Nvidia has refreshed its old RTX 2060 Turing GPU and launched it to meet the insane current demand. The Nvidia RTX 2060 12GB graphics card has minor specification changes compared to the stock RTX 2060.
The RTX 2060 12GB variant has 2176 CUDA cores, 12 GB VRAM with 14 Gbps memory speed, 192-bit memory interface, and 336 GB/s bandwidth. Also, minor improvement in GPU clock speed. Other than the CUDA core and VRAM, no new changes you would notice.
Don’t assume that with the fewer improvement, we would get some surprising FPS gain in gaming and make it the best graphics card. The RTX 2060 12GB GPU is a generation-old almost-three-year-old graphics card, and it’s a first-generation ray tracing card with Turing architecture. On the other hand, RTX 3000 Ampere cards offer a giant generation leap over Turning architecture.
Surprisingly, Nvidia is not excited about this launch. The company quietly launched the card on December 7. Only AIB partner cards will be available, no founders edition. It remains to be seen how the company handles supplies with the current global chip shortage.
Perfect for Crypto Mining
According to some reviews, the RTX 2060 12GB has more crypto mining capacity than the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT as it is a non-LHR card. Which is quite surprising, why would Nvidia launch a non-LHR card for gamers? Despite knowing that, these non-LHR cards will eventually be used by crypto miners.
Here, maybe Nvidia is trying to divert miners towards RTX 2060 12GB to save the rest of the RTX 3000 series graphics cards. More VRAM may or may not affect gaming performance but favors crypto mining.
Furthermore, RTX 2060’s TU106 Turing GPU is based on TSMC 12nm, whereas RTX 3000 GPU uses Samsung 8nm. So, instead of pushing Samsung fabs, Nvidia has chosen to go with TSMC 12nm to get more cards.
Conclusion
It’s hard to recommend RTX 2060 12GB for any consumers. I know it will be out of stock anyway as the GPU shortage is making users buy any available graphics card. Don’t get me wrong, the RTX 2060 was one of the best GPUs in 2019, but not now.
Moreover, the price matters most. Nvidia is silent on the RTX 2060 MSRP and has left the price selection on AIBs. So, not sure at what price range it will be available. At least we know that year 2019 prices will not reflect now.
