MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z & Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro
January, 2019Type
Graphics CardPrice
$390 US & $390 USGigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro Overview
The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro holds the second place in Gigabyte's lineup for the RTX 2060 graphics card. It is excelled by the faster AORUS Xtreme variant but still holds on its own with an impressive triple-fan WindForce design and a custom PCB design which is meant for overclocking. The card retails for $390 US which is the same price as the MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming Z that I will be testing alongside it.
In terms of specifications, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 features 1920 CUDA cores, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. The Turing TU106 die used on the graphics card is based around a 12nm process and has a die size of 445mm2. The core clocks for the card are maintained at 1365 MHz for base and 1680 MHz for boost. The MSI Gaming Z model is clocked up to 1830 MHz (boost) which will be providing better gaming performance than the reference model. The chip additionally comes with 5 Gigarays of ray tracing performance and a total of 6.5 TFLOPs of FP32 compute output. The cards feature a 6 GB GDDR6 memory interface running along a 192-bit wide bus interface. The reference model is powered by a single 8 pin connector and has a TDP of 160W.
The ASUS Gaming OC Pro graphics cards are fitted with the latest version of the Windforce 3X cooler. The Windforce 3X is the triple fan design which features three 82mm fans. These fans come with a unique blade fan design with the airflow being split by a triangular edge on the fan blade, guiding it smoothly through the 3D stripe curve on the fan surface. This helps enhance air flow by a good bit over traditional fan designs.
In addition to the standard fan spin, Gigabyte Windforce fans have an alternate spinning mode. It leads the middle fan to spin in a clockwise manner while the two fans on the side spin in anti-clockwise mode. This helps reduce airflow turbulence and allow more airflow to be blown away from the card, effectively increasing heat dissipation.
The fans are fully compliant with the 3D Active Fan technology which will allow the fans to stay in idle mode until the temps exceed a certain threshold. This threshold is based on both the GPU load and the temperatures, allowing for smooth and quiet operation under lower application loads.
Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of composite heat pipes which combine thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the heat transfer between two solid interfaces which increases cooling capacity. The base of the heatsink is a direct touch heat pipe surface. The heat pipes made direct contact with the GPU die, allowing for faster dissipation of heat from the core. Gigabyte is one of the few GPU manufacturers who is still using direct contact surfaces while others have switched over the nickel plated, cold plates. It will be interesting to see how this heatsink performs compared to the nickel plated designs we have tested more recently.
In addition to the main GPU heatsink, there’s a second additional heatsink for the VRAM and MOSFETs which offers higher dissipation power when it comes to the cooling design. Finally, we have a metal black plate which to our surprise comes with heat pads to ensure smooth heat transfer on the back.
The card comes with a fully custom PCB design and has a 6+2 Phase Ultra Durable design that utilizes premium components to deliver better overclocking and core stability when running graphics intensive applications.
Following are some of the features of the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro before we go into detail:
Features
- Powered by GeForce RTX 2060
- Integrated with 6GB GDDR6 192-bit memory interface
- WINDFORCE 3X Cooling System with alternate spinning fans
- RGB Fusion 2.0 – synchronize with other AORUS devices
- Metal Back Plate
- Core Clock: 1830 MHz (Reference card: 1680 MHz)
Contents
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About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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