Tag:

GeForce

Nvidia’s native support for Logitech racing wheels for GeForce Now has me excited for sim racing on a budget

by admin August 20, 2025

Nvidia has announced a huge raft of changes and improvements to their GeForce Now cloud gaming service as part of their Gamescom 2025 announcements, but it’s actually one of the smallest sections that has me most excited.

As part of their extensive press release covering exciting updates such as RTX 5080 power for GeForce Now Ultimate subscribers and the ability to play games at up to 5K2K 120fps on supported screens, one of the footnotes near the bottom mentions the following:

Support for popular peripherals also grows, with native support for many Logitech racing wheels offering the lowest-latency, most responsive driving experiences.

That’s right, folks – GeForce Now now has native support for Logitech G29 and G920 racing wheels for playing the service’s selection of sim racing titles, granting important force feedback and more analogue controls versus a mouse-and-keyboard setup or even a controller. Indeed, this has been quite the popular request on forums for a number of years, so it’s pleasant to see Nvidia respond.

At a recent Gamescom event, deputy tech editor Will and I had the chance to go hands-on with a demo rig Nvidia had set up (pictured above) using a budget Logitech G920 wheel on a proper cockpit playing arcade racer The Crew Motorfest. It perhaps wasn’t the most hardcore sim racing setup in terms of game or gear, but it was still an effetive demo that proved out the concept.

I didn’t have any issues with the gameplay experience, in terms of stutters or input latency, and was largely impressed by what’s become possible with the cloud gaming space. Of course, with the venue in Cologne offering gigabit speeds to a regional data centre, it’s easy to see this as a best-case scenario that will have to be borne out in real-world testing on less capacious connections. The main thing was that the game’s force feedback was present and correct, whether I was drifting around roundabouts, running up the highway, or crashing off-road. Having used the G29 and G920 for several years at home, the cloud version didn’t feel any different.

Wheels such as this Logitech G29 are natively supported in GeForce Now.

The big thing for me is that it involved no computational power from the host device itself – in this instance, it was some form of small Minisforum mini PC, but Nvidia also had games running natively on LG TVs (4K 120fps with HDR is now accessible on 2025/2026 LG TVs with the new GeForce Now update) or off an M4 Mac Mini. Theoretically, this means all you need is a wheel, some kind of computer or device with support for the wheel, and a GeForce Now subscription, and you can be up and running – no need for a dedicated gaming or living room PC.

Of course, that is the whole point of cloud gaming, but it adds another string to your bow if you’re a current GeForce Now subscriber and you’ve felt the lack of a proper racing experience has been a sore miss. In addition, if you’ve already got a Logitech wheel from years ago and you want to jump into sim racing without the faff of a PC and such, then you can pay the subscription, and away you go.

An Nvidia representative told me that the technical difficulty was passing through effects such as force feedback in respective games over the cloud, while the reason they chose Logitech peripherals initially was due to the convenience of their G Hub software in part, which is running in a compatibility layer of sorts to get the wheels to work. They also chose Logitech because of the wide range of wheels they do, with the G29 and G920 being the only supported models at present, with more wheels to be supported in the future.

Before I go, I’ll provide a quick rundown of the other key additions for GeForce Now:

Implementation of Blackwell architecture – RTX 5080 is now the ‘Ultimate’ tier, bringing DLSS 4 MFG and so on, plus streaming at up to 5K 120fps.
‘Cinematic Quality’ mode for better extraction of fine detail in areas where the encoder would previously struggle.
More devices supported with native apps, including Steam Deck OLED at 90fps (to match the refresh rate), plus some 2025+ LG TVs at 4K/120fps.
Support for 1080p/360fps and 1440p/240fps streams for competitive esports title, involving Nvidia Reflex and sub 30ms response times. (We saw 17ms figures in Overwatch 2, for example.)
A GeForce Now installation of Fortnite integrated into the Discord app, providing a limited-time trial of GeForce Now’s 1440p ‘Performance’ tier, requiring only connection between an Epic Games and Discord account.
‘Install to Play’ feature in GeForce Now app, which more than doubles the playable titles to some 4500, giving access to over 2,000 installable games through Steam alongside Nvidia’s fully-tested ‘Ready to Play’ games. Installs must be repeated each session, unless you pay for persistent storage in 100GB+ increments.

