Gaming Benchmarks (DirectX 12 + RT)
It's been two years since NVIDIA introduced its Ada Lovelace GPUs, kicking things off with the RTX 4090 and finishing up the initial lineup with the SUPER family At CES, the company unveiled its new RTX 50 "Blackwell" family which features a brand new architecture and several changes such as new cores, AI accelerators, new memory standards, and the latest video/display capabilities.
Today, NVIDIA releases its 6th entry within its "RTX 50" portfolio, the GeForce RTX 5060. The RTX 5060 is positioned in the entry-level segment, with an MSRP of $299 US and a factory-equipped 8 GB of VRAM, which might seem a bit too little for today's standards. Today, we will be trying out the GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX 8 GB graphics card which is priced at MSRP ($299 US).
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2025 | 2023-2024 | 2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | 2020-2021 | 2019-2020 | 2018-2019 | 2017-2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | GeForce RTX 5090 | GeForce RTX 4090 | GeForce RTX 4090 | GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 | GeForce RTX 3090 | Titan RTX (Turing) | Titan V (Volta) | Titan Xp (Pascal) |
| Price | $1999 US | $1599 US | $1599 US | $1999 US $1499 US | $1499 US | $2499 US | $2999 US | $1199 US |
| Ultra Enthusiast Tier | GeForce RTX 5080 | GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 4080 | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti |
| Price | $999 US | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $999 US | $999 US | $699 US |
| Enthusiast Tier | GeForce RTX 5070 Ti | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti | GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB | GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce GTX 1080 |
| Price | $749 US | $799 US | $799 US | $799 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US | $549 US |
| High-End Tier | GeForce RTX 5070 | GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER GeForce RTX 4070 | GeForce RTX 4070 GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB | GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 | GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GeForce RTX 3070 | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce GTX 1070 |
| Price | $549 US | $599 $549 | $599 US $499 US | $599 $499 | $599 $499 | $499 US | $499 US | $379 US |
| Mainstream Tier | GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB | GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 4060 | GeForce RTX 4060 Ti GeForce RTX 4060 | GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB | GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB | GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 |
| Price | $429 US $379 US | $449 $299 | $399 US $299 US | $399 US $329 US | $399 US $329 US | $399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US | $249 US | $249 US |
| Entry Tier | GeForce RTX 5060 | RTX 3050 8 GB RTX 3050 6 GB | RTX 3050 | RTX 3050 | GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 | GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
| Price | $299 | $229 $179 | $249 US | $249 US | $159 US $149 US | $159 US $149 US | $139 US $109 US | $139 US $109 US |
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Gaming Graphics Cards
With Blackwell, NVIDIA is going full-on into the AI segment with loads of optimizations & AI-specific accelerators.
The Blackwell GPU does many traditional things that we would expect from a GPU, but simultaneously breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. To sum up some features:
- New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
- New 5th Gen Tensor Cores
- New 4th Gen RT (Ray Tracing) Cores
- AI Management Processor
- Max-Q Mode for Desktops & Laptops
- New GDDR7 High-Performance Memory Subsystem
- New DP2.1b Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Blackwell GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself, which we will talk about in detail, so let's get started.
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards have so far been available for over $500 US, and that changes today with the RTX 5060 series, which promises to bring Neural Rendering prowess, & the DLSS 4 capabilities to mainstream audiences. These graphics cards are designed to offer over 100+ FPS in the most popular games at their targeted resolutions with DLSS 4 MFG (Multi-Frame-Gen) delivering a 2x gain in frame rate over the previous generation.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 series graphics cards are going to be a huge upgrade for the vast majority of gamers out there, since 50+ million gamers are still running older x60 and x50-class graphics cards based on the older Pascal (10 Series), Turing (20 Series) and Ampere (30 Series) architectures. With DLSS 4, gamers running an RTX 5060 or 5060 Ti can reach up to 50x graphics performance versus a GTX 1060 or GTX 1660 GPU.
NVIDIA is specifically aiming for the 1080p gaming segment with the GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB graphics card. The company starts by listing several AAA games, such as Alan Wake II, Cyberpunk 2077, Half-Life 2 RTX S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and Doom: The Dark Ages, with over 100+ FPS with every setting maxed out using AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
While NVIDIA mostly shows the gaming performance of the GeForce RTX 5060 with DLSS 4 enabled versus the GeForce RTX 4060 with DLSS 3.x enabled, we were told during a briefing that the raster improvement is around 25% over the RTX 4060.
