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Nvidia RTX 5060 review live: looks like the 8 GB of VRAM isn't the biggest issue the new card has to face

You're going to learn how the new Nvidia GPU performs alongside me, isn't that exciting? No? Just me then.

MSI RTX 5060 graphics card
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Update, May 20, 2025: It's day two of testing and I'll be digging more into MFG testing and overclocking today, as well as seeing how it stacks up from a creator point of view with some rendering tests.

Something a little screwy has been going on with the new Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics card launch. It was revealed a few weeks ago that Nvidia wasn't going to be helping sample cards for review testing of its budget-oriented RTX Blackwell GPU. Now, that's not completely unprecedented for a card low down the stack which doesn't have a Founder Edition to call its own. What is unprecedented, at least in my long experience, is the company refusing to allow review access to pre-release drivers to specifically block some media from having day one critiques of the hardware live at the time the cards go on sale.

But not all media has been blocked. Over the weekend, multiple sites had strictly controlled previews go live for the new RTX 5060 GPU, and those sites have had drivers ahead of time, and will have reviews going live for the embargo of 2pm today. Some of those sites are from the Future family of which we are part, yet it seems PC Gamer, and potentially Tom's Hardware, have been singled out as publicatio non grata for this launch.

Now, it has to be said that Nvidia owes us nothing and has zero obligation to support PC Gamer around new graphics card launches. We're talking about a massive, multi-trillion dollar company now, and a GPU which will likely rise to the top of the Steam Hardware Survey in a handful of months no matter what we say; Nvidia doesn't need us. And yet, in all my time as a PC hardware journalist, at many different sites and publications, Nvidia always has supported pre-release reviews.

And it has also consistently been a good sport about both favourable and unfavourable reviews, so long as they were fair, and honestly demonstrated why any conclusions had been drawn. I feel that's how we've been all along with with the RTX 50-series reviews and yet we find ourselves black-listed by the company for this one.

Still, I'm a professional, I believe in giving our honest, independent opinions on PC gaming hardware and so, I'm going to be testing this card out live. Follow along with the live updates below as I go through benchmarking the card once public drivers are finally released.

Nvidia RTX 5060 specifications

Because we've not been allowed access to review drivers we also don't have access to any reviewer's guide material which would confirm the specifications of the GPU at the heart of the RTX 5060. But enough has been published and leaked so far that we can be pretty confident that we're looking at another spin of the GB206 GPU used inside the RTX 5060 Ti.

This time around there are six fewer streaming multiprocessors making up the RTX Blackwell chip, so just 3,840 CUDA cores and the requisite number of RT Cores and Tensor Cores coming out of those 30 SMs. That's a 25% increase in core count, and Nvidia has claimed a corresponding 25% increase in gen-on-gen raster performance, too.

Alongside that is the much maligned 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which ought to have the same level of memory bandwidth as the RTX 5060 Ti's 8 GB version because it's running the same 128-bit aggregated memory bus.

To be honest, I don't have that much of a problem with a low-end GPU in a range coming out with 8 GB of video memory. There will be some instances where it can have an impact, as shown when the ill-optimised The Last of Us port initially launched and struggled on 8 GB GPUs. But The Last of Us Part 2 showed that if the devs manage it correctly, even 8 GB can be enough for max settings.

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Nvidia RTX 5060 specifications
Header Cell - Column 0

RTX 5060 (*unconfirmed)

RTX 5060 Ti

GPU

GB206

GB206

TFLOPs

19

24

CUDA cores

3840

4608

SMs

30

36

RT cores (4th Gen)

30

36

Tensor cores (5th Gen)

120

144

Memory

8 GB GDDR7

16 GB / 8 GB GDDR7

Memory bus

128-bit

128-bit

Memory speed

*28 Gbps

28 Gbps

Memory bandwidth

448 GB/sec

448 GB/sec

Price

$299

$429 (16 GB) / $379 (8 GB)

Release date

May 19

April 16

AMD is also releasing new 8 GB graphics cards in this generation, with the RX 9060 XT, expected to launch at Computex this week, coming in both 8 GB and 16 GB configurations. Although we still don't know what the price is going to be for that one.