It’ll be fascinating to see whether Nvidia continues to expand their peripheral support over time, as I’m sure flight sim fans could also benefit from a cloud-streamed version – especially with the CPU and GPU requirements that Flight Sim 2020 and 2024 entail.

Source link

August 20, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

GeForce RTX 5050 listed with 2,560 CUDA cores and 2,250 MHz boost clock

by admin June 11, 2025

The German IT company Kiebel (via momomo_us) has inadvertently disclosed the specifications of the unreleased GeForce RTX 5050. The entry-level Blackwell graphics card is anticipated to launch shortly, ushering in a new generation of budget-conscious gaming laptops.

Kiebel has listed the GeForce RTX 5050 as part of the vendor’s Helix 13 laptops. Consequently, the specifications correspond to the mobile variant of the GeForce RTX 5050 and should not be confused with the desktop variant, although both variants may share some similarities.

According to Kiebel, the GeForce RTX 5050 will reportedly feature the GB207 silicon, which may represent Nvidia’s smallest Blackwell silicon. The precise die size remains unknown at this time; however, it is a given that GB207 will be produced using TSMC’s 4N FinFET process node, like all previous Blackwell silicon.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 Specifications*

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Graphics Card

GeForce RTX 5050

GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU

Architecture

GB207

AD107

Process Technology

TSMC 4N FinFET

TSMC 5nm

Transistors (Billion)

18.9

Die size (mm²)

159

SMs / CUs

GPU Shaders (ALUs)

2,560

Tensor / AI Cores

Ray Tracing Cores

Base Clock (MHz)

2,235

1,455

Boost Clock (MHz)

2,520

1,755

VRAM Speed (Gbps)

VRAM (GB)

VRAM Bus Width

128-bit

96-bit

L2 / Infinity Cache (MB)

Render Output Units

Texture Mapping Units

TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)

12.9

8.9

TFLOPS FP16 (INT4/FP4 TOPS)

12.9

8.9

Bandwidth (GB/s)

192

TBP (watts)

*Specifications are unconfirmed.

The GeForce RTX 5050 appears to exhibit significantly elevated clock speeds. Kiebel has detailed the graphics card’s specifications, noting a base clock speed of 2,235 MHz and a boost clock speed of 2,520 MHz, which are 54% and 44% higher, respectively, than those of the GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. For those interested in the FP32 metric, the GeForce RTX 5050 provides up to 45% higher FP32 performance than the GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU.

Kiebel’s listing confirms that the GeForce RTX 5050 will likely have 8GB of memory capacity and a 128-bit memory interface. There were rumors that it would feature GDDR7 memory.

Still, recent information, allegedly obtained from Nvidia partners, seemingly indicates that the Blackwell-based graphics card will instead stick to GDDR6 because of cost and availability concerns. To secure a reliable supply of GDDR6, Nvidia’s partners are said to be placing orders with Samsung and SK hynix. Unfortunately, Kiebel did not provide details on the speed of the GDDR6 memory, making it impossible to compare the memory bandwidth of the GeForce RTX 5050 with its predecessor.

Kiebel offers delivery times between three and seven days on its Helix 13 laptops with the GeForce RTX 5050. We’ve also seen GeForce RTX 5050-equipped laptops popping up everywhere. Asus Vietnam has listed the ROG Strix G16 (G615JHR-S5069W) on its website with a placeholder price tag. Meanwhile, Lenovo’s Legion 5i (83LY0024CC) is already up for purchase at Newegg for $2,233. It shouldn’t take long before Nvidia officially announces the GeForce RTX 5050.

Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

Source link

June 11, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Tested: Nvidia’s GeForce Now just breathed new life into my Steam Deck

by admin May 29, 2025

I don’t want gaming to become another streaming subscription service that keeps going up in price. I don’t want to put even more power in Nvidia’s hands, particularly not right now.

