Positioning & Architecture
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5060 was released a little more than a month ago during Computex, with a somewhat surprising stealth-launch strategy that made it hard for us to produce optimal review coverage. Right after Computex we tested the Zotac RTX 5060 Solo, a cost-optimized entry-level version of the RTX 5060: no backplate, no OC, no idle-fan-stop. Today we have the review of the MSI RTX 5060 Gaming OC, which is a more premium model, with a bigger cooler and factory OC.
Positioned at a price point of $300, the RTX 5060 is designed for entry-level gaming using the NVIDIA GB206 graphics processor—the same as on the RTX 5060 Ti. While the RTX 5060 Ti comes with 4,608 cores active, the RTX 5060 non-Ti (this review) features 3,840 (or 17% less). The number of ROPs remains constant at 48, but you’re getting 17% fewer TMUs as well (120 vs 144). As expected, a PCI-Express 5.0 x8 interface is used on the 5060, memory transfers run over a 128-bit bus with 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM. While the RTX 5060 Ti is available with both 8 GB and 16 GB variants, the RTX 5060 comes only in 8 GB models.
The Blackwell architecture introduces several architectural improvements under the hood, like giving all shaders the ability to run FP32 or INT32 instructions, on Ada only half the cores had that ability. The Tensor Cores are now accessible from the shaders through a new Microsoft DirectX API, and they now support FP4 and INT4 instructions which run at lower precision, but much faster with less memory usage. There’s numerous additional architecture improvements, we talked about all of them in detail on the first pages of this review.
From a fabrication perspective nothing has changed though—Blackwell is built on the same 5 nanometer “NVIDIA 4N” TSMC node as last generation’s Ada. NVIDIA claims this is a “4 nanometer process,” but during Ada it was confirmed that NVIDIA 4N is actually not TSMC N4 (note the order of N and 4), but 5 nanometer. At the end of the day the actual number doesn’t matter much, what’s important is that NVIDIA is using the same process node.
Performance
At 1080p, Full HD, without ray tracing or upscaling, we measured the RTX 5060 8 GB to roughly match last generation’s RTX 4060 Ti. This makes it 26% faster than last generation’s RTX 4060—a pretty decent gen-over-gen improvement, which is definitely bigger than on most other Blackwell cards. Compared to the RTX 3060 from two generations ago, the performance uplift is +45%—far from double the performance that you’d expect over two gens. The recently released RTX 5060 Ti is 15% faster. Compared to Intel’s fastest card, the B580, the RTX 5060 is around 25% ahead, a similar difference as to the AMD RX 7600 XT 16 GB. AMD’s previous-gen RX 7700 XT is 12% ahead of the RTX 5060. AMD’s newly released AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT runs a bit faster than the RTX 5060, both the 8 GB and 16 GB model. What’s interesting is that the 8 GB 9060 XT model does pull away noticeably at higher resolutions, because it isn’t losing nearly as much performance as the 5060 when VRAM is running out.
Thanks to its factory overclock and higher power limit, the MSI Gaming OC gains 2% performance over the base RTX 5060 at 1080p, 3% at higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K. While that is not a lot, any improvement is certainly welcome.
Interestingly, some games at higher resolutions run at lower FPS than even the RTX 4060 8 GB, which is unexpected. It seems that Blackwell has different memory management techniques, which don’t work nearly as well as Ada when VRAM constrained. Maybe this is a driver thing and NVIDIA can improve these cases. They are definitely working on their drivers, as in some tests, the RTX 5060 8 GB outperforms the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB due to newer drivers that handle “out of memory” scenarios slightly better.
I’d say that 1080p is really the only resolution that you should consider the RTX 5060 for. While it can run 1440p in older, lighter games, achieving a AAA gaming experience in newer titles will be difficult, even with upscaling at 1440p and beyond. If you are willing to dial settings down or use upscaling that could change though. Even 4K is possible with a lot of compromises, but here you’ll be seriously limited by both computing power and memory size.
Ray Tracing & Neural Rendering
Ray tracing is the future and Blackwell comes with several improvements here. The problem is that with 8 GB VRAM, ray tracing will push VRAM usage well over 8 GB. Even at 1080p (but without upscaling), we’re seeing many titles impacted, Indiana Jones will even crash during level loading (due to the highest texture setting). Does that mean RTX 5060 8 GB is unfit for ray tracing? I don’t think so. If you play with the settings carefully, mix and match upscalers and frame generation, you’ll still be able to achieve a decent gaming experience in many games, but there’s no way you can just set details to ultra, max out RT, and expect a great gaming experience, not even at 1080p in many games. Interesting AMD results here, too—the RX 9060 XT will give you a much better RT performance than the RTX 5060.