As for other metrics, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB GPUs will offer 19 TFLOPs of shader performance, 614 AI TOPS (FP4/FP8/FP16 support), and 58 TFLOPs of RT performance. It will feature the latest 9th Gen NV Encoders and 6th Gen NV Decoders alongside support for PCIe Generation 5.0 (x8 interface) and adopt the latest DisplayPort 2.1b outputs with UHBR20 (80.0 Gbps bandwidth).
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 GPU Specifications
The GeForce RTX 5060 is expected to carry on with similar specifications as its predecessor, including the VRAM size and memory bus, but there are some noticeable changes, although not many.
The GPU will be featured on the PG152-SKU25 board and GB206-250-A1 GPU die. It will feature 3840 CUDA Cores, which is 25% higher than the 3072 CUDA Cores found on the RTX 4060. A decent uplift over the RTX 4060, but the VRAM capacity will remain the same at 8 GB. However, it will be the faster GDDR7, running at 28 Gbps through a 128-bit memory bus. The memory bandwidth will be around 448 GB/s, a nearly 65% increase over the 272 GB/s bandwidth of the RTX 4060.
This should be enough to bring some decent uplift over the predecessor, but 8 GB VRAM capacity isn't enough for intensive modern titles. Lastly, the GeForce RTX 5060 is also going to bring a noticeable increase in power consumption, and, compared to the RTX 4060, it will bring a 25W TDP increase. So, comparing the RTX 5060 to the RTX 4060, you get:
- 25% More CUDA Cores
- Up To 25% Higher Raster Perf vs RTX 4060
- Same Memory Capacity
- Faster GDDR7 Memory (28 Gbps)
- More Bandwidth (+64%)
- 22% Higher power rating
- Same $299 MSRP as RTX 4060
In terms of pricing, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 graphics cards will start at $299 US, which is the same as the RTX 4060's MSRP at launch. It won't come in FE models, but gamers will have plenty of AIC models to select from.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 GPU Specs (Official):
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | Blackwell GB202-300 | Blackwell GB203-400 | Blackwell GB203-300-A1 | Blackwell GB205-300-A1 | Blackwell GB206-300 | Blackwell GB206-250 | Blackwell GB207-300 |
| GPU SMs | 170 (192 Full) | 84 (84 Full) | 70 (84 Full) | 50 (50 Full) | 36 (36 Full) | 30 | 20 (20 Full) |
| GPU Cores | 21760 | 10752 | 8960 | 6144 | 4608 | 3840 | 2560 |
| Clock Speeds | 2.41 GHz | 2.62 GHz | 2.45 GHz | 2.51 GHz | 2.57 GHz | 2.49 GHz | 2.57 GHz |
| Memory Capacity | 32 GB GDDR7 | 16 GB GDDR7 | 16 GB GDDR7 | 12 GB GDDR7 | 16 GB / 8 GB GDDR7 | 8 GB GDDR7 | 8 GB GDDR6 |
| Memory Bus | 512-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
| Memory Speed | 28 Gbps | 30 Gbps | 28 Gbps | 28 Gbps | 28 Gbps | 28 Gbps | 20 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 1792 GB/s | 960 GB/s | 896 GB/s | 672 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 320 GB/s |
| Power Interface | 1 12V-2x6 (16-Pin) | 1 12V-2x6 (16-Pin) | 1 12V-2x6 (16-Pin) | 1 12VHPWR (16-Pin) | 1 12VHPWR (16-Pin) | 8-Pin | 8-Pin |
| Launch | 30th January, 2025 | 30th January, 2025 | 20th February, 2025 | 5th March, 2025 | 16th April, 2025 | 19th May, 2025 | July 2025 |
| TBP | 575W | 360W | 300W | 250W | 180W | 145W | 130W |
| Price | $1999 US | $999 US | $749 US | $549 US | $429/$379 | $299 | $249 |
In addition to the desktop announcement, NVIDIA has also announced that the GeForce RTX 5060 will be coming to laptops, offering the same Blackwell and DLSS 4 features to mainstream laptop audiences with 144 FPS gaming at Ultra Settings, 8K 4:2:2 Video Editing, and prices starting at 1099 USD.
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5060 Desktop GPUs and laptops are now available, starting at $299 and $1099. The graphics card is only available in AIB variants; no Founders Edition is planned.
The NVIDIA Blackwell or RTX Blackwell architecture is designed for gamers and content creators. This architecture will be offered on the RTX 50 graphics cards first, launching later this month.
