Review: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Graphics Card

This should've been Nvidia’s victory lap after a fairly successful round of high-end GPUs. The RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 were expensive and hard to find at launch, but the performance was impressive for those who could get their hands on one. Most people spend less than $500 on a graphics card, and they've been waiting patiently for their turn to go shopping.

Unfortunately, the RTX 5060 falls short of its similarly priced AMD counterpart, and the gap gets even worse when any pressure is applied. Simply put, I think you should find an extra $50 or $100 in your budget for either an RTX 5060 Ti (7/10, WIRED Review) or AMD’s RX 9060 XT (8/10, WIRED Review).

The upside is that this card is likely to fit into almost any case that will take a full-height GPU, and most users won't need a new power supply. I doubt that will be much consolation to the budget-minded gamers hoping for a worthwhile upgrade in the $300 range.

Gaming

I shared the 3DMark benchmarks in my RX 9060 XT review, and I'll say pretty much the same thing here: They tend to offer a nice view of comparative performance in a vacuum, but they don't always reflect how games will actually play.

Courtesy of Brad Bourque

In this case, they do a pretty good job summarizing the situation. At lower performance levels, Nvidia’s option has better optimization, but in more demanding benchmarks, the AMD option takes the lead. That pattern continues into real-world gaming benchmarks.

Courtesy of Brad Bourque

The RTX 5060 slides in just ahead of the RX 9060 XT at 1080p, but the difference is measured in inches. Importantly, it loses to the AMD offering in both Cyberpunk 2077 and Avowed, the most graphically adept and newest games in my test suite, respectively. That's a strong indication of where even 1080p performance is headed over the next few years.

Courtesy of Brad Bourque

That gap becomes even clearer at 1440p, where the RTX 5060 falls behind in almost every game I tested. That extra memory makes a massive difference when you start to raise the resolution. The RTX 5060 Ti takes a sizable lead here, but the 16-GB versions of that card will run you at least $400, an extra $100 more than the other two cards.

Compact and Low Power

This version of the card uses only a half-size PCIe x8 connection. That's great news for older systems and compatibility, but it should absolutely set off some alarm bells about how much juice this machine can squeeze out. It's equally compact too, but like most dual-fan cards, it is a bit noisy and runs a little hot, a typical trade-off for the reduced footprint. There's also a backplate with a thermal cutout, something you don't normally find on graphics cards at this price point.

Gigabyte recommends a very reasonable 550W power supply, thanks to the RTX 5060's low 145W TDP. While that makes it easy to slot one of these into many older gaming rigs, the RX 9060 XT sits just above it at 160W, with a 600W PSU recommendation. The Nvidia option technically wins here, but I doubt that 20W difference will be the deciding factor for many gamers. Both also use the classic PCIe connector, so no adapters or extra parts are needed.

The Situation

Photograph: Brad Bourque

To give you a little peek behind the curtain, manufacturers generally offer us products ahead of launch, and typically all they ask is that we won't discuss it until an agreed-upon date and time, which means nobody has to rush to get it done ahead of everyone else. This is how every other 50 Series GPU review has worked so far. If we think something is truly broken, we’ll ask for clarification, but otherwise, the review goes live with no other input from the manufacturer.

For the RTX 5060, Nvidia only offered to send out the card if we agreed to stipulations around which games we would benchmark, which features we would enable, and which other GPUs we'd compare it to. That would've looked a lot better for Nvidia than the reality of the situation, putting an emphasis on multiframe-generation features only available on the newest cards, rather than directly comparing traditional rendering benchmarks.

All this to say, I personally went out and bought the RTX 5060 for this review, which wasn't as tough as it is with the higher-end offerings. I've expressed in previous reviews that supply would be an issue, and having now lived it first-hand, it wasn't pleasant, but it was possible. Cards are available, but you may have to jump through some hoops to get them into your cart, especially if there are discounts involved.

Photograph: Brad Bourque

None of this affects the performance or my review, but I do think it's an indication of how confident Nvidia is about what would historically be its most popular offering. The GPU makers may not want to admit it, but the benchmarks don't lie: PC gaming is officially getting more expensive, and $300 just won't buy you the same performance it would have even a few years ago.

Performance here is lacking, but it's only going to get worse as time goes on and more developers start taking 16 GB for granted. While most gamers still play at 1080p, that number is always dropping, and I’ve said multiple times that you should at least target 1440p for a new build.

Otherwise, both the RTX 5060 Ti and RX 9060 XT offer much better value, and as I write this there are OC models for the latter at just over $300. The only reasons you should opt for the RTX 5060 instead is if you can find an exceptional deal, you literally only play Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (2002), or you happen to have a 550W PSU you can't or won't upgrade.