Given the entry-level positioning of the card I’m not sure RT is even worth it in this segment. Rather focus on getting playable FPS for an enjoyable gameplay experience—so you can have fun with the game. This is possible in every single game that I’ve tested.
With Blackwell, NVIDIA is introducing several new technologies. The most interesting one is Neural Rendering, which is exposed through a Microsoft DirectX API (Cooperative Vectors). Technically, this feature will be able to lower the VRAM requirements of games considerably, because textures can be compressed much more efficiently, with no or minimal loss in image quality. It’s also much easier to define materials as math formula instead of pixels, which takes up much less memory as well. Game support for Cooperative Vectors is basically non-existent yet, so I don’t think this will see widespread use in a lot of games any time soon enough to make a difference for the RTX 5060.
Individual Gaming Experiences
For my reviews I test all games at the same settings. This standardized approach allows an objective performance comparison, but of course it has its drawbacks. Many gamers don’t play at Ultra settings, and lowering settings often yields free FPS with no visual loss in image quality. There’s also DLSS upscaling and Frame Generation. That’s why I spent a few hours on popular “problematic” titles to see if I could get them into an “enjoyable” state, and I mean more than just “playable,” where the game simply starts and can be played. I’m looking for a good gaming experience that’s fun and doesn’t constantly make me think, “I should have bought a console or a faster GPU.” To achieve this you must stop using the “low,” “medium,” “high” profiles, and change settings individually. No doubt, this introduces subjectiveness, and sorry for making the conclusion so much longer.
Alan Wake 2: With RT, the game simply runs too slow. I found that disabling RT at 1080p with max settings runs very well, as long as you enable DLSS Quality. Even 1440p is in reach, with DLSS Balanced. Thanks to the Transformer DLSS model, it still looks fantastic. To me, DLSS Frame Generation x2 provided the best gaming experience, FG off was too stuttery, and DLSS x3 and x4 had a bit too much latency. Of course, you can improve latency with a higher DLSS upscaling factor, but I rather have the fine details than the extra FPS of FG x3 with DLSS Balanced. On the other hand, Alan Wake 2 is very slow paced, so you’ll not notice the added latency as much.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Good settings for me were 1080p, Max settings, RT only in home area, DLSS Balanced and x2 Frame Generation. DLSS Quality + Frame Gen was a bit too laggy. Lowering the settings helps a lot, and will let you enable DLSS Quality + x2 frame gen due to the higher base FPS.
Cyberpunk 2077: 1080p, max settings, with RT off, DLSS Quality and Frame Generation x2 or x3 ran extremely well.
Star Wars Outlaws: You must absolutely use DLSS Quality at least, that lets you run 1440p just fine at max settings. Frame generation helps for a smoother experience, I had no issues with FG latency, even x3 and x4 ran well.
Dragon Age: Veilguard: Activating Frame Generation increases VRAM usage in all games, which eats into your VRAM budget. In this title specifically, I felt that FG off gave me some “extra” memory for textures, which resulted in a much nicer look overall. You definitely have to use DLSS Performance, but with the Transformer model this looks good enough to not be distracting during gameplay. Also, disable ray tracing so you don’t have to dial down the textures, the RT performance hit just isn’t worth the minimal improvement in image quality.
Indiana Jones: This game is Vulcan based, which means that it will crash when running out of VRAM. Unlike DirectX-based games, there is no standard mechanism that is able to move resources from the GPU into main memory, roughly similar to how the pagefile works for main memory. Of course this is MUCH slower, but games with DirectX won’t just crash when running out of VRAM (usually). In Indiana Jones this means that you should target 7 GB VRAM usage instead of 8 GB, to have a cushion for busy scenes that might just use a bit more VRAM—you really don’t want to just crash in those. I found DLSS Quality, Max everything but textures on low an excellent starting point, and the game looks very good overall. “Low” textures in this case still looks much better than the “high” textures in many other games. You could also do textures on high with everything else on low, but that doesn’t look nearly as good, because of increased pop-in and worse geometry. Frame generation can be hit-and-miss in this game, it often resulted in FPS cut in half, instead of doubled. It appears to me that the frame generation part is able to end up in main memory without crashing, which will result in a huge performance penalty of course. Enabling it can still be viable, but that means lowering a lot of other settings to free up enough VRAM—it wasn’t worth it to me, especially since the performance of Indiana Jones is pretty good already.
Monster Hunter Wilds: Focus on 1080p with DLSS Quality and x2 framegen. When running out of VRAM, MHW does have a tendency to crash, but it will happily stutter, too, while running out of VRAM and using system memory, I also noticed that it does end up with worse 1% lows more quickly than other titles. You should definitely turn off ray tracing, and enable at least DLSS Quality. Texture memory must be dialed down, I found textures at “medium” a good compromise, but that only works when using DLSS Quality or higher. DLSS Upscaling will render your games at a lower resolution, which lowers the VRAM usage, so that’s a good dial to bring memory consumption down.
