1070 Ti vs 2060

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the GTX 1070 Ti and the RTX 2060 for you to compare.

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AMD/Nvidia

AMD and Nvidia have been pitted up against each other in terms of who can produce the best range of graphics cards for a long time with Nvidia always seeming to take the lead, especially as you get closer to the higher-end of the spectrum with their GeForce GPUs.

With AMD being left out of the equation, it’s Nvidia’s GTX and RTX series of graphics cards that go back and forth as being some of the best, and the best value-for-money GPUs on the market. So, what about when it’s the GTX 1070 Ti versus the RTX 2060?

Released as a graphics card that combines ray tracing ability and affordability, the RTX 2060 features Nvidia’s latest Turing GPU architecture, with 30 specialized RT cores that support the ray tracing and DLSS technology that the RTX series has us all excited about.

The GTX 1070 Ti offers a vast improvement on the GTX 1070 and it can be boosted up to speeds and quality that contends with the RTX 2060 to some degree, but whether or not that makes it worth your money is yet to be discerned. So, keep reading to find out!

Architecture

The 16nm Pascal architecture and GP104 GPU of the GTX 1070 Ti is the same as Nvidia’s older GPUs, and it’s less advanced than what Nvidia has to offer with their latest Turing architecture, yet it still packs some pretty impressive performance power for a lower cost.

It has 2,432 CUDA cores which are great for most gaming needs, and it is a huge improvement on the original GTX 1070 which somewhat surprisingly shares the same number of CUDA cores as the RTX 2060.

There are 1,920 CUDA cores at the heart of the RTX 2060 for stream processing, as well as 240 Tensor cores, and these are what enable the real-time ray tracing and DLSS technology. However, this is where Nvidia’s new Turing architecture comes into play.

Nvidia claims that this boosts the efficiency of each core by 50%, so this effectively bumps the RTX 2060 up to a theoretical core count of 3,840 and a performance level that supposedly matches this.

But does this really translate when the two GPUs are compared next to each other? Looking at their base clock speeds, the GTX 1070 Ti has a faster speed of 1,607 MHz, but it can only be pushed a little bit further through overclocking reaching up to 1,721 MHz.

Compared to the RTX 2060, which admittedly comes clocked at a slower base speed of just 1,365 MHz, there is a much bigger difference when overclocked as it has a boosted clock speed of 1,845 MHz, although this still falls slightly short of the GTX 1070 Ti.

Cooling

Having the right cooling system for your GPU is something that shouldn’t be but is often overlooked, even though it’s what prevents your graphics card from overheating, and potentially becoming damaged or damaging other components of your gaming PC set-up.

Pascal-based graphics cards perform their best when they’re kept cool, so it’s especially wise to invest in a decent fan blower system that will stabilize your GPU around the 70°C mark, which is a safe distance from the maximum temperature limit of 94°C. Under heavy load, the GTX 1070 Ti is more likely to hit highs of around 81°C on average.

This is likely because the GTX 1070 Ti has a TDP of 180 watts whereas the RTX 2060 has a lower TDP of 160 watts. The latter therefore consumes less power, but it still needs a decent cooling system as it has a lower maximum temperature limit of 88°C and will have to work harder when overclocked. During testing, we found it hovered around the 72°C marks.

Dimensions

It’s worth double-checking the exact measurements of each graphics card you’re considering against the amount of free space you have left on your motherboard, as there’s nothing more disappointing than making your final decision on a GPU only to realize it won’t fit.

In terms of dimensions, the GTX 1070 Ti connects to the system via a PCI-Express 3.0 x 16 interface, and it measures 267 mm (L) x 112 (W) mm x 40 mm (H) with a 2-slot cooling solution.

This is almost identical to the 229 mm (L) x 113 mm (W) x 35 mm (H) dimensions of the RTX 2060, which is slightly smaller in terms of length and height, but with another dual-slot cooling system. As such, either one of them would probably fit fine on your motherboard.

Resolutions and Frames Per Second

Comparing two high-end GPUs often ultimately comes down to the actual performance quality, in which the resolution and frame rates speed plays a large part. This is where the GTX 1070 Ti holds its own and demonstrates its ability over the original GTX 1070 GPU.

With a pixel rate of 107.9 GPixels/Second, it can render more pixels on the screen per second than the GeForce RTX 2060 which has a lower resolution of 80.64 pixels/Second. It does a pretty good job of going back and forth with the RTX 2060 in terms of fps, but surprisingly, we saw that it often just conceded the lead to the GTX 1070 Ti.

When we tested them at 1080p, the RTX 2060 gave us around a 6% improvement on average and it consistently gave us fps rates of 107.8 compared to the GTX 1070 Ti’s still impressive but slightly lower 101.1 frames per second.

The gap was even closer when we increased the settings to 1440p and again at Ultrawide 1440p, where the capable GTX 1070 Ti delivers between 50 to 60 frames per second without bottleneck, even playing AAA titles.

Even at 4K where the graphics cards are pushed even further, there’s but 1 frame between them with the GTX 1070 Ti achieving an average of 45.3 fps and the RTX 2060 following closely behind with 44.6 fps.

Ray Tracing

The AI-enhanced graphics and real-time ray tracing that Nvidia’s RTX series has to offer is what really sets it apart from the GTX range of GPUs, and the RTX 2060 is no exception thanks to its dedicated RT and Tensor cores which are designed specifically for this reason.

Technically, you can experience ray tracing shadow enhancement on either of these GPUs, but the quality of the performance will vary drastically depending on the card you’re looking at. The GTX 1070 Ti can support ray tracing via a downloadable DirectX Raytracing (DXR) driver, but it isn’t equipped with the same RT and Tensor cores.

You’ll therefore be looking at a pretty substantial drop in the quality with ray tracing turned on, although the GTX 1070 Ti handles this better than some of the earlier GTX series GPUs which struggle more to keep up with this newer, more advanced technology.

VRAM

When you’re looking to upgrade your GPU, one of the things you should be thinking about is memory, especially as we move towards a future where the demands of modern games are only going to increase.

The GTX 1070 Ti is equipped with 8 GB of memory which is a huge improvement on the likes of the earlier GTX 970 or GTX 980 GPUs, and it has a 256-bit memory bus and a bandwidth of 256.3 Gbps.

By comparison, the RTX 2060 is equipped with only 6 GB of memory capacity, but it features the more advanced GDDR6 memory type which is highly efficient. It has a 192-bit memory bus and a faster memory bandwidth of 336.0 Gbps, therefore it can retrieve image and game data more quickly than the GTX 1070 Ti is able to do.

Final Thoughts

The GeForce GTX 1070 Ti may be HD and VR ready, and it successfully succeeded the former GTX 1070 which was considered one of the best GPUs of its time, but if you’re coming at this decision as someone who just wants to upgrade their graphics card, is it really worth it, or should you look ahead to the RTX 2060 and the future of ray tracing?

Even if you ignore the RTX 2060s superior ray tracing ability, upon its initial release, the GTX 1070 Ti was actually around $50 more expensive than the RTX 2060, so for the gamer who’s budget-conscious, it makes sense to spend less for more with the latest RTX 2060.

With that being said, if your focus is more on base and boosted clock speeds and an ability to keep up with the best in terms of resolution and frame rates speed, then you might be willing to spend the extra on a GTX 1070 Ti graphics card as it will provide excellent quality for an enhanced gaming experience.