That leaves it open as to whether we're looking at competition for the RTX 5060 Ti or the RTX 5060 from a price perspective. Though we ought to be looking at Intel, too, when it comes to competition as the Intel Arc B580 could provide some interesting price/performance comparisons to Nvidia's new card as well. That was a card I didn't much trust at launch, but it's drivers have definitely improved.

It only remains to be seen what sort of state Nvidia's RTX 5060 launch drivers will be. Once I've got them installed and running through our benchmark suite, I'll be able to let you know below...

Nvidia RTX 5060 performance

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MSI RTX 5060 graphics card

(Image credit: Future)

MSI RTX 5060 graphics card

(Image credit: Future)

While we wait for the drivers to be unveiled, this is our compatriot site Techradar's take on the performance of the RTX 5060.

The Taipei 101 building and Taipei skyline in Taiwan.

(Image credit: Jacob Ridley)

The thing with modern GPUs is what the actual on-street pricing will be. With the cards released this year all we've seen are ever-ephemeral MSRP and sky-high actual price tags. Whether that's the manufacturers massively inflating the cost or retailers deciding to add a few hundred dollars on to get their due, or a combination of both, the prices of graphics cards has been painful this generation.

AMD RX 9070 XT vs Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti | Critical Rig - YouTube AMD RX 9070 XT vs Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti | Critical Rig - YouTube
Watch On

So, what's going to happen with the RTX 5060? Honestly, this feels like our best chance to get a card that remains close to MSRP across the globe for the simple reason that the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB card puts a hard ceiling on pricing. At the moment that card is $430 at Newegg, and I've seen $410 in recent weeks, too.

That at least gives me hope pricing will not go super crazy for the RTX 5060, despite some of the leaked Best Buy listings.

Image of GPU usage in the Steam Hardware Survey

(Image credit: Valve)

Nvidia RTX 5060 no drivers found

(Image credit: Nvidia)

But, we ought to have drivers available to download within the next hour. So... er... stay tuned, I guess.

In case you're interested, this is the PC we're going to be testing out this MSI RTX 5060 Gaming OC card on, the same as for practically all of the GPUs we've reviewed in the past six months:

Metro Exodus PC gaming FPS showing ehanced edition with ray tracing support turned on

(Image credit: 4A Games)

Nvidia PCAT power testing board

(Image credit: Future)

Well, the 'RTX 5060 out now' page is live, though the drivers apparently still aren't...

And here's the actual driver release page nominally for the RTX 5060 and F1 25.

And the release notes, too...

Nvidia drivers downloading via the Nvidia App

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Uh-oh. Black screen crash!





Just joking.

Though, to be fair, Metro Exodus did seem to take an actual age before it started running, making me think my 'joke' was going to be prescient.

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition running on an RTX 5060 at 4K Ultra settings

(Image credit: 4A Games)

And here are our first benchmarks!

It's running a little thirstier than an RTX 4060 in terms of average and peak power draw, but even this 'overclocked' version is only ~64 MHz faster in respect to the clock speed. It is certainly cooler-running, however.

And here are the final efficiency numbers for the card running at 4K and its more likely target resolution of 1080p. Of all the competing cards at this sort of level, it is definitely the most efficient from a performance per watt PoV.

The question of power vs performance might be a key one at the very high-end of graphics cards, where they really can suck down a ton of power, but at the budget level—where there isn't a huge amount in terms of wattage between them—I'd say the average and 1% Low fps figures are where it really counts.

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Header Cell - Column 0

Avg fps

1% Low

Avg fps

1% Low

Avg fps

1% Low

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB | 128-bit

98

42

72

34

42

20

RX 7600 XT | 16 GB | 128-bit

69

46

47

35

25

19

Arc B580 | 12 GB | 192-bit

86

56

63

44

37

29

RTX 4060 | 8 GB | 128-bit

71

46

50

34

27

21

RTX 5060 | 8 GB | 128-bit

87

47

63

45

36

28

Row 5 - Cell 0

1080p

Row 5 - Cell 2

1440p

Row 5 - Cell 4

4K

Row 5 - Cell 6

You can see the RTX 5060 and Arc B580 are delivering almost identical scores in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition. If that becomes a continuing trend across my benchmarking, then that might be a worry for Nvidia. Or, it would have been were Intel actually able to ship cards at its $250 MSRP.

