Nvidia RTX 2060 for $179, the Lowest Price Ever
Turing's last gasp
If you're looking for a decent budget to midrange graphics card, this Asus RTX 2060 Cyber Monday deal on Amazon is about as good as we're likely to see. Priced at $179, down from a previous $279 and beating the former best price on an RTX 2060 of $219 by $40, this one will likely go fast. Note that you may have to click "other sellers" to get this price — it's not always the top option.
Asus RTX 2060 Dual OC: now $179 at Amazon (was $279)
The RTX 2060 still consistently outperforms the newer RTX 3050, provided you don't exceed its 6GB VRAM. This is the lowest price we've ever seen on the GPU, and likely the last we'll see of RTX 20-series deals.
If you check our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, you'll see that the RTX 2060 performs a few percent faster than the RTX 3050 — and that applies to ray tracing games as well as rasterized games. That's largely thanks to its having a 192-bit memory interface and 336 GB/s of bandwidth, compared to a 128-bit interface and just 224 GB/s on the 3050.
It's not as fast as AMD's RX 6600 in rasterization games, though it does rank ahead of it for DXR (DirectX Raytracing) performance. Now that the RX 6600 $189 deal is gone, this is about as good as it gets for a "budget" GPU, and it will easily beat cards like the RX 6500 XT, GTX 1650, or Arc A380.
The RTX 2060 has had an interesting run of late. After EVGA announced it was exiting the GPU market, we saw the RTX 2060 drop down to $219 for a short time. Since then, prices have climbed back into the upper $200s, but for a time the RTX 2060 was the best value on an Nvidia GPU. It can now stake that claim again, as it's about $75 less than the RTX 3050 it still outperforms, and matches the lowest current price on an GTX 1660 — the GDDR5 non-Super model.
Turing has been out since 2018, and the RTX 2060 originally launched in early 2019. Four years later, we'd normally expect supply to be long gone, but the GPU shortages of the past two years have kept it in production. With cryptocurrency mining (on GPUs) now effectively dead for the time being, this should finally represent the end of the line for the venerable TU106 GPUs and the Turing Architecture.
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Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.
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oofdragon THIS. I tell you that no one, no one period, is able to tell which PC is running a 2060 base vs a 3070 side by side on a 1080p screen, fps counter off. Heck you would have a hard time telling wich is wich even comparing it to a 3080 on most demanding games. If you run a 2060 vs a 3080 4K on your 50' tv then there's a telling difference right away, but at 1080p? Right now anyone gaming on a PC monitor up yo 27' gets zero return spending more than $200 on a GPU.Reply -
zecoeco You can easily find an RX 5700 XT at this price in Open Box Condition.Reply
Much faster and better VRAM... if you don't care about DLSS / RT or Nvidia Software -
Thunder64 Replyoofdragon said:THIS. I tell you that no one, no one period, is able to tell which PC is running a 2060 base vs a 3070 side by side on a 1080p screen, fps counter off. Heck you would have a hard time telling wich is wich even comparing it to a 3080 on most demanding games. If you run a 2060 vs a 3080 4K on your 50' tv then there's a telling difference right away, but at 1080p? Right now anyone gaming on a PC monitor up yo 27' gets zero return spending more than $200 on a GPU.
Bunk. And what about 27" 1440p?
zecoeco said:You can easily find an RX 5700 XT at this price in Open Box Condition.
Much faster and better VRAM... if you don't care about DLSS / RT or Nvidia Software
I agree, 6GB isn't going to age well. One would be better off saving for the RX 6600. I got the vanilla 5700 over the RX 5600 XT because even though performance was close, I knew the extra memory would last longer. -
jessterman21 Annnd sold! Been salivating over the Radeon deals lately, but this is just as good and gives me access to DLSS. Coming from a 1650 Super.Reply -
Thunder64 Replyjessterman21 said:Annnd sold! Been salivating over the Radeon deals lately, but this is just as good and gives me access to DLSS. Coming from a 1650 Super.
Not really. An RX 6600 is close to an RTX 3060. Certainly better than an RTX 2060. But, if DLSS is worth it for, not a bad deal. -
renz496 Reply
Better go with RDNA 2 based card.zecoeco said:You can easily find an RX 5700 XT at this price in Open Box Condition.
Much faster and better VRAM... if you don't care about DLSS / RT or Nvidia Software -
renz496 Reply
There is one difference. You can keep 3070 much longer than 2060. Sometimes that can end up being more economical than have to upgrade more often because you get lower tier cards.oofdragon said:THIS. I tell you that no one, no one period, is able to tell which PC is running a 2060 base vs a 3070 side by side on a 1080p screen, fps counter off. Heck you would have a hard time telling wich is wich even comparing it to a 3080 on most demanding games. If you run a 2060 vs a 3080 4K on your 50' tv then there's a telling difference right away, but at 1080p? Right now anyone gaming on a PC monitor up yo 27' gets zero return spending more than $200 on a GPU.