We felt we might be there for the bumpy rides Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 When you are told there are no press drivers available before release. Why doesn’t Nvidia want to prepare reviews when it’s released? Based on my tests, the simple answer is that this new GPU doesn’t have enough VRAM to play one of the latest games at a high setting of just 1,920 x 1,080.
I had the opportunity to test the Gigabyte card based on this new Nvidia GPU. We’ll be creating a complete RTX 5060 review in the near future. But in the meantime, I wanted to quickly run some of the most demanding tests in our benchmark suite to see if my doubts were true. Essentially, the RTX 5060 spec could make this GPU more powerful than the RTX 4060, and also have the advantage of multi-frame Gen, but there is not enough memory to deal with one of the latest blockbuster games.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Benchmark
Start with the Real Kicker from Bethesda’s indy game, RTX 5060. This ultra-demand release was announced at the end of 2024, and Indiana Jones and Great Circle System Requirements will implement ray tracing at all graphics levels, while also offering an all-out full RT mode for running on pass tracing on modern GPUs. As found in the RTX 5090 review, it’s amazing if you have a GPU that can make the most of it, but the RTX 5060 can’t even run with high graphics presets, even at 1,920 x 1,080 without pass traces.
As standard, when I test all graphics cards, I run this game on Ultra Preset without using full RT functionality. As a comparison point, my RTX 5060 TI review showed that thanks to the large frame buffer, I can handle games at this preset and average 91FPS without the help of NVIDIA DLSS upscaling or frame GEN. However, the RTX 5060 fell completely in these settings at 1080p, running the game at just 23fps and enabling DLSS and frame GEN, but the starting frame rate was very unreliable, causing the game to run out of motion and become sturdy.
Worse, dropping down on a high-graphic preset caused the exact same problem, with choppy actions and a 1% lowest value of just 13fps, averaged at 41fps. Drop on a medium preset will still cause a warning that there is not enough VRAM in the graphics menu.
Ultimately, the only preset that didn’t bring a VRAM warning is low, and when you enable DLSS you’ll see a warning. Thankfully, the game still doesn’t look terrible in this setting. The RTX5060 averages 110fps. However, playing one of the latest games at 1080p at a low setting is a very disappointing experience for the latest $299 GPU.
On the plus side, one game that is usually very strict on the Memory Front runs at least at the RTX 5060 maximum setting. Even at 1080p, the rays are traced in the UltraNightmare setting, but if the RTX 5060 can handle it, I’ve seen Doom Eternal fall on an 8GB card.
With these settings, the RTX 5060 was 1% low at 96fps at an average of 185fps, but the graphics menu showed that these settings were correct, using 7,563MB out of 7,807MB. In comparison, this test suggests that the RTX 5060 TI is at an average of 278fps, with 1% of 187fps being much higher and slightly more GPU power, but the RTX 5060 would be faster if it had a little more memory.
That’s not all bad news. When you play the game with the RTX 5060 that doesn’t push VRAM to its limits, the new GPU is actually pretty decent. For example, running Cyberpunk 2077 at 1,920 x 1,080 with Ultra Ray Trace Presets, and with DLSS enabled with a balanced setting (still looking good using the new transformer model), the frame rate is averaged 85fps. This is a sufficient baseline to enable multi-frame GEN, pushing the frame rate up to a very smooth 231FPS.
Of course, not all games require 8GB of VRAM with the right settings, and I’m sure the RTX 5060 will run most games in the test suite at 1080p. But we’ve obviously hit that bottleneck in one game, and that situation will only get worse in the coming years. From a future proof perspective, it appears that the RTX 5060 could have a hard time delivering goods throughout their lifetime, unless they are ready to drop the settings. That’s a shame, as the GPU itself looks very powerful for money.
I will run the full benchmark suite on my RTX 5060 in the next few days. I will publish a review at a later date, but one conclusion is already clear. I’ve already struggled to play at 1,920 x 1,080 on this card.
In the meantime, if you want to buy an upgrade, check out my guide to the best graphics cards and my tutorial on how to install a GPU. Take a look at the entire graphics card fitting process.
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