A familiar refrain, right? Right now, the most affordable B580 seems to be a Gunnir card that's some $379. Which is, frankly, ludicrous money for that card. At $250 it would now be a great budget buy, but like so many modern GPUs, it's priced out of the running for now.

So, now we have our 3DMark scores, for both Time Spy Extreme and Port Royal—synthetic raster and ray tracing benchmarks respectively. Again, it's the B580 proving problematic for Nvidia, though I would say that it's worth taking these numbers with a pinch of salt when it comes to Intel's 3DMark performance; it's GPUs have always been suspiciously well tuned for UL's benchmark.

Things are looking interesting between the RTX 5060 and the Arc B580 right now, but let's look at where things stand vs the RTX 4060. Actually, pretty well. In the Metro benchmarks it's a pretty solid ~25% increase at 1080p and 1440p, with a 33% increase at 4K, where it ought to be equally memory starved.

Maybe more interesting, at least at 1080p and 1440p so far, is that the RTX 5060 is delivering performance around 12 - 17% off the 16 GB RTX 5060 Ti card. Given that is a GPU with a nominal 43% higher price tag the value tag is most definitely more suited to the lower spec card.

Right, I've just finished the Black Myth Wukong benchmarks, and while it's still close against the RTX 5060 Ti outside of 4K, there is clear air between the RTX 5060 and the Arc B580 here. We're talking 49% at 1080p and 42% at 1440p.

And with that I break for tea and putting the kids to bed... back soon.

Aaaand I'm back, and starting with what has become the Nvidia poster child, Cyberpunk 2077. This is one of the game engines which most heavily supports the suite of modern GeForce technologies, with every one baked into the game, and a game that is used by Nvidia to highlight them to the best effect.

Erm. Well, that hasn't gone as well as I expected. The RTX 5060's 1080p performance is pretty excellent, to be fair to the ickle GPU, but as soon as you step away from that lowly resolution things get choppy real quick.

Multi Frame Generation to the rescue!

Oh boy. F1 24 is not happy.

There is some frankly unsettling choppiness to the F1 benchmark runs so far. Not like a little frame drop here and there, but complete freezes to the visuals. And it's happening whether at 1080p, 1440p, or 4K.

Unlike with the Cyberpunk 2077 video, this time the choppiness is not down to the video encoding, that's what it looks like live. And even when it's running 'normally' it doesn't look great. I mean, you don't even need to fullscreen the vid to see how bad it gets.

Onto Total War: Warhammer III and things are a bit more straightforward again. No need to mess around with Frame Gen or upsampling, this is good old fashioned raster gaming. Simple.

Homeworld 3 is the same, to be honest. Really solid benchmarks, and it looks and feels good. I'm seeing the RTX 5060 hit 51 fps (28 fps 1% Low) at 4K Epic settings. Across the board that's far ahead of the Arc B580 which struggles with HW3.

And that's the full PC Gamer test suite now run across the RTX 5060, at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, as well as with DLSS and Frame Generation where it matters. Prepare for benchmark graphs when I come back from making a cup of tea.

Without further ado, here are the final gaming performance benchmark numbers from the full test suite. Just click through for 1440p and 4K figures.

We also have our optimistically titled 'real-world' gaming benchmarks.

You know what, I think I'm done for now.

And I'm back. Tentatively booting up Alan Wake 2 for some more detailed Multi Frame Gen testing. It's been a great show of the power of MFG in the other cards, but I think we're going to have to dial things back to get a good experience out of Remedy's might game.

As you would expect from an ultra demanding games, such as Alan Wake 2 on Ultra settings, it's all just too much for the RTX 5060. That's the same whether at 1080p or 1440p with full 4x MFG and DLSS Quality settings. You're going to be maxing settings out here no matter what AI magic you throw its way.

Here are some vids of the RTX 5060 running Alan Wake 2. The top video is of what I feel is a totally playable setting. The latency feels decent, and there aren't a huge number of visual MFG-related artifacts that I could see as I was going.