But I can’t deny that the company’s $20-a-month* GeForce Now is a near-perfect fit for the Steam Deck. I’ve been covering cloud gaming for 15 years, and this is the very first time I’ve wanted to keep playing indefinitely.

For the uninitiated, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is a game streaming service that farms the graphical processing power out to the cloud. Instead of controlling a game running locally on your Steam Deck’s chip, you’re effectively remote-controlling an RTX 4080-powered* gaming rig in a server farm many miles away, which you sync with your existing Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, and Battle.net accounts to access your games and savegames from the cloud.

*Nvidia’s GeForce Now also technically has a free tier, and a “Performance” tier, but I recommend you ignore both. For me, it was the difference between playing many games through a clean window or a dirty window, the difference between playing Alan Wake II and Indiana Jones with full ray tracing or none at all, the difference between comfortably stretching to 4K or not.

Handhelds have already become my favorite way to play games. The Steam Deck is comfortable and easy to pick up whenever and wherever the mood strikes. But neither my Deck nor my aging desktop PC have kept up with the latest titles. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur’s Gate 3 can look like a fuzzy mess on a Deck, and I’ve never seen Alan Wake II, Portal RTX and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in all their ray-traced glory on my RTX 3060 Ti desktop.

But today, with Nvidia’s just-now-released GeForce Now app for the Steam Deck, I can play every one of those titles at near-max settings, anywhere in my home, for hours and hours on a charge. And if I dock that Steam Deck to my 4K TV, it can output 4K60 HDR and/or ray-traced graphics that put the PS5 Pro to shame.

When we tested GeForce Now’s last big upgrade in 2023, Tom and I agreed it wasn’t quite on par with playing on a native PC.

But on a Steam Deck, where I’m either playing on a low-res handheld screen or sitting across the room from a TV where I don’t notice so many imperfections, it can feel like the best of both worlds.

Here’s what Expedition 33 looks like running natively on my Steam Deck today, versus the Deck with GeForce Now:

The best part might be this: while handhelds like the Steam Deck barely get two hours of such a game at potato graphical settings, I could get 7 to 8 hours of GeForce Now. I saw the cloud gaming service consistently sip under 7 watts from my Steam Deck OLED’s 49.2 watt-hour battery, barely more than the system consumes at idle.

And the new native app makes it a cinch to set up, with no more web browser-and-script workaround: just hold down the power button and switch to desktop mode, download the app, run it, and scan QR codes with your phone to link your various accounts.

Oh, you’d best believe there are caveats. Giant gaping gotchas galore, which I’ll explain as we go. But after testing the service for nearly two weeks, I’m starting to believe in cloud gaming again.

Now, you might be wondering: how the heck am I playing a game where timing is so critical via remote control? Here’s the first big caveat: you need a low-latency internet connection, a good Wi-Fi router or wired ethernet, and you need to be within range of Nvidia’s servers for the magic to work. Download speed isn’t as key: 50Mbps should suffice for 4K, and you can get away with less.

But I’m armed with a AT&T Fiber connection, and I live maybe 30 minutes away from Nvidia’s San Jose, California servers, which makes me a best-case scenario for this tech. Still, Nvidia has over 35 worldwide data centers now, including 14 distinct locations in the United States, and my colleagues with Xfinity and Spectrum cable internet in Portland and Brooklyn tell me Expedition 33 played just as well for them.

Rough server locations for GeForce Now; you can get a better idea by Image: Nvidia

“The latency was negligible to the point that I wasn’t missing parries,” Cameron Faulkner tells me, saying he nailed the Sad Troubadour on the first try. Jay Peters and I found we needed to adjust our timing a bit, but I wound up playing roughly half the game over GeForce Now and almost never looked back.

Even with the best of connections, though, GeForce Now isn’t bulletproof. Once or twice a day, my seemingly stable gameplay session would at least briefly unravel into a choppy mess.

