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Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB Power, Clocks, Temps, and Noise
All our gaming tests are conducted using an Nvidia PCAT v2 device, which allows us to capture total graphics card power, GPU clocks, GPU temperatures, and some other data as we run each gaming benchmark. We have separate 1080p, 1440p, and 4K results for each area, which we'll order from highest to lowest resolution for these tests.
The raw specs say that Nvidia increased the power limit for the 5060 Ti by 20W compared to the 4060 Ti. Across our full gaming suite, however, the difference ends up being pretty negligible. The PNY card uses 1W more than the 4060 Ti 16GB at 4K, but 5W less at 1440p, and 9–10 watts less at 1080p. The Asus card on the other hand uses 6–9 watts more power than the PNY card, and basically ties or uses slightly more power than the 4060 Ti 16GB.
The 4060 Ti 8GB uses a lot less power at 4K, but that's because the GPU ends up waiting on the VRAM a lot of the time. At 1440p, it uses 14W less, and 9W less at 1080p.
One of the things Nvidia said it worked on with all Blackwell RTX 50-series GPUs was to improve power savings. That shows up nicely here, particularly with the lighter, lower resolution tests. The 5060 Ti 16GB is able to enter and exit sleep states quicker, giving some decent efficiency improvements.
AMD doesn't really have anything that competes directly with the 5060 Ti 16GB for now, as the 7600 XT and 7700 XT are both previous generation parts. As far as we know, neither one is still in active production, and there's no RDNA 4 option for the $380~$430 price range yet. That will come with the RX 9060 XT in the coming days (or weeks or months).
Clock speeds among the different GPUs and architectures aren't super important, but it's still interesting to see where things land. The PNY card does average higher GPU clocks at all of our test settings compared to the Asus card, but both also have slightly lower clocks compared to the 5070 and even the 4060 Ti 8GB. The 4060 Ti 16GB on the other hand drops further down the charts — though we're only looking at a 50–66 MHz deficit at worst.
AMD's RDNA 4 chips can hit very high clocks, at least with the 9070 XT or with overclocking. Out of the box, however, the 9070 power limits keep its clock speeds in check. The RX 7000-series GPUs have quite a large spread as well, with the 7600 series parts basically matching the Nvidia GPUs while the 7700 XT and 7800 XT fall 100 MHz to as much as 500 MHz behind. (The reference 7800 XT seems to clock relatively poorly, due to the card's design.)
Like the clock speeds, comparing GPU temperatures without considering other aspects of the cards doesn't make much sense. One card might run its fans at higher RPMs, generating more noise while being "cooler." So these graphs should be used alongside the noise and performance results.
While the PNY card often ends up slightly faster than the Asus Prime thanks to a higher boost clock, temperatures clearly favor the Asus design. That's not surprising, since it has an extra fan and a much larger radiator. The Asus design runs 8–9 degrees Celsius cooler than the PNY card, and slightly cooler than the 4060 Ti 8GB/16GB cards.
But we also need to look at noise levels... and we haven't finished retesting every card, so some of the cards aren't in this chart. But the 5060 Ti is!
We check noise levels using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter placed 10cm from the card, with the mic aimed right at the center of one fan: the center fan if there are three fans, or the right fan for two fans. This helps minimize the impact of other noise sources, like the fans on the CPU cooler. The new noise floor of our test environment and equipment is around 34 dB(A), due to the noise from the CPU cooling pump.
The Asus card not only runs cooler but is also a couple of decibels quieter than the PNY card. That makes sense, considering the cooler size, fans, and clock speed differences. Having one less fan with a smaller and lighter cooler, with an older fan design, plus higher boost clocks? Yes, that results in a card that makes more noise.
It's interesting to see that, despite the larger form factor and triple fans, Nvidia's own RTX 4070 Founders Edition still manages slightly higher performance overall with less noise. It may not have some of the other extras like a dual VBIOS, and some of the noise gets "hidden" by having one fan on the opposite side of the card, but it's still a good design overall. The large XFX RX 7700 XT also delivers impressively quiet performance, thanks to an even larger cooler and fans compared to the Asus 5060 Ti.
Here are the full tables of testing results, with FPS/$ calculated using the various launch MSRPs for the cards. That's because current retail prices are all wildly inflated, and many of the previous generation GPUs are now discontinued. Any pricing information we put in right now will inevitably be outdated and meaningless, so don't pay too much attention to the "value" column until and unless things calm down. Latency results are included for some of the games as well, and you can see the game-by-game power figures.
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