMark competitions doesn’t get the card off to a compelling start.
Unigine’s Superposition test also showed mixed results for the RTX 5060. The RTX 5060 performed better when using DirectX than the Radeon RX 9060 XT, but worse with OpenGL.
With the RTX 50-series, one of Nvidia's key aims was to beef up its AI performance. The results showed up clearly in UL’s Procyon AI benchmark. The older GeForce RTX 4060 flat-out refused to run this test, while the RTX 5060 could tackle all of the AI model tests except Llama 2, possibly due to the smaller amount of video memory. In the tests it did run, the RTX 5060 outperformed the RTX 4060 Ti.
AMD, meanwhile, doesn’t really stand a chance in this test: Either its AI hardware isn’t as fast as Nvidia’s, or this test isn’t optimized for AMD. The Radeon RX 7600’s time-to-first-token scores were especially off.
Intel’s Arc B580 graphics card provided better competition for the RTX 5060. For one thing, it could run the Llama 2 tests, giving it an instant advantage. It also scored better in the other tests and had fairly wide margins in most benchmarks. If you are concerned about AI performance, you’ll likely want to opt for a faster and more powerful graphics card, but if you're committed to something in this price range, the Intel Arc B580 could be the better option for AI tasks that are similarly optimized.
The GeForce RTX 5060 performed well in both of our GPU-accelerated content creation tests. In Adobe Premiere Pro 24, it edged past the Arc B580 and proved a fair bit faster than the RTX 4060 Ti and the Radeon RX 9060 XT.
In the Blender benchmark, the RTX 5060 lagged a little behind the RTX 4060 Ti, but it was a fair bit faster than the RTX 4060 and all of the AMD and Intel competition shown here, even the Radeon RX 9070.
It can be tricky to compare different screen optimization technologies like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. Each of them can produce radically different image quality and use a wide range of techniques to hit their benchmarks. However, it is still helpful to have some basic idea of how these cards perform while using these technologies. With that windup out of the way, let's check in on the Black Myth: Wukong benchmark.
In the first test here with DLSS 2, FSR2, and XeSS, the GeForce RTX 5060 performed just a hair better than the RTX 4060 Ti and the Radeon RX 9060 XT. Turning on frame generation boosts the RX 9060 XT past the RTX 5060 by a relatively large margin.
Things didn't get any easier for the RTX 5060 in Cyberpunk 2077. Though the RTX 5060 was still well ahead of the RTX 4060, it fell behind the RTX 4060 Ti while rendering the game at 1080p and 1440p. It outperformed the Intel Arc B580 at 1080p and 1440p but fell behind at 4K. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT beat the RTX 5060 across the board.
In F1 2024, the GeForce RTX 5060 lagged far behind the Radeon RX 9060 XT and the RTX 4060 Ti. This is a little surprising. The RTX 4060 Ti has a slightly higher core count, but the RTX 5060 has some big pluses—far faster vRAM and a newer architecture—and the two cards operate at similar clock speeds. On paper, the RTX 5060 looks like it might be better than the RTX 4060 Ti, but these F1 2024 scores suggest the RTX 4060 Ti could be the better card, at least in some games.
The Intel Arc B580 was slower overall than the RTX 5060 in F1 2024. The RTX 5060 was significantly faster at 1080p and 1440p, while the B580 was faster at 4K. It's not clear why. Maybe the RTX 5060's 128-bit memory interface is holding it back? At a glance, this seems to be the answer, since the Intel Arc B580 has a wider 192-bit memory interface.
But we also need to consider the total amount of bandwidth available to each GPU, and they're nearly equal on that measure. The RTX 5060 sports 448GBps of available bandwidth, thanks to its speedy GDDR7 memory. The Arc B580's memory interface is wider, but its GDDR6 memory is slower—hence, 456GBps of bandwidth, a negligible difference.
In Far Cry 6, the RTX 5060 held a potent lead over the Arc B580 and the RTX 4060 Ti. The Radeon RX 9060 XT performed much faster than the RTX 5060 at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, but the two oddly tied at 4K, likely because the RX 9060 XT has just 320GBps of bandwidth available.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora brought in the strangest results for the RTX 5060, almost the opposite of what we observed in Far Cry 6. This time, the RTX 5060 tied with the Radeon RX 9060 XT at 1080p and 1440p before falling slightly behind at 4K. At the same time, the RTX 5060 was a sizable step behind the RTX 4060 Ti. The RTX 5060 still outpaced the Arc B580, though.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 showed the worst of both worlds in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, trailing the RTX 4060 Ti and the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT. Returnal split the difference, with the RTX 5060, the RX 9060 XT, and the RTX 4060 Ti all delivering relatively close results. The Intel Arc B580 wasn’t too far behind here, either, with its slightly better 4K performance compensating for its weaker 1080p showing.
Capable ray tracing hardware is essential for any modern graphics card, but this hardware isn’t used in all games, and when it isn’t, cards tend to perform differently. In Total War: Three Kingdoms, the GeForce RTX 5060 outperformed both the Radeon RX 9060 XT and the RTX 4060 Ti.
The GeForce RTX 5060 also outpaced the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but it couldn't top the Radeon RX 9060 XT here; the two cards essentially tied at all three test resolutions.
From there, we measured the overall power draw of our GPU test bed using a Kill-A-Watt wall meter. The RTX 5060 proved more efficient overall than the last-gen RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti, as well as the Radeon RX 9060 XT, in content creation tasks. The RTX 5060 Ti also performed better and used just slightly more power than the RTX 5060 in content creation.
The RTX 5060’s recorded power draw numbers suggest it is highly efficient for gaming. In our games testing, it used less power than the RTX 4060 Ti and the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, two competitors it battles on performance. RTX 5060 also uses less power than the older RTX 4060 and significantly less than the RTX 5060 Ti while gaming.
Asus' Prime GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GDDR7 OC Edition thermal solution performed admirably during the testing process. While running the games we used to measure temperatures, as well as the productivity apps, this RTX 5060 model never exceeded 60 degrees C.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GDDR7 OC Edition
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
For $299, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 is a compelling option in the current graphics card market, but it is also up against tough competition. The RTX 5060's bugbear isn't the RTX 4060 or RTX 4060 Ti (which are too slow and too pricey, respectively); instead, it's AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT.
The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT often outpaced the GeForce RTX 5060 in the games we tested, but again, we tested a version of the AMD with 16GB of VRAM. The 8GB AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is likely a touch faster than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, but we can't say that with total certainty at this time.
As for the Asus Prime GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GDDR7 OC Edition, priced at $329, this model comes closer to matching the 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT on price. An RX 9060 XT 16GB at the $349 MSRP would be a better buy than this card, but personal preference (brand loyalty, or familiarity with the Nvidia driver UI) could justifiably push you toward Team Green. The performance difference isn’t enormous, and the RTX 5060 has some other minor advantages, such as AI performance and better overall efficiency. Either of these midrange cards will make for a capable gaming PC.
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About Our Expert
I have been interested in science and technology for as long as I can remember, spurred on by a fondness for video games. I learned to work in Windows and manipulate files to get buggy games to work, and I learned to build and upgrade PCs for better performance.
In my role at PCMag for the past four years, I’ve deeply enjoyed the opportunity to share my knowledge and expertise. Before PCMag, I wrote for Tom's Hardware for three years, where I covered tech news, deals, and wrote some hands-on reviews. After working as a PCMag contributor for a time reviewing desktops, PC cases, budget processors, and motherboards, I now focus on testing and reviewing processors and graphics cards and sharing my insights on the industry.
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