In single-player games like Expedition 33 and Indiana Jones I could easily forgive a few minutes of trouble, but my colleagues Antonio Di Benedetto and Erick Gomez saw it in otherwise stable twitch shooters where lag could be a bigger issue. “I saw a handful of lag spikes / hiccups that would definitely screw anybody over in a competitive shooter, but thankfully they weren’t at the worst times and they soon subsided,” Antonio tells me.

You also give up some of the Steam Deck’s portability. While you can plug and unplug the Steam Deck from a TV dock and seamlessly switch between big screen and small screen play, you can’t just put the Steam Deck to sleep without ending the session and losing unsaved progress. (Unlike, say, Chiaki.) And although the native GeForce Now app supports 4K60, a big leap up from 1440p, you may find yourself squinting at tiny text because it doesn’t scale the UI appropriately.

Also: while GeForce Now also supports a lower res but smoother 1440p 120Hz mode on TVs and even other gaming handhelds, it doesn’t offer a 90Hz mode for the Deck OLED yet. I tested at 60Hz instead.

Tiny text. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Speaking of portability, public Wi-Fi generally isn’t good enough for GeForce Now, and neither are most cellular connections — even with four bars of Verizon 5G UWB service and a wired USB tether to my phone, my stream quickly deteriorated into the jumble you see below. Only the very best cellular connection in my entire neighborhood, a spot right under a 5G tower where I can get 1,200Mbps down and 30 millisecond ping, felt playable to me.

This is on four bars of Verizon 5G UW. It actually got worse after this, with ping in the 500ms range. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

And, as we’ve discussed previously, only the $20-a-month Ultimate tier truly shows what cloud gaming is capable of. Expedition 33 looked substantially worse on the Performance tier (Epic spec, native resolution, vs. Medium spec, 50 percent resolution with DLSS) and Indiana Jones went from gorgeous to just “playable while handheld” for me.

But the biggest caveat with GeForce Now may be outside the company’s control: you have to bring your own games, and yet you only can bring games where Nvidia has explicitly struck a distribution deal.

Nvidia has made progress: 165 of my 457 Steam games are now available to play, up from 85 two years ago. The company offers over 2,100 games in total across Epic, Battle.net, Ubisoft, Xbox, and GOG too. But Nvidia has no games from Sony, so I’m not playing Helldivers 2, no games from Rockstar, so I’m not playing GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2, and no Elden Ring, no PUBG, no Schedule I or Football Manager or FIFA or NBA or The Sims. We never quite know which games GeForce Now will get, or when, or if they might disappear.

Cloud gaming has never felt like a better deal, now that the service has matured, now that handhelds can make such good use of it, and now that buying your own GPU is such a ridiculously expensive proposition. Maybe I’ll defer my own next GPU upgrade in favor of a subscription.

But it’s not for everyone — you should definitely try a $8 GeForce Now Ultimate day pass first — and there’s still a lot of mental friction. I’m not looking forward to the day that Nvidia alters the deal further.

Source link

May 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: better than console performance – but not enough VRAM

by admin May 24, 2025

The RTX 5060 is here, finally completing the 50-series lineup that debuted five months ago with the 5090. The new “mainstream” graphics card is far from cheap at $299/£270, but ought to offer reasonable performance and efficiency while adding the multi frame generation feature that’s exclusive to this generation of GPUs. However, the 5060 also ships with just 8GB of VRAM, which could be a big limitation for those looking to play the latest graphics showcases.

Before we get into our results, it’s worth mentioning why this review is a little later than normal, coming a few days after the cards officially went on sale on May 19th. Normally, Nvidia or their partners send a graphics card and the necessary drivers anywhere from a couple of days to a week before the embargo date, which is typically a day before the cards go on sale. That’s good for us, because it allows us to do the in-depth analysis that we prefer and still publish at the same time as other outlets, and it’s good for potential buyers, as they can get a sense of value and performance and therefore make an informed decision about whether to buy a card or not – from what is often a limited supply at launch.