NVIDIA RTX Blackwell Architecture Deep-Dive
What we have known so far about the NVIDIA RTX Blackwell Gaming GPUs is that they are based on TSMC's 4nm process node, feature up to 92 Billion transistors with 4000 AI TOPS, 380 RT TFLOPs, a 125 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, the fastest GDDR7 memory interface with up to 1.8 TB/s bandwidth and come with a brand new Founders Edition design.
With Blackwell, NVIDIA had a few design goals in mind to accelerate the graphical capabilities for the next generation of gaming. The architecture was to be designed and optimized around new neural capabilities and workloads. It aims to reduce the overall memory footprint, it also focuses vastly on energy efficiency, and all the while adding new quality of service capabilities.
So Blackwell had to introduce a lot of changes. The main ones include the addition of 5th Gen Tensor Cores, offering high-speed FP4, compute and up to 4000 AI TOPS of performance, 4th Gen RT (Ray Tracing) cores with up to 360 RT TFLOPs and designed for Mega Geometry, a next-gen AI Management Processor which enables Simultaneous AI models and graphics workloads to be executed, a brand new Blackwell SM with 125 TFLOPS of peak FP32 compute and the addition of GDDR7 memory which offers the world's fastest memory speeds of up to 30 Gbps (on the RTX 5080).
Other notable RTX Blackwell GPU architecture additions include DisplayPort 2.1 (UHBR20), PCIe Gen5 support, and 4K NVDEC/NVENC with 4:2:2 colors.
Diving into the Blackwell SM, we first compare it with the Ada SM, which was mostly optimized for traditional shaders, & most of its Tensor cores were used either for DLSS or content creation apps. Ada also partitioned the FP32 cores into two blocks, one that could purely execute FP32 and one that could manage both FP32 & INT32 formats. With Blackwell, NVIDIA has doubled its INT32 GPU throughput, which can help accelerate workloads such as Work Graphs and Shader Execution, and 5th Gen Tensor Cores also offer the aforementioned doubled throughput.
Other microarchitectural changes allow multiple workloads to be executed efficiently. Blackwell also improves SER (Shader Execution Reordering) by 2x by reordering the neural models and the standard shading models and putting the same work together in an organized fashion. These models are then passed through tensor cores (if ML models) or shared cores (if shading models) for final execution.
GDDR7 also brings a much-needed upgrade over GDDR6/X memory, offering twice the bandwidth and data rate of G6 memory with higher frequency and lower wattage. GDDR7 also supports PAM4 signaling, and the PCB materials used on RTX 50 GPUs are top-of-the-line from an engineering point of view. This is the first full-fledged architecture for desktop PCs to utilize GDDR7 and PCIe 5.0 materials in full conjunction. The new memory interface also offers twice the efficiency of GDDR6 in terms of PJ/bit. This will be very useful in mobility "Max-Q" designs where efficiency matters the most.
Moving over to the Ray Tracing enhancements, the 4th Gen RT Cores introduce various new capabilities, such as a Triangle Cluster Intersection Engine which replaces the previous Triangle Intersection Engine which is optimized for Mega Geometry and can handle clusters of Mega Geometry and standard geometry much more efficiently.
The Mega Geometry engine also has a new Triangle Cluster Compression format, which can be decompressed using Blackwell's on-chip engine. Lastly, the new Linear Swept Spheres block accelerates RTX Hair and Fur rendering. To sum up, the new RT cores bring an 8x ray triangle intersection rate while reducing the memory footprint to 0.75x.
The FP4 format introduced on Blackwell's 5th Gen Tensor Cores will offer up to 32x throughput versus the Pascal generation and 2x versus the Ada generation of GPUs. These new cores will be taking full advantage of Neural Shading and Rendering techniques featured in next-gen AAA titles.
This also leads us to the next topic, which is about Blackwell's scheduling and how it processes various workloads. In Blackwell, NVIDIA is introducing a new programmable Coprocessor known as Amp, which sits at the front of the GPU, and interacts differently with the different cores on the GPU while understanding what's running on them, what's being done on them, and scheduling precisely the specific workload for the right core.
NVIDIA also talked about Blackwell's new Power Gating modes. In Blackwell, the entire clock tree can be disabled even while the GPU is active. So, if the memory system or portions of the memory system are idle, power savings can be achieved this way.
Another way to save power is to disable logic and SRAM when entire engines are idle. Blackwell also introduces a secondary rail that separates the core and the memory system, which runs them at different voltages and, for different workloads, captures more performance within a power budget. It also allows a 15x reduction in the time it takes from the rail gate to the core. The new rail gate system is particularly useful in laptops as it reduces leakage by a major margin.
