Today we're investigating claims that the new GeForce RTX 2060 is not a expert purchase because it only features 6GB VRAM chapters. The RTX 2060 offers operation similar to the GTX 1070 Ti, but that menu packs an 8GB memory buffer, as did its non-Ti counterpart.

In other words, the RTX 2060 is the fastest graphics card to ever to come with a 6GB retention buffer. The previous king of this title would accept been the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, and so far the Maxwell part has aged very well. So at least up until this point 6GB VRAM hasn't been an result.

The RTX 2060 is merely ~fifteen% faster than the 980 Ti on average, and then while a lot of people are freaking out and nosotros don't believe the 6GB buffer is a short term issue, we wanted to run a few more tests and requite a fuller perspective on the thing.

The first thing in our to-do list was to report tiptop VRAM resource allotment at 1440p in all the games we currently utilize to examination GPU operation. That's 37 games in full, and allow usa tell you watching VRAM allocation while playing around in these games for over a day wasn't the near enjoyable experience.

Before we wait at memory usage it'south important to notation that we're looking at resource allotment and non necessarily usage. Memory allocation sees retentiveness reserved for storing data required past the GPU and some of this information allows the GPU to perform diverse calculations. Oftentimes games allocate more than VRAM than is required, equally having the memory reserved alee of time can improve performance.

A recent case of this was seen on our Resident Evil 2 criterion. We often saw VRAM allocation go equally high equally viii.five GB when testing with the RTX 2080 Ti at 4K, but in that location was no performance penalty when using a graphics card with but 6GB of VRAM. At that place was however a large operation penalty for cards with less than half dozen GB.

That is to say, while the game will allocate 8GB of VRAM at 4K when available, it appears to exist using somewhere betwixt 4 and vi GB of retentiveness, probably closer to the upper end of that range.

Games VRAM Allocation at 1440p

Here is a look at 37 PC games and how retention allotment differs between the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 that comes with a larger 8GB retentivity buffer, allowing a greater amount of retentivity to be allocated if need be.

Starting from the peak nosotros find our most memory intensive titles. Quake Champions is a surprisingly hungry title though this game would simply announced to allocate all available retention. I guess usage is really below 4 GB based on what we've seen when testing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is some other hungry title, only usage for this one is probably closer to the allocation figure. We've already discussed Resident Evil ii and I suspect Shadow of the Tomb Raider is very similar to Ascension of the Tomb Raider. Across those, allotment drops beneath vi GB. We encounter 10 titles allocating betwixt 5 - 5.v GB with everything else allocating iv GB or less.

It's worth noting that nearly all of these titles were tested using the maximum graphics quality preset with some form of anti-aliasing enabled. That existence the case, it's easy to tweak those settings in most titles to reduce memory usage without noticeably impacting visual quality. We'll explore that in a moment.

Moving on, we've seen people argue that Turing's improved memory compression makes all the departure when compared to Pascal. So they're saying the 6GB 2060's memory buffer is technically larger than that of the GTX 1060's. We don't consider that a valid argument for a few reasons... one existence that the RTX 2060 is over l% faster and therefore volition exist expected to handle drastically higher visual quality settings and resolutions. Further, we dubiousness any pinch improvements are substantial enough to brand up for that.

And yet nosotros were interested to encounter how this impacted memory allocation, so we loaded up all 37 games once again, this time using the GTX 1060 6GB to see what we hit for peak allotment.

Typically retention allocation was higher with the GTX 1060, there were a few titles where it was half a gigabyte higher, but for the most role we're looking at 100 - 200 MB. Interestingly, in Warframe resource allotment was lower with the GTX 1060. And then while Turing's retentiveness management is indeed improve, it'due south not enough to explicate large performance differences.

How About Functioning?

Our performance benchmarks were comprised of comparing the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 in iv of the nearly heavily memory allocated titles we constitute: Quake Champions, Resident Evil 2 and both Tomb Raider games. Nosotros desire to run into how they scale from 1440p to 4K, if the RTX 2060 is suffering from a lack of VRAM, if the margin should continue to grow at 4K, and in particular if frame time performance would take a nosedive in this scenario.

Offset up we have Convulse Champions and looking at the 1440p results we see that the RTX 2060 is just 7% slower than the RTX 2070 when comparing the average frame rate and 5% slower for the 0.1% depression result. Increasing the resolution to 4K, the RTX 2060 is 9% slower for the average frame rate and eight% slower for the 0.ane% low frame fourth dimension issue. So while the margins grew at 4K, they're nowhere about big enough to claim a VRAM consequence for the RTX 2060. It's just as probable downwardly to the higher core count GPU existence better utilized and less bottlenecked at the college resolution.

In Rise of the Tomb Raider we see the RTX 2060 trailing by just 4% at 1440p. This margin is increased to ~13% at 4K. You could easily blame this on the RTX 2060's 6GB memory buffer, only I would suggest confronting that. The 2060 packs 17% fewer CUDA cores and therefore should be anywhere from 10-17% slower than the 2070. This probably means we're running into some kind of system bottleneck at 1440p that's limiting performance of the RTX 2070.

In any case, the RTX 2060 was merely equally smooth as the 2070 at both resolutions. Of course, frame rates weren't ideal for either GPU at 4K, but they did offer a similar experience.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a fantastic looking title. At 1440p the RTX 2060 was eleven% slower for the average frame charge per unit and 0.1% low. Moving to 4K we see the boilerplate frame charge per unit margin increased to 16%, just the 0.one% low reduced to just 7%.

Over again, no retentivity capacity issues here. Frame time functioning for the RTX 2060 is splendid despite its 17% fewer CUDA cores, so a xvi% deficit in a heavily GPU bound scenario makes sense.

If you lot saw our recent Resident Evil 2 benchmark examination featuring 57 GPUs, then yous have seen these results already. At 1440p the RTX 2060 was 11% slower for the average frame rate and 10% slower for the 0.1% low. Those margins change ever so slightly at 4K, but with no prove of running out of VRAM.

Lesser Line

It'southward clear that right at present, even for 4K gaming, 6GB of VRAM really is enough. Of course, the RTX 2060 isn't powerful enough to game at 4K, at to the lowest degree using maximum quality settings, but that'due south non really the point. I can hear the roars already, this isn't about gaming today, it's most gaming tomorrow. Like a much later on tomorrow…

The statement is something like, yeah the RTX 2060 is okay now, but for future games it just won't have enough VRAM. And while we don't take a functioning crystal ball, nosotros know this is going to exist both true, and not so true. At some bespeak games are absolutely going to require more than than 6GB of VRAM for all-time visuals.

The question is, by the time that happens will the RTX 2060 be powerful plenty to provide playable operation using those settings? Information technology's almost certainly not going to be an issue this year and I doubt it will be a real trouble next twelvemonth. Peradventure in 3 years, you might have to starting time managing some quality settings then, four years probably, and I would say certainly in 5 years fourth dimension.

We tin can look to AMD's Fiji GPUs every bit an example of aging poorly due to limited VRAM. The Fury series was released in mid-2015 with 4GB of HBM memory. The Fury X was meant to compete with the GTX 980 Ti and the GeForce GPU packed a slower but larger 6GB buffer. Just 3 years later on the Fury X was struggling to go along upwards with the GTX 980 Ti in modern titles at 1440p using high quality textures.

We recently saw the Fury X struggling in Resident Evil 2, and then much so that it was slower than the RX 580 and the experience wasn't even comparable. Where as the RX 580 with information technology's 8GB memory buffer offered silky shine game play the Fury X was a stutery mess. That said, while the Fury X tin't handle Resident Evil two with the Max preset, you lot can manage the quality settings for smooth operation. Dropping the quality preset from 'Max' to 'Graphics Priority' reduced retention allocation from 7 GB at 1440p down to merely 4.5 GB and this was enough to revive the Fury X.

Honestly image quality isn't that different. Information technology's certainly not noticeably different, just what is dissimilar is the gaming experience using the Fury X. Whereas the RTX 2060 merely sees a 17% boost to the average frame rate, the Fury X sees a massive twoscore% operation increase. The frame time performance was massively improved, as well. Nosotros saw a 97% increase for the 1% low and 61% for the 0.1% low and near crucially all stuttering was gone.

But back to betoken, as it stands right now the GeForce RTX 2060 has enough VRAM to power through today'southward games using maximum quality settings. As a GPU targeting 1440p gaming or farthermost high refresh rate 1080p gaming, it fits the pecker nicely, at least in terms of performance.

We can all concord 8GB of GDDR6 memory would have been improve down the road, simply for those buying a new graphics bill of fare right now it seems like a non-issue. Remainder assured, we'll exist watching the RTX 2060 over the next few years and monitor information technology closely against its peers every bit we get.

Shopping Shortcuts:
  • GeForce RTX 2060 on Amazon, Newegg
  • GeForce RTX 2070 on Amazon, Newegg
  • GeForce RTX 2080 on Amazon, Newegg
  • GeForce RTX 2080 Ti on Amazon, Newegg
  • Radeon RX 570 on Amazon, Newegg
  • Radeon RX 580 on Amazon, Newegg
  • GeForce GTX 1060 6GB on Amazon, Newegg