For the RTX 5060 launch, Nvidia – via Asus – delivered a card in good time ahead of its release, but the drivers weren’t released to reviewers until the card went on sale on May 19th, coinciding with Nvidia’s Computex presentation. Without the drivers, the card is a paperweight, so any launch day coverage is necessarily limited – and in many cases, graphics cards went out of stock before the usual tranche of reviews went live from the tech press. It’s a frustrating situation all around, and I doubt that even Nvidia’s PR department will be thrilled that most reviews start with the same complaint.

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5060 gets the Digital Foundry video review treatment.Watch on YouTube

Following the public release of the drivers, we’ve been benchmarking around the clock to figure out just how performant the new RTX 5060 is, where its strengths and weaknesses lie, and where it falls compared to the rest of the 50-series line-up, prior generation RTX cards and competing AMD models.

Looking at the specs, you can see that the RTX 5060 is based around a cut-down version of the same GB206 die that powered the RTX 5060 Ti. The 5060 has 83 percent of the core count and rated power of the full-fat 5060 Ti design, with an innocuous three percent drop to boost clocks and the same 448GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Unlike the 5060 Ti, however, which debuted in 8GB and 16GB models, the 5060 is only available with 8GB of frame buffer memory – a limitation we’ll discuss in some depth later. For your 16.6 percent reduction to core count and TGP versus the 5060 Ti, you pay around 20 percent less – so the 5060 ought to be slightly better value.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Monster Hunter World – 1440p resolution. We aren’t at native resolution. We aren’t on ultra settings, but both 8GB RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti see performance collapse. The 16GB RTX 5060 Ti works fine and delivers good performance – proof positive that 8GB is too much of a limiting factor for these cards. | Image credit: Digital Foundry

RTX 5070 Ti
RTX 5070
RTX 5060 Ti
RTX 5060

Processor
GB203
GB205
GB206
GB206

Cores
8,960
6,144
4,608
3,840

Boost Clock
2.45GHz
2.51GHz
2.57GHz
2.50GHz

Memory
16GB GDDR7
12GB GDDR7
16GB GDDR7
8GB GDDR7
8GB GDDR7

Memory Bus Width
256-bit
192-bit
128-bit
128-bit

Memory Bandwidth
896GB/s
672GB/s
448GB/s
448GB/s

Total Graphics Power
300W
250W
180W
150W

PSU Recommendation
750W
650W
450W
450W

Price
$749/£729
$549/£539
$429/£399
$379/£349
$299

Release Date
February 20th
March 5th
April 16th
May 19th

There’s no RTX 5060 Founders Edition, as you’d perhaps expect for a mainstream model, with various third-party cards available in a range of sizes. The RTX 5060 model we received is the Asus Prime model, an over-engineered 2.5-slot, tri-fan design that is nonetheless described as “SFF-ready” due to its relatively modest 268mm length. On top of the robust industrial design, the card features a dual BIOS with “quiet” and “performance” options – always useful. In this case however, the cooler is so large that even the “performance” option is very, very quiet. The card ships with this preset and we recommend it stays there.

Hilariously, the manufacturer product page recommends a 750W or 850W Asus power supply, though the specs page for the same model makes a more sane 550W recommendation. Regardless, you’ll be good to go with a single eight-pin power connector. In terms of ports, we’re looking at the RTX 50-series standard assortment, including one HDMI 2.1b and three DisplayPort 2.1b.

Like the RTX 5060 Ti – but not AMD’s just-announced Radeon RX 9060 XT – the RTX 5060 uses a PCIe 8x connection. That’s perfectly fine on a modern PCIe 5.0 or 4.0 slot, but potentially problematic on earlier motherboards with PCIe 3.0 slots – something we’ll test out in more detail on page eight.

For our testing, we’ll be pairing the RTX 5060 with a bleeding-edge system based around the fastest gaming CPU – the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. We also have 32GB of Corsair DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, a high-end Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard and a 1000W Corsair PSU.