A new aspect of Blackwell is also its accelerated frequency switching capability, which improves clock responsiveness by 1000x. For example, a workload such as physics, which doesn't utilize the full width of the GPU, can switch to a higher frequency, while a tensor core workload, which can use the full width of the GPU, can move to a lower frequency. But when the CPU hasn't fed the GPU with any work, Blackwell can drop its frequency fast, and this is done because Blackwell can switch back to a faster frequency faster.
In terms of clock frequency uplift, Blackwell achieves a 300 MHz higher frequency in the active state versus Ada GPUs.
Lastly, we have Blackwell's Display & Video capabilities. New support on Blackwell includes support for DisplayPort 2.1b (UHBR20) with High-Speed hardware flip metering, which improves the pace of frames using DLSS 4. There's also the 9th Gen Encoder and 6th Gen Decoder, offering AV1 UHQ & 2x H.264 Decode capabilities, while MV-HEVC and 4.2.2 Encode/Decode are also included in the RTX Blackwell Video engine block.
NVIDIA DLSS 4 - Continuing The Deep Learning Innovations
Since the advent of DLSS back in 2018, the technology has been improving continuously. The DLSS model is being trained on a supercomputer housed within the NVIDIA HQ, which is running 24/7 & uses the latest and greatest of their GPUs for the past 6 years. The last major iteration of DLSS was DLSS 3.5, which introduced ray reconstruction. This new feature was part of the failure process in which the model detects various issues such as blurriness, ghosting, and flickering.
NVIDIA's in-house team of engineers then tried to figure out what went wrong in the model and why the image wasn't created as intended. New approaches are defined to augment the model set, which is retrained and tested across 100s of games to achieve the desired image quality, and these result in upgraded versions of DLSS, with the latest one now being DLSS 4, which improves upon all aspects of the Super Sampling technology.
With DLSS 4, NVIDIA is transitioning to a completely new neural architecture model from the 2020s DLSS 2. The main change is the new transformer engine, which can be trained across multiple data sets while being computationally efficient, offering 2x the parameter size and 4x the compute horsepower.
DLSS 4 also adds the new MFG mode, or Multi-Frame Generation, which, instead of running two models per frame, runs five models per frame with super-resolution and ray reconstruction. This leads to 15 out of 16 pixels or frames being generated by AI, all the while improving the image quality.
NVIDIA also dives a bit into why they only thought of doing multi-frame frame-gen with Blackwell and there were two reasons, one was that DLSS's image quality was not that great to begin with and needed more training time, while the second was the time it takes to generate these new frames could result in frame pacing and artifacting issues.
So, as the DLSS model was trained, the image quality became much better, which is fairly noticeable in recent DLSS 3 and DLSS 3.5 titles, while for frame pacing, NVIDIA's flip metering system is the solution that displays frame, and this has been upgraded, and it can now reduce the frame variability by 5-10x, leading to similar or better latency versus last-gen DLSS solutions even when MFG is enabled.
Best of all, while MFG will be limited to RTX 50 and Frame Generation will be limited to the RTX 40 and RTX 50 series, the image quality enhancements and Reflex 2 highlights will apply to all RTX GPUs as we reported here, so all RTX GPU owners are in for a small treat even if they don't own the latest and greatest hardware.
Unlike previous generations of DLSS, DLSS 4 will come with Day-0 support for a total of 75 games and apps, the largest library of DLSS-enabled titles on the first day, and more are on the way. To be clear, NVIDIA confirmed that developers will be able to leverage DLSS 4 quite easily if they have already integrated DLSS 3 or DLSS 3.5 within the engines.
NVIDIA will also integrate the option to enable DLSS 4 for non-DLSS-4 titles, such as those with DLSS 3 support, within its NVIDIA App. You can select between the older CNN mode, which will be a little bit faster but with lower image quality, and choose between various frame generation modes such as 2x, 3x, and up to 4x. Users can also select between resolution override modes, such as DLAA, if they prefer higher image fidelity or go with DLSS Ultra-Perf, which enables faster performance on RTX GPUs.
Another feature that goes hand in hand with the new DLSS 4 technology is Reflex 2, which is designed to decrease latency and improve responsiveness in games, especially eSports titles. Reflex 2 introduces a new technology called Frame Warp, which improves system responsiveness by 75%.
How NVIDIA achieves this is by sampling the mouse position right before the frame is rendered, and the camera is updated based on the user input, and then warping the scene to a new position right before the frame is displayed. Reflex 2 will be natively coming to The Finals and Valorant. All RTX GPUs will support Reflex 2.