Alan Wake | 1080p | DLSS Quality | 3x MFG | High settings

Alan Wake | 1080p | DLSS Quality | 3x MFG | Ultra settings

Doing some MFG testing with Cyberpunk 2077 again now to see if it can hang with the RT Overdrive mode... around 3 fps on average at 1440p native so far. I'm going to guess that's going to be a big fat no if the input frame rate is this low.

Okay, I might have spoken too soon. Sure, at 1440p native it's a slideshow, but drop the res down with DLSS Quality settings and some MFG lovin' and it's actually delivering a playable frame rate... in the benchmark.

Yup, Dogtown don't like it. I'm lucky to hit 30 fps with 3x MFG enabled. And yeah, around 280 - 300 ms PC latency.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has been the game I could rely upon in my Multi Frame Gen testing to pretty much always deliver a great experience. And I was kinda expecting we could still get a good 1440p run out of the RTX 5060.

Here's Dragon Age: The Veilguard running at 1440p with DLSS set to Quality and x4 Multi Frame Gen enabled via the Nvidia App 👇

Now I've done some MFG testing with the RTX 5060 it's kinda becoming clear that the way we were using it in the upper echelons of the RTX 50-series of graphics cards just isn't going to work down at the bottom.

Say what you like about the RTX 50-series—and plenty has been said, for good or ill—but they are good overclockers. I promised earlier that I would do some overclocking testing on the RTX 5060 to see what I can get out of it, and that's what I'm going to do.

But in reality, overclocking cards over the past few years has yielded precious little in terms of tangible performance uplifts. Not so with the RTX 50-series cards—we've gotten up to 10% extra performance from some simple tweaks, without stressing the GPUs much at all, certainly not in terms of much in the way of higher temps or power draw.

I've gone in cavalier.

That's not just because I'm a dreadful person, who ill treats hardware on the regular—though thinking about it my office machine is in parts strewn across the PC Gamer desks because I brutally ripped out the Arc B580 it was running for some comparative testing—it's because I know how much you should be able to squeeze out of an RTX Blackwell GPU from past experience.

Overclocking the RTX 5060

(Image credit: Future)

That's pretty hard to read, but I've just gone straight in with a +300 MHz offset on the core clock, nudged the memory clocks up by +1,000 MHz, and let it have the maximum MSI Afterburner will allow in terms of extra power: an extra 9 %.

And it's fine. Running through Black Myth Wukong's benchmark it's a pretty regular 3 GHz+ core frequency, and we get another six or so frame per second at 1440p with DLSS and a handful extra at native.

That's not groundbreaking, but it's something and seemingly stable, for now.

Onwards to +350 MHz on the GPU and +1,500 MHz on the memory. That's solid in Black Myth Wukong at 1440p native, and another frame added onto the average fps score.

Worth noting here that I'm just doing a bit of light touch overclocking here—I'm not chasing some high marker on HWBot for this card. And I'm definitely not capable of that, I am not a pro by any means. So, I'm just blithely nudging up the GPU clock speed slider, making sure it doesn't crash, and see if there any weird artifacts cropping up as the chip gets warmed up.

I'm up at +450 MHz on the GPU clock now, with the mem still at +1,500 MHz. That's seemingly solid in Black Myth Wukong, so I'm going to give Cyberpunk 2077 a shot. Wish me luck.

Yeah, Cyberpunk didn't like that. Choom got himself blasted back to the desktop.

Now, this is kinda interesting. Maybe it's getting late and my eyes grow weary, but having found a +425 MHz GPU clock to be stable in Cyberpunk, I'm only getting another 5 fps from that overclock, but it certainly feels better. That's at 1440p, with DLSS Quality enabled at the RT Ultra setting and with 2x Frame Gen turned on.

At this clock speed and memory setting, Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition is running completely stable, and I'm seeing an 11% increase in frame rate at both 1080p and 1440p. Which is a pleasing result from a simple overclock.

Worth noting that F1 24 is running now, without that dreadful stutter. Though it also doesn't see the 10% improvement this overclock adds on. You see that in the 3DMark scores, however, and I think we can comfortably say this is a decent overclocking GPU, and it does fix some of the issues I was having with performance before.