Stalker 2: 1080p, max settings, DLSS Quality ran well. Enabling x2 frame generation does make the game smoother and the added latency isn’t much of a problem due to the slow-paced gameplay. As trade-off, you can disable frame generation, or use DLSS Balanced to lower the latency a bit more.
This short list confirms that even problematic titles can run well, but it also confirms that it’s easy to find a AAA scenario where 8 GB VRAM will fail. Definitely do not expect that everything will magically work like on a console, or on a card with 16 GB VRAM. In many titles at 4K, no matter what you do, the experience will suck. Is that unreasonable for a x60 class card? I don’t think so. After reading this list you’ll probably think “but there are so many settings to change”—yes, that’s right. Unless you are willing to play with settings—beyond just selecting a “low” or “medium” profile, you will not get the optimal gaming experience. There’s also the option of using the recommended settings set within the GeForce app, which offers to use optimized game profiles when you open it. If you’re not willing to work the settings or use the GeForce app, do not buy an 8 GB NVIDIA card in 2025. Once again, the optimal scenario for the RTX 5060 is running at 1080p, with DLSS Transformer Quality upscaling. It will look great, and internally render the game at 1280×720, which helps a lot to lower memory consumption.
VRAM
Ideally, there would be a 12 GB VRAM model of the RTX 5060, which would have been a good middle choice, as that’s good enough for virtually all titles at 1080p and 1440p, but is more economical than an even wider bus. NVIDIA designed their GPU with a 128-bit memory bus, meaning four memory chips, which each connect using a 32-bit interface. On the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, NVIDIA doubled up configuration to eight chips, so that two each share a 32-bit interface (they do not use larger capacity chips), but that option is not available for the RTX 5060 non-Ti. A 192-bit bus would certainly be possible, like on RTX 5070, but that would have required a wider bus design in the GPU, with support for the extra bus width, and more pins in the design, and a more complex PCB, etc. All these changes would make the card more expensive, too.
In the future, 3 GB memory chips will be available, which enables a theoretical RTX 5060 12 GB model with the same 128-bit memory bus. It seems NVIDIA will use this configuration for their 2026 refresh, the Blackwell “Super” series. Some details of the RTX 5070 Super, RTX 5070 Ti Super, and RTX 5080 Super have already leaked.
DLSS 4 Upscaling & Frame Generation
For the RTX 5060, DLSS is one of the most important capabilities to have, and it’s the only way to achieve a good gaming experience in AAA titles without having to go to low settings. First of all, DLSS 4 Multi-Frame-Generation. While DLSS 3 doubled the framerates by generating a single new frame, DLSS 4 can now triple or quadruple the frame count. While this sounds fantastic in theory, for the RTX 5060 it’s not a fire-and-forget solution. When using FG, gaming latency does NOT scale linearly with FPS, you need a base FPS of at least 40 or 50, or you will notice the added input latency, even though the movements on the screen are super smooth.
Enabling Frame Generation will increase the VRAM usage, by 1 GB or so—memory that’s now not available for the game’s textures and models. That’s why it’s sometimes better to leave DLSS FG disabled and use upscaling for better performance, especially in games that tend to use a lot of VRAM, but run very well when it comes to the amount of GPU compute they do per frame. One such example is Indiana Jones.
It also depends on the gameplay, in slower, single-player games it’s easy to tolerate a bit more input latency than in fast-paced multiplayer shooters where every millisecond counts.
In the past there were a lot of debates whether DLSS upscaling image quality is good enough, some people even claimed “better than native”—I strongly disagree with that—I’m one of the people who is allergic to DLSS 3 upscaling, even at “Quality.” With Blackwell, NVIDIA introduced a “Transformer” upscaling model for DLSS, which is a major improvement over the previous “CNN” model. I tested Transformer and I’m in love. The image quality is so good, “Quality” looks like native, sometimes better. There is no more flickering or low-res smeared out textures on the horizon. Thin wires are crystal clear, even at sub-4K resolution! You really have to see it for yourself to appreciate it, it’s almost like magic. The best thing? DLSS Transformer is available not only on GeForce 50-series, but uses Tensor Cores on all GeForce RTX cards, all the way back to the RTX 2080 Ti! While it comes with a roughly 10% performance hit compared to the previous CNN model, I would never go back to CNN, since DLSS Transformer still delivers improved image quality with a performance advantage compared to native.