NVIDIA RTX AI For Gamers: Moving From Programmable Shaders To Neural Shaders
As we stated at the start of this deep dive, the RTX Blackwell architecture is designed with AI in mind, and one of the major shifts that NVIDIA is making is to access next-gen Neural Shading technologies.
The company has already announced how it's cooperating with Microsoft to leverage DirectX's Neural Rendering capabilities that will fully unleash the tensor core prowess of RTX 50 GPUs.
With Blackwell's Neural Shaders, NVIDIA will harness various means of doing graphics, such as Neural Textures, Neural Materials, Neural Volumes, Neural Radiance Fields, Neural Radiance Cache, and Neural Compression techniques to help with efficiency and optimization while adding in more performance by leveraging tensor cores.
The aim is to replace some or all parts of the traditional graphics pipeline, which has mostly relied on programmable shaders for a while now.
With traditional materials in a real-time scene, it's usually a few dozen lines of code to several thousand for film rendering, so to faithfully represent the same data, neural materials take the same code and take assembly collective of layers that are associated with a material and lay it out in a neural space (neural recompressed texture 7:1) & then a very small neural network with a few layers that are executed for each pixel on the screen that is using that material. In a demo shown by NVIDIA, Standard Materials take up 47 megabytes of memory while Neural materials take up just 16 megabytes of memory, so that's a factor of 3x.
Next is RTX Neural Radiance Cache for path tracing, indirect lighting, and faster performance. NRC is training in real time using the GPU to create a model on the fly. It collects the transport of light through the scene and caches it geo-spatially, so that you can have virtually unlimited bounces of light throughout the scene of light being transported around and be able to have that in the cache so that you can have one lookup in the cache and represent an unlimited number of bounces on the scene.
One area where Neural Shaders shine is in materials such as skin, and for that, NVIDIA is adding a new feature called RTX Skin. For this purpose, NVIDIA has collaborated with Unreal Technology & Disney, bringing the subsurface scattering algorithm into the real-time realm for path tracing. The demo to showcase RTX Skin was Half-Life 2 Remix, where the bricks are missing indirect lighting by default, but enabling NRC brings a lot more detail to the scene. The same can be seen in a Zombie, which looks much more vibrant, and shadows are displayed more realistically.
Another feature is RTX Neural Faces, which combines Generative AI Faces with photorealistic characteristics that are trained at different angles, and different lighting conditions, and display different emotions too. These can be used to enhance NPCs within games.
Even Ray Tracing hair and fur is discussed, with the traditional methods being very expensive, since a character with individual strands may have 6 million strands, which requires a lot of horsepower. In Blackwell's RTX architecture, this new approach requires fewer polygons and fewer ray-traced spheres, leading to 3x less data to compute and less VRAM while offering higher FPS.
Blackwell also introduces a new groundbreaking technology called RTX Mega Geometry, which allows you to have an uncompromised solution where you can have a full-fat Nanite mesh, fully path-traced, with no rasterization involved. This is done with a new API that quickly, effectively, and efficiently compresses these clusters over time.
In the Zorah Demo, which uses RTX Mega Geometry with half a billion triangles per scene, a lot more details are present when the tech is enabled, and it looks very fluid when running on an RTX 50 GPU. RTX Mega Geometry will run on all RTX GPUs, but Blackwell has specific technologies that will accelerate the tech further.
The GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of the package has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "GALAX" logo in the top left corner & the "EX" model name on the bottom left corner. This is also a 1-Click OC variant which means that you can extract more performance with a single-click through GALAX's 1-Click Xtreme Tuner Plus software.
The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support.
The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and the GeForce Experience application, which is a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards. The sides of the box greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 8 GB GDDR7 (RTX 5060) memory available on the card.
Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories such as an ARGB cable, and manuals, which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience. The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover, which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card.
After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. This card is a compact variant and is compliant with NVIDIA's SFF standards.
GALAX makes use of its latest Xtreme Cooling system heatsink. The card measures 264 x 145 x 41 mm and features a 2-slot height.
The graphics card adopts a black and white color scheme with a plastic shroud on the front, and a metal backplate.
The back of the card features a solid metal backplate that looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks, which I will get back to in a bit.
In terms of design, the card features the "Xtreme Cooling System" cooler, which adopts a dual-fan design.
The new heatsink is a combination of GALAX's dynamic thermal control design and the new Double Wings 3.0 fans.
The only RGB source on the card are the two fans on the front.
Coming to the fans, the card features the latest Double Wings 3.0 design. These fans feature 7 blades in 102 mm frames with axial technology. The larger 102mm frame of these fans allow for 15% higher air pressure, 3C lower temperatures versus Wings 2.0 design, and a reduction of 5% in noise output.
GALAX's new fan system has the 0dB "Silent Extreme" technology, which ensures that the fans don't spin at lower temperatures, avoiding unwanted noise output.
I am back to talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate that the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The back comes with a dual-tone "White+Black" color scheme.
The graphics card also comes with a compact PCB design, which means that the shroud, heatsink, and backplate are all extended beyond the PCB. The second fan blows air through the heatsink and blows it out from the cutouts that are situated at the very end of the backplate. There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card.
With the outside of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of the card. The first thing to catch my eye is the large fin stack that's part of the heatsink that the card utilizes.
The heatsink has been designed to be denser by increasing the footprint. This includes the use of denser aluminum fins and bigger heat pipes. There are a total of three heat pipes on the card which connect to the baseplate while a fourth heatsink is situated at the front for extra heat dissipation.
I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme, which includes three Display Port 2.1b & a single HDMI 2.1 port.
The GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX comes with a single 8-pin connector to feed its 145W power rating.
The card features a 6-phase VRM with four GDDR7 memory modules. The card features a +53 MHz over-clock of 2550 MHz which is only accessible through the Xtreme Tuner Plus software.
GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX RGB Lighting Gallery:
Once again, the GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX features two ARGB-lit fans. These come with 20+ effects that are accessible through the Xtreme Tuner App.
The following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used by AMD, Intel & NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 11. All tested games were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD GPUs.
WCCFTECH GPU "E" Test Bench (2025):
| CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K @ Default |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | MSI MEG Z790 ACE |
| Video Cards | Maxsun Intel Arc B580 iCraft GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX Colorful GeForce RTX 5060 Battle NX ASRock Radeon RX 9060 XT Steel Legend OC MSI Radeon RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio Intel Arc A770 16 GB Limited Edition MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPRIM X MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X MSI Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z ASRock RX 7800 XT Phantom Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER FE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 FE MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming X MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Gaming OC MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Gaming X MSI Radeon RX 6650 XT Gaming X ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti TUF Gaming Intel Arc B580 GALAX GeForce RTX 4070 OC 2X (GDDR6) ASRock Intel Arc B570 Challenger OC MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Gaming X |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 X 16GB) CL38 7200 Mbps |
| Storage | Teamgroup T-Force A440 Pro 2 TB Gen 4 |
| Power Supply | MSI MEG Ai1300P 1300W PSU |
| OS | Windows 11 64-bit (24H2) |
| Drivers | AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.10.09 NVIDIA GeForce 576.52 WHQL Intel 6733 WHQL |
- All games were tested at 3840x2160 (4K) resolution.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations are provided with each game description.
- The "reference" cards are the stock configs except where mentioned otherwise.
Speed Way
Developed with input from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and other leading technology companies, Speed Way is an ideal benchmark for comparing the DirectX 12 Ultimate performance of the latest graphics cards. 3DMark Speed Way’s engine is assembled to demonstrate what the latest DirectX API brings to ray-traced gaming, using DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1 for real-time global illumination and real-time ray-traced reflections, coupled with new performance optimizations like Mesh Shaders.
3DMark Speed Way Graphics
Firestrike
Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance. In this test, we ran the Extreme and Ultra versions of Firestrike, which run at 1440p and 4K, and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined scores are not pertinent to this review.
3DMark Firestrike Extreme Graphics
3DMark Firestrike Ultra Graphics
Time Spy
Time Spy is running the DX12 API, and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme, where we only recorded the Graphics Score, as the Physics score records the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.
3DMark Time Spy Graphics
3DMark Time Spy Extreme Graphics
Port Royal
Port Royal is another great tool in the 3DMark suite, but this one is 100% targeting Ray Tracing performance. It loads up ray-traced shadows, reflections, and global illumination to tax the performance of the graphics cards that either have hardware-based or software-based ray-tracing support.
3DMark Port Royal Score
3DMark Pure Ray Tracing Feature Test
Doom Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to Earth with the Vulkan-powered IDTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay consistent.
DOOM Eternal (Nightmare 4K)
Red Dead Redemption 2
Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date. It is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine, which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned off.
Red Dead Redemption 2 (4K Maxed)
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set in an alternate future where the Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is, once again, Id Tech 6, which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained its glorious FPS roots and is slaying with every new title.
Wolfenstein
Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 sets you up in a horror thriller that takes place in two dimensions and lets you play two different protagonists, Alan himself and Saga, who once again have to find a way to fix the darkness that erupted in Bright Falls.
