Well… it’s time to find out.
What are the best games to test?
How many games provide a worthwhile ray tracing experience?
How important is this feature as part of a GPU package?
What baseline can we use to benchmark improvements, especially in the mainstream market?
Gamers who bought a 2060 for DLSS have seen that experience improve significantly.
Can the same be said for ray tracing, more than five years after the card debuted?
With just 6GB of VRAM, many modern titles encounter VRAM-related issues at 1440p.
These days, the 2060 is more akin to an entry-level 1080p GPU.
Let’s get into it.
In other words, how compromised the experience gets to use RT on an RTX 2060.
We’ve tried to lower tweaks until ray tracing is potentially usable to see what we’re working with.
In other words, how compromised the experience gets to use RT on an RTX 2060 today.
With Ratchet & Clank, it’s clear that ray tracing is simply not viable on the RTX 2060.
In contrast, Guardians of the Galaxy is playable with ray tracing enabled on the RTX 2060.
Rasterized performance using max parameters and DLSS upscaling exceeds 100 FPS in the area we tested.
Enabling RT reflections reduces performance but still maintains a frame rate above 60 FPS.
The RTX 2060 struggles with ray tracing in Suicide Squad.
The high VRAM requirements overwhelm the GPU’s 6GB buffer.
Ray tracing in Ghostwire Tokyo using max parameters is a no-go.
Enabling ray tracing under these controls is out of the question unless you’re comfortable with 30 FPS gameplay.
Ultra+ parameters are completely out of reach, as the GPU struggles to maintain 60 FPS even without RT.
What’s surprising is how taxing ray tracing remains even on the Low preset.
To address this, we enabled DLSS Quality and dropped the preset to Medium.
After these adjustments, the RTX 2060 can handle ray tracing at reasonable frame rates.
While it’s a compromised experience in terms of visual quality, we’ll take it as a win.
Metro Exodusis an interesting case, particularly when including the Enhanced Edition.
Using Medium options and lowered RT options, the Enhanced Edition runs at 86 FPS on average.
There’s not much to say about ray tracing inBlack Myth: Wukong.
Path tracing, however, is a no-go.
Enabling RT cripples performance, making the game completely unplayable.
It’s a similar story withCyberpunk 2077.
InStar Wars Outlaws, playing on the 2060 at 1080p using Ultra parameters is not feasible.
Meanwhile, in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, texture loading problems are even worse.
Even on the Low preset, the game fails to consistently hit 60 FPS at 1080p.
However, we were hoping for better performance in these RT-only titles, even with quality controls dialed down.
Performance Summary: Can It Do 60 FPS?
And this is at 1080p, not 1440p, the resolution the RTX 2060 was initially designed for.
This is a poor result for a GPU marketed as ray tracing-capable.
Still, in just three titles, the 2060 failed to deliver a minimum playable 40 FPS average.
Also see:How Much VRAM is Enough for PC Gaming?
Six years should be enough time to make ray tracing viable for entry-level GPUs in 1080p gaming.
Gamers buy GPUs in that price range for 1440p gaming with ultra prefs at 60 FPS, at minimum.
The problem with meeting these expectations is that the baseline needs to rise substantially.
But that only happens if entry-level and mid-range GPUs improve dramatically.
