NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB Has CUDA Core Count Rivaling RTX 2060 SUPER

NVIDIA’s surprise launch of the GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB graphics card could stir things up in the 1080p mainstream graphics segment. Apparently, there’s more to this card than just a doubling in memory amount. Specifications put out by NVIDIA point to the card featuring 2,176 CUDA cores, compared to 1,920 on the original RTX 2060 (6 GB). 2,176 is the same number of CUDA cores that the RTX 2060 SUPER was endowed with. What sets the two cards apart is the memory configuration.

While the RTX 2060 maxed out the “TU106” silicon, the RTX 2060 12 GB is likely based on the larger “TU104,” in order to achieve its CUDA core count. The RTX 2060 SUPER features 8 GB of memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus, however, the RTX 2060 12 GB uses a narrower 192-bit wide bus, disabling 1/4th of the bus width of the “TU104.” The memory data-rate on both SKUs is the same—14 Gbps. The segmentation between the two in the area of GPU clock speeds appears negligible. The original RTX 2060 ticks at 1680 MHz boost, while the new RTX 2060 12 GB does 1650 MHz boost. The typical board power is increased to 185 W compared to 160 W of the original RTX 2060, and 175 W of the RTX 2060 SUPER.

Update 15:32 UTC: NVIDIA has updated their website to remove the “Founders Edition” part from their specs page (3rd screenshot below). We confirmed with NVIDIA that there will be no RTX 2060 12 GB Founders Edition, only custom designs by their various board partners.

NVIDIA is getting its add-in card partners to come up with several custom-design products based on the new SKU, which should occupy price-points below those of the RTX 3060 “Ampere.” This could be an answer to AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT), which beats the RTX 2060 SUPER by 3% and the original RTX 2060 by 13%, at 1080p, in our testing. Technologically, the older “Turing” architecture won’t find itself obsolete in the current market, as it maintains full DirectX 12 Ultimate compatibility.