Both these technologies are very important, and they are the reason why I think the RTX 5060 is a better buy than the Arc B580 12 GB, for example. While the Arc card is more affordable, and has more VRAM, it lacks DLSS. DLSS 4 is what makes the difference to turn stuttery gameplay at native into a fluid experience that looks good, without noticeable upscaling artifacts during gameplay, and it is supported in pretty much all games. Sure, if you look hard you can spot something that’s not perfect, and if you stop playing the game and start reviewing the latency you might be able to feel something, but if you really just plan on enjoying your games it’s a great alternative to spending a few hundred dollars extra on a faster GPU.
Physical Design, Heat & Noise
The MSI Gaming OC is a compact card that will fit into all cases, even older ones, thanks to its dual-slot design with 25 cm length. Unlike the Zotac Solo RTX 5060 you are getting a backplate made from metal, which helps with the overall impression of the product. Temperatures are excellent, just 65°C under full load, and noise levels are excellent, too. With 29 dBA the card is “quiet,” a bit quieter than the Zotac, but not by a huge amount. What’s more important is that you do get the idle fan-stop capability on MSI’s board—that’s not available on the Zotac Solo, even though it’s pretty much standard these days.
Our apples-to-apples cooler comparison test shows that the MSI cooling solution is considerably more powerful than what Zotac offers, by around 10°C at the same heat load and noise level.
PCI-Express 5.0
NVIDIA’s GeForce Blackwell graphics cards are the first high-end consumer models to support PCI-Express 5.0. This increases the available PCIe bandwidth to the GPU, yielding a small performance benefit. Of course PCIe Gen 5 is backwards compatible with older versions, so you’ll be able to run the cards in an older computer, too. The RTX 5060 GPU specifically operates at PCIe 5.0 x8, not x16 like the other RTX 50 Blackwell cards. This cuts the available bandwidth in half, but the switch from Gen 4 to Gen 5 doubled it.
We tested PCI-Express scaling of the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB here. Once I have a bit more time, I’ll run the RTX 5060 non-Ti 8 GB through the same tests. While it’ll probably choke a bit harder when running out of VRAM, you’ll be tweaking settings to prevent that from happening during normal usage, and when it’s not out of VRAM it should perform similarly to the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB.
Power Consumption
Power consumption of the RTX 5060 is good. While some other Blackwell cards had quite high power consumption in idle, multi-monitor and media playback, this isn’t a problem at all here. Generally, the card uses very little power in non-gaming states, which includes media playback and could make the card interesting for a media PC setup. The base RTX 5060 comes with a power limit of 145 W, but MSI has increased that to 155 W out of the box, with the option to go up to 170 W manually. While this lowers energy efficiency a little bit, the extra juice can help improve performance in power constrained situations. It’s not a huge difference though.
Overclocking
Just like other Blackwell cards, this MSI RTX 5060 does overclock very well. In our testing we got +15% real-life performance from the card, which is a huge boost and much bigger than what we usually see during OC. After OC, the card is able to match the stock RTX 5060 Ti, so it is definitely something worth looking into. Memory overclocking is very impressive, too, and topped out at NVIDIA’s artificial cap of +375 MHz / +6000 MT/s—the chips could certainly take more.
Pricing & Alternatives
The GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB is available and in-stock at its MSRP of $300 in both Europe and the United States. At that price point the card offers excellent price/performance that’s the best of the whole market. The Intel Arc B580 is a strong alternative, due to its 12 GB VRAM and lower $250 price point, but it lacks the DLSS Transformer model, which is the most important capability in my opinion. Also, NVIDIA’s Frame Generation support is so much better, so I’d definitely spend $50 more for the RTX 5060. MSI’s RTX 5060 Gaming OC sells for $330, or a $30 increase over the baseline MSRP (+10%). In return, you get an improved cooler, a metal backplate, a factory overclock and some lighting. Is that worth it? Not sure. While $30 isn’t that much in absolute terms, it puts the card much closer to the most affordable RTX 5060 Ti models ($380) and the AMD RX 9060 XT 16 GB is only slightly more expensive ($350). AMD’s offerings with the RX 9060 XT are pretty strong, both 8 GB and 16 GB. Our results show that performance can definitely match or outperform NVIDIA’s cards, but NVIDIA still has a small advantage, which is their DLSS 4 technology. Buying a last-gen RTX 4060 for $270 will save you $30 over the base RTX 5060—definitely worth considering. You’re still able to run the DLSS Transformer model, which is the most important ingredient for a good gameplay experience, and you can enable DLSS x2 Frame Generation, too. Having support for x3 and x4 framegen can come in handy in some edge cases, but I don’t think it’s an essential capability in this segment. So, if you can find the RTX 4060 at good pricing, definitely go for it. On the other hand, if it’s just a few dollars more to get the RTX 5060, prