Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Temperatures and Fan Speeds
Gaming
Gigabyte’s Gaming OC Pro 6G is the only card in our comparison with a semi-passive mode. It starts the Metro benchmark sequence at 0 RPM, jumps to 1,500 RPM, and quickly stabilizes around 1,250 RPM before commencing a slow rise to 1,850 RPM. The three 80mm fans do their job quietly, though Nvidia’s Founders Edition solution subjectively makes less noise.
We’ve seen the Windforce design transition from idle to active much clumsier in past reviews, so Gigabyte deserves credit for dialing in a smoother ramp this time around. That initial pulse is almost imperceptible.
Although the temperature of TU106 on Gigabyte’s Gaming OC Pro 6G rises faster than any of our comparison boards, it also levels off quickly and crests below 70°C (and under Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition).
Despite a 1,830 MHz core clock rating, Gigabyte’s GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G maintains 1,920 MHz through three runs of the Metro: Last Light benchmark. It does this at a constant voltage of 1.037V, whereas the other cards in our comparison rise and fall to avoid violating stricter limits.
FurMark
The sudden thermal load of FurMark causes Gigabyte’s card to spring to life more urgently. Because the Gaming OC Pro 6G had a bit of available headroom in its power budget through our gaming benchmark, the fans spin faster to compensate for increased heat under FurMark. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s reference designs were already operating at close to their peak potential under Metro: Last Light. Their fans don’t behave much differently in FurMark as a result.
More power consumption is counterbalanced with faster fans, which help keep this card’s TU106 processor from running notably hotter in FurMark than it did under a real-world gaming load.
Gigabyte does pull voltage back to 0.868V to keep the Gaming OC Pro 6G from blowing past its power limit. The GPU’s clock rate is consequently knocked down to 1,680 MHz or so. That’s as fast as a baseline GeForce RTX 2060 when it’s not under the stress of a taxing synthetic workload.
MORE: Best Graphics Cards
MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table
MORE: All Graphics Content
Aoostar AG02 eGPU dock with OCuLink support and 500W PSU announced for $219
China levels anti-trust charges against Nvidia – country accuses chipmaker of violating anti-monopoly regulations, examining the $7 billion Mellanox acquisition
Fanless audiophile PC sells for close to $30,000 — music server features dual Xeon 10-core CPUs, 48GB RAM, 280GB Optane SSD, and 2TB secondary storage expandable to 24TB