With all that said, let’s get into the benchmarks.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Analysis

Introduction and test rig [This Page]
RT benchmarks: Alan Wake 2, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Cyberpunk 2077
RT benchmarks: Dying Light 2, F1 24, Hitman: World of Assassination
RT benchmarks: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, A Plague Tale: Requiem
Game benchmarks: Alan Wake 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Cyberpunk 2077
Game benchmarks: F1 24, Forza Horizon 5, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
Game benchmarks: Hitman: World of Assassination, A Plague Tale: Requiem
PCIe 3.0 vs PCIe 5.0: Black Myth: Wukong, F1 24, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
PlayStation 5 comparisons and DLSS 4 multi frame generation
Conclusions, value and recommendations

Manage cookie settings

Source link

May 24, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: passable GPU, shame about the drivers

by admin May 21, 2025

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5060 Solo specs:

CUDA Cores: 3840
Base Clock Speed: 2.28GHz
Boost Clock Speed: 2.49GHz
VRAM: 8GB GDDR7
Power: 145W
Recommended System Power: 550W
Price: From £270 / $299

I’d so desperately like to do a graphics card review without the fug of a wider controversy (or cacked-up market conditions), but the RTX 50 series hasn’t been particularly cooperative in that regard, so why should the RTX 5060 be any different? This time, the sadness cloud comes wafting from Nvidia themselves, amid accusations of engineering dodgy RTX 5060 previews and attempting to trade access for greater coverage of its Multi Frame Generation (MFG) capability.

Such scheming, if true and intentional, would suggest a remarkable lack of faith in the RTX 5060’s core, un-frame-genned performance. Yet now that I’ve spent some quality time with the card myself – independent of any tit-for-tat preview shenanigans, obviously – it really isn’t that bad, on pure hardware terms. It’s not equipped for cut-price 1440p but as an affordable 1080p pusher, it’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable. Hardly some catastrophe that needs a thunder-running PR offensive to cover up with MFG figures.

The drivers, though? Now there’s a disaster. And not because of the convention-breaking lack of early review software for press hacks – I got access to the RTX 5060’s Game Reader Driver 576.52 update at the same time everyone else did, when both it and the GPU released on May 19th. The real problem is that it’s the latest in a series of GeForce driver updates that have invited all manner of unforced errors upon games old and new, including several of my benchmarking regulars.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Some, like Horizon Forbidden West and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, began suffering sustained framerate drops that they’ve never exhibited before. Meanwhile, Metro Exodus would crash on startup, and F1 24 would perform worse with Nvidia’s precious DLSS frame generation than without. Even if these aren’t the fault of the RTX 5060 hardware, these driver problems are just yet more bad vibes around a graphics card that should be – like the RTX 3060 and, after a while, the RTX 4060 before it – a people’s champion.

This is, after all, the more affordable RTX 50 GPU of the bunch, and thus the least taxing entry point (literally, if you’re over the pond in Tariffs Land) into full-spectrum DLSS 4 support. In fact the very model you see here, the nicely compact Zotac GeForce RTX 5060 Solo, is one of several that are actually selling at RRP/MSRP, or £270 / $299. That’s a snip, by 2025 standards, especially when most RTX 5060 Ti models have already gained a few quid. If nothing else, then it’s at least worth looking for some upsides.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1440p benchmarks

Granted, 1440p maybe isn’t the best place to start the search. After various restarts and reloads, I did eventually get some usable data from the 576.52 drivers, and at native resolution the RTX 5060 does make for visibly smoother framerates than the RTX 4060 in most games – Metro Exodus and Total War: Warhammer III especially. But then it only produced a single extra frame in Forbidden West, forcing it to drop behind the older and cheaper Intel Arc B580. That’s an underdog GPU that the RTX 5060 could also only hold to a draw in both Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 24.

Click to embiggen! | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The RPS test PC:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
RAM: 32GB Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5
Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
PSU: NZXT C1000 Gold

Points for coming close to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, a potential challenger from the second-hand market, but if I was speccing a 1440p rig on a budget, I’d still save up for an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. In part because the VRAM difference does become evident at this kind of rez, particularly in Forbidden West, which had a certain jittery quality that I don’t think is entirely explained by the lower frame output alone. Playable evidence suggests 8GB is okay for most 1080p games, despite recent grumbles from tech enthusiasts, but an extra 8GB on top of that likely will help cope with the rigours of Quad HD.

You’ll also need to invest more if you want to partake in path tracing. Even with Quality DLSS upscaling, neither of my path traced test games could reach 30fps on the RTX 5060, again making an argument for the RTX 5060 Ti. MFG could get the numbers up, but only Cyberpunk 2077 at 2x felt remotely playable: at 4x, input lag went off the charts, and Alan Wake II had a similarly sludgy feeling (along with noticeable blurring on camera movements).

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

DLSS 4 is still the best overall upscaler/frame gen package in the biz, but as I seem to say every time it comes up, it just doesn’t work as a means of smoothening out low performance. It’s great at taking quite-fast games and making them look even slicker, but that really needs a foundation of ordinarily rendered frames for DLSS to generate new ones from; without that, it’s the gaming hardware equivalent of sitting in a rusty wheelbarrow with a Ferrari livery. You’ll pick up some good speeds on the right hill, but won’t enjoy the sensation.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1080p benchmarks

Life is much better at 1080p. The B580 still beats the RTX 5060 in Horizon, but only by a few frames, and it’s practically on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in Metro and Cyberpunk. Not far behind in Warhammer III or Assassin’s Creed Mirage, either.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Vitally, there’s also – more often than not – a decent improvement on the RTX 4060, especially in Metro and Cyberpunk. This is sustained with the application of regular ray tracing, too. Adding Ultra-quality RT effects to Metro only brought the RTX 5060 down to 77fps, while the RTX 4060 managed 62fps.

Will it consistently fill out a 165Hz monitor on max quality? No, but then for less than £300 it doesn’t need to. It’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable, I remember someone saying. VRAM-wise, you should probably think about whether you might like to upgrade to 1440p within this card’s shelf life, but for the time being it does look like you can get away with 8GB at 1080p. I didn’t see much more of that jittering in Forbidden West, for one thing, and a side-jaunt into Doom: The Dark Ages – with its always-on ray tracing and Ultra Nightmare settings – produced a smooth, stutter-free 73fps, once again besting the RTX 4060 at 60fps.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Path tracing remains a questionable endeavour, mind. Although the RTX 5060 could crawl to an ostensibly playable 30fps-plus in both games at this lower rez, this wasn’t enough to avoid an offputting deluge of input lag once MFG tried to make up the difference. Alan Wake 2 wasn’t as blurry as at 1440p, but still, it felt sharper to just have Ultra-quality ray tracing at 44fps instead.

In fairness, I did find a use case for MFG in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. With Ultra settings, DLSS on Quality and all ray tracing effects enabled, Nvidia’s tech turned 53fps into 88fps on 2x and 150fps with a 4x override. Crucially, neither of the heightened results came with excessive latency, thanks largely to the fact that the RTX 5060 was already running the game acceptably without them.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

It’s just unfortunate that to get these numbers, I had to re-run the test every time one of those newfound framerate collapses took place, on top of having to restart the game after every settings change because otherwise they’d kill performance for no apparent reason. That’s not because of a recent bad patch on Bioware’s part, and it’s certainly not a problem with how the RTX 5060 itself is engineered, with Zotac’s single fan keeping peak GPU temps to a sensible 68°c. Nope, this was the fault of my lifelong enemy for the past two days: those 576.52 drivers.

A possibility exists that they’ll be fixed, and might not even be replaced by something worse, but at this point, there have been enough faulty Game Ready drivers – whose faults are usually specific to the RTX 50 series – that it’s become a problem for the entire GPU family. Sadly, that has to include the RTX 5060. By Nvidia’s own hand, this puts it in the unenviable position of being the most powerful and flexible 1080p graphics card in its price range yet also one that makes the words “Yes, you should buy this” disproportionately difficult to say out loud. Why would, or should, someone invest in a component when its requisite drivers have such a high chance of breaking their games?

This review is based on a retail unit provided by the manufacturer.

Source link

May 21, 2025 0 comments