Conclusion

Nvidia’s Super launch is a mid-stack shakeup designed to bring existing performance down to new price levels. With RTX 2060 Super, Nvidia is able to use TU106 dies that didn’t quite make the cut as RTX 2070 and make up the difference with clock speeds, and that means we’re now seeing RTX 2070 performance immediately available for nearly £100 less – ITX RTX 2070 cards can be found for £430 at the time of writing, but normal-sized ones are closer to £470, and RTX 2060 Super brings virtually all that performance down to a new starting price of £379.

On the face of it, that seems like a pretty good deal, but that is of course only relative to the previous RTX pricing that has long been perceived to be excessive. The timing of this launch, which is effectively an RTX price drop wrapped up in some new branding, should make it clear that this is not a move done out of the kindness of Nvidia’s hearts but rather a pre-emptive strike against Navi. Competitive pressure has been missing from this segment of the market for a long time, and it’s a real relief to see it return.

What this means in terms of buying advice is therefore: wait and see. Once Sunday rolls around we’ll be able to give a much fuller assessment of the Super vs. Navi showdown, and in particular for the $399/£379 RTX 2060 Super versus the $379/£TBC Radeon RX 5700.

If for some reason you can’t wait five days before buying your next GPU, then right now the RTX 2060 Super looks good against Vega 64 (faster, cooler, more efficient) and is in-line with RTX 2060 in terms of value, delivering 15 percent more performance for 15 percent more price when looking at non-ITX cards that start at around £330. The Founders Edition design continues to impress with outstanding build quality, a three-year warranty, and a nice balance of noise, size, and performance.

There’s definitely a risk for Nvidia that this launch will cause even more backlash along the lines of ‘why couldn’t have RTX performance have come in at this price to begin with?’, and it’s a fair question, especially so given that ray tracing/DLSS titles are still only being trickled out even now. The obvious answer from a pure business perspective relates to a lack of competition, as explored above, but even so it’s easy to imagine RTX 2070 (and RTX 2080) owners feeling a bit angered by this launch. There’s always a cost to early adoption, but so sudden a price drop relatively early in Turing’s lifespan is arguably a bad look, even if the result for consumers in the market now is definitely a good thing.

In terms of game bundles, this Super card will qualify buyers for copies of both Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Control, which will be released in late July and late August respectively and which will both feature ray tracing. AMD’s Navi bundle, assuming there is one, is yet to be confirmed. We expect Nvidia to start pushing the ray tracing message quite hard again, especially after E3 brought more confirmed titles to the table, but readers might also bear in mind that both next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony are set to support the technique on their Navi GPUs. To what degree remains unclear, and how this will affect the PC ecosystem is very hard to predict, but the ray tracing story really is only just getting started.

In short, the RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition has done more than enough to earn itself a Recommended award at the launch price of £379, but anyone in the market for a GPU will want to wait and see how Navi affects things on Sunday.