Alan Wake 2 (Maxed Out / Rasterized)
Alan Wake 2 (Maxed Out / PT / DLSS 4 Quality)
Atomic Heart
Atomic Heart is set in an alternate universe where the Soviet Union achieved incredible technological breakthroughs thanks to a scientist named Dr. Sechenov, who invented a liquid programmable module called Polymer that links robots in a so-called Kollektiv network.
Atomic Heart (4K Maxed)
Battlefield V
Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best-looking Battlefield titles to date.
Battlefield V (Maxed)
Baldur's Gate III
2023's GOTY is well-deserved for its title. The creation from Larian Studios is a turn-based RPG that has gorgeous interiors and exteriors shown through a bird's eye top-to-bottom view. You can sink countless hours into the game, and if you're a fan of the D&D playstyle, then this epic is just for you.
Baldurs Gate III (Maxed Out)
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customizable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. The game uses CD Projekt Red's in-house Red Engine, which is one of the most visually breathtaking and also one of the most graphics-intensive engines designed to date.
Cyberpunk 2077 (Maxed Out)
Cyberpunk 2077 (Maxed Out / PT / DLSS 4 Quality)
Dead Space (Remake)
Remaking Dead Space was a bold choice, but I would say that the team at EA Motive nailed every bit and piece of this horror classic. The remake makes the USG Ishimura twice as scarily beautiful. The gore, the endless corridors of terror, the void of space, all of it looks incredible while the game remains true to its core, to the original Dead Space formula. Modern cards can run the game well, but it can also be demanding if you crank the settings to the max with ray tracing enabled.
Dead Space Remake (Ultra / No RT)
Death Stranding
Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray-tracing effects, but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.
Death Stranding DLSS/FSR/XeSS (Quality)
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 5 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12-powered entry is beautifully crafted, amazingly well executed, and a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Forza Horizon 5 (Maxed Out)
Halo Infinite (DX12 Highest)
Next up, we have the latest entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Infinite, which uses the brand new Slipspace engine (although there are rumors it will be ditched in the future for Unreal Engine) based on the DX12 API. The game rocks some incredible environments for Master Chief to visit on the Halo ring.
Halo Infinite (Maxed Out)
Hitman III (DX12 Highest Settings)
Hitman III is the highly acclaimed sequel to the 2016 Hitman & 2018 Hitman II, which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47. The game runs on the IO Interactive Glacier 2 engine, which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of the DirectX 12 API.
Hitman III (Maxed Out)
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus continues Artyom's journey through Russia's nuclear wasteland and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.
Metro Exodus (Extreme Preset)
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village is the latest in the horror franchise that was wonderfully rekindled with RE7 and onto the RE2 Remake. But now the RE Engine is back and better than ever with Ray Traced Reflections and Lighting that makes the world just come to life, unironically. The game was tested in the center of the village itself with all graphical settings maxed out and with raytracing enabled.
Resident Evil Village (Maxed)
Resident Evil IV Remake
The remake of the beloved and highly acclaimed Resident Evil IV is here, boasting the latest RE engine, which adds stunning visuals and even better ray tracing effects. The game looks just as incredible as it plays.
Resident Evil 4 Remake (Maxed)
Starfield
Bethesda's latest RPG epic is set in space and takes place across a vast universe, filled with lots of planets to explore. Based on the latest iteration of the Creation Engine, Starfield offers a great amount of visual fidelity, whether you are exploring an abandoned base or just roaming a planet on which you have just set foot.
Starfield (DirectX 12 / Max)
No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load.
Temperatures
We finally got the chance to test NVIDIA's latest entry-level product, the GeForce RTX 5060, a $299 US-priced offering for the gaming masses. A lot has been said about this graphics card on the web, and while most of the criticism about the card is valid, I think more reviewers should put their input regarding this product, so here's ours.
Trades Blows With The RTX 4060 Ti, But Ultimately A Small Upgrade Over RTX 4060 & Lowly 8 GB VRAM
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 once again adds a 20% uplift over the RTX 4060, which is decent, but given the generation jumps that we have seen in the past, such as the likes of the GTX 1060, the 60 series gains are getting smaller. These cards used to compete with the 80-class competition of the past generation, but that isn't the case anymore.
The performance differences get slimmer at high resolutions such as 1440p and 2160p as the 8 GB VRAM becomes a limiting factor. There is more bandwidth thanks to GDDR7, but that isn't enough, given there are plenty of AAA games these days require more than 8 GB VRAM and in this regard, Intel has done a fine job with its Battlemage B-series which boasts 10 GB at minimum and up to 12 GB in its sub $300-class GPU.
DLSS4 Is The Game Changer: Better Image Quality Than DLSS3 With Transformers Gunning For 1440P 240Hz Gaming
DLSS4 is huge! With the updated upscaling technology, NVIDIA is taking image quality to the next level. The model they have been training is in the most advanced state yet, with the image quality improving day by day. DLSS4 is a visual upgrade over DLSS 3, and all RTX gamers can enjoy its benefits. With the faster transformer model on the Blackwell GPUs, you will see limited losses in terms of performance when switching from the older CNN model to the newer transformer model.
Now, DLSS has been plagued with the "Fake Frames" controversy regarding the frame-gen tech, but it does offer better performance and smoothness. NVIDIA is quadrupling the frame rate with a 4x mode, which boosts FPS dramatically. This is enough for those who want to utilize the potential of their 4K & 1440P 240Hz monitors.
Yes, there will be certain artifacts when using DLSS4 with frame generation enabled, but like I said, the DLSS model is improving, and this is DLSS at its finest. We can expect DLSS4 to receive countless amounts of updates in the coming months, and during the time I spent trying it out, there were just minor artifacts that you can only notice when focusing on a certain section of the frame. It is almost indistinguishable from the native render.
For the RTX 5060, DLSS 4 is a major caveat, on one hand, it offers a uplift that can boost your FPS and provide smoother gameplay but then, if you dwell too much into online discussions, there's not a lot of good you can read about frame generation or upscaling as mentioned above. I talked to someone a while ago about this, and one interesting comment made by the person was that if you look at it, each frame, even a native frame, can be considered a fake one, since it's being generated by the GPU. It's an interesting take on this, and well, frame-generation is getting to the point where it not only offers better image quality and stability than a native frame, but at a faster throughput. There are definitely some concerns that are being addressed by the engineering minds at NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, so hopefully, at the pace things are going, frame generation may not be as hated as it is right now.
NVIDIA's Blackwell Is Built For The Future of Gaming, But We Might Have to Wait
The NVIDIA Blackwell architecture is designed with AI in mind. While DLSS 4 and its 4x Multi-Frame Generation technology are one aspect, there's also support for FP4, which would help in certain AI workloads.
Things we liked about the GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX 8 GB:
- Decent performance jump (around 20% over 4060 8 GB)
- Great Perf/$ if available at MSRP
- Overclocked out of the box
- Designed With Next-Gen Neural Rendering
- Next-Gen Blackwell Architecture With Several AI Additions
- New GDDR7 Memory
- DLSS4 Offers Better Image Quality
- DLSS4 MFG Offers 4x FPS Boost
- Compact design & SFF Approved
- Dual 102mm Fans with ARGB
- Low noise output with 0 dB operation
- Next-Gen Video Encode/Decode Engines
- DP2.1b (UHBR20) support
- PCIe Express 5.0 technology
The big gun is the neural shaders support, along with several new Neural rendering approaches that the company has highlighted and discussed. While the company hasn't yet announced any major game partnerships that will make use of these technologies, we are anxiously waiting for NVIDIA's update in this regard, as that would further unlock the architectural potential of NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture.
Things we didn't like about the GALAX GeForce RTX 5060 EX 8 GB:
- Performance is not a big uplift over 4060
- High power rating
- GDDR7 Memory runs hot
- Only 8 GB VRAM
- A few games with next-gen RTX features at launch
GALAX overall has a solid design on its hand, being both compact and good-looking with its ARGB effects. Furthermore, the company has a nice factory overclock which adds slightly more performance though nothing that will be noticeable by any means.
So, what do I think of the RTX 5060? Well, it seems like a passable product that would entice some gamers running much older GPUs, such as the GTX 1060, RTX 2060, or even the RTX 3060 crowd, if you can find it at the right price. If you are accustomed to NVIDIA's ecosystem and its gaming features, then RTX 5060 can be a decent entry-level product. But there are some other options too, such as the 12 GB Arc B580 and the Radeon RX 9060 XT.
The RTX 5060 is good for 1080p gaming and maybe for 1440p eSports gaming too, and DLSS 4 offers a compelling reason to get Blackwell. Besides that, well, there isn't a lot going on, which is underwhelming for the majority of gamers who can easily be tilted to whatever makes the most sense for them in terms of value, & features, and this should at least push NVIDIA to do better for mainstream gamers with future products. Let's see if we get any upgraded VRAM models at similar prices shortly.
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