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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh: A Hybrid of Power and Mobility in 2025

April 2025

Introduction

In the world of gaming and professional GPUs, the balance between performance, energy efficiency, and price remains key. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh, presented as an updated version of the legendary RTX 2060, continues to impress with its versatility even years after its release. In this article, we will explore why it remains relevant in 2025 and who it is suitable for.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Turing Architecture: Legacy and Optimization

The RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh is built on the Turing architecture, but with several optimizations. Despite NVIDIA having already introduced newer generations (Ada Lovelace), Turing maintains its relevance thanks to support for DLSS 3.5 and hardware ray tracing. The manufacturing process is 12 nm FinFET, providing a balance between power consumption and performance.

Unique Technologies

- RT Cores and DLSS: Real-time ray tracing and neural network scaling remain the card's highlights. DLSS 3.5 enhances image quality in 4K, compensating for a lack of power.

- NVIDIA Reflex: Reduces latency in esports titles (e.g., CS2 or Valorant).

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) Support: Despite being an AMD technology, the card is compatible with FSR 3.0, expanding the list of optimized games.

2. Memory: Fast, but Limited

GDDR6 and Its Capabilities

The card features 6 GB GDDR6 memory with a 192-bit bus and a bandwidth of 336 GB/s (14 Gbps frequency). This is sufficient for most games at 1080p and 1440p, but in 2025, some titles with ultra textures (e.g., Starfield 2) may require more memory.

Bottleneck Issues

Activating ray tracing or working at 4K makes memory a limiting factor. However, DLSS and FSR help to mitigate this disadvantage, reducing the load on VRAM.

3. Gaming Performance: Numbers and Realities

1080p: Comfortable Gaming

- Cyberpunk 2077: 55–60 FPS (high settings, RT Medium + DLSS Balanced).

- Hogwarts Legacy 2: 60–65 FPS (Ultra, no RT).

- Apex Legends: 100–120 FPS (max settings).

1440p: A Compromise Required

- Elden Ring: Shadows of the Erdtree: 45–50 FPS (high settings + FSR Quality).

- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: 60 FPS (medium settings + DLSS Performance).

4K: Only with Upscaling

In Fortnite (Epic settings, RT High, DLSS Performance) — 40–45 FPS. For a stable 60 FPS, it is better to opt for 1440p.

Ray Tracing: Beautiful, but Expensive

Enabling RT decreases FPS by 30–40%, but DLSS 3.5 recoups lost frames. For example, in Alan Wake 3 with RT Medium and DLSS Balanced, the card achieves 50 FPS at 1080p.

4. Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

Video Editing and Rendering

Thanks to 1920 CUDA cores, the card handles rendering in Blender and Adobe Premiere Pro. In the PugetBench test for Premiere Pro, it scores 720 points, comparable to the RTX 3050 Ti.

3D Modeling

In Autodesk Maya and SolidWorks, the RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh shows stability, but for complex scenes with RTX rendering, it is better to choose more powerful models (e.g., RTX 4070).

Scientific Calculations

Support for CUDA and OpenCL makes the card suitable for entry-level machine learning (TensorFlow) and physical simulations. However, the limited amount of memory (6 GB) narrows the scope of tasks.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP: Energy Efficiency

The maximum power consumption is 80 W (up to 90 W under peak loads). This makes the card usable in thin laptops and compact PCs.

Cooling Recommendations

- For laptops: A system with two fans and heat pipes.

- For PCs: A case with at least two 120mm coolers (intake + exhaust).

Noise

Under load, the noise level reaches 40 dB, which is acceptable for gaming sessions with headphones.

6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT

- Pros: 8 GB GDDR6, better performance in 1440p without RT.

- Cons: Weaker in ray tracing, no equivalent to DLSS 3.5.

- Price: $350–$400.

Intel Arc A770M

- Pros: 16 GB of memory, XeSS support.

- Cons: Drivers still less stable, lower performance in older games.

- Price: $300–$350.

Conclusion: The RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh outperforms competitors thanks to DLSS and RTX but falls short in memory capacity.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply

- For PCs: Minimum of 450 W (recommended 500 W with an 80+ Bronze certification).

- For laptops: Charger of at least 150 W.

Compatibility

- Supports PCIe 4.0 x8, which is sufficient for full performance.

- Recommended processors: Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600.

Drivers

- Regularly update GeForce Experience: NVIDIA continues to optimize older cards for new games.

- For professional tasks, install the Studio Driver.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Support for DLSS 3.5 and RTX.

- Energy efficiency.

- Affordable price ($320–$380 for new devices).

Cons:

- Only 6 GB of memory.

- Limited 4K performance.

- The Turing architecture lags behind Ada Lovelace in AI tasks.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

1. Gamers with 1080p/1440p monitors who want to play with RTX without significant expenses.

2. Students and professionals who need mobility and CUDA support.

3. Owners of compact PCs who value silence and moderate energy consumption.

In 2025, the RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh remains a "golden mean" for those looking for a balance between price, technology, and performance. However, if your budget allows, consider the RTX 4060 — it offers more memory and a better future-proof solution.

Prices are current as of April 2025. The indicated cost is for new devices in retail stores in the USA.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2019

Model Name

GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh

Generation

GeForce 20 Mobile

Base Clock

960MHz

Boost Clock

1200MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

10,800 million

RT Cores

Tensor Cores

Tensor Cores are specialized processing units designed specifically for deep learning, providing higher training and inference performance compared to FP32 training. They enable rapid computations in areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, text-to-speech conversion, and personalized recommendations. The two most notable applications of Tensor Cores are DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AI Denoiser for noise reduction.

240

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

120

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

12 nm

Architecture

Turing

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

6GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

192bit

Memory Clock

1353MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

259.8 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

57.60 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

144.0 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

9.216 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

144.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

4.7 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1920

L1 Cache

64 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

3MB

TDP

115W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

CUDA

7.5

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.6

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.7 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

5488

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER

4.926 +4.8%

Radeon RX 570 Mobile

4.841 +3%

GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh

4.7

Arc Graphics 128EU Mobile

4.516 -3.9%

Quadro P4000 Mobile

4.31 -8.3%

3DMark Time Spy

TITAN X Pascal

9397 +71.2%

GeForce RTX 3060 8 GB

7479 +36.3%

GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q Refresh

5488

Radeon R9 290X

4069 -25.9%

Radeon R9 380

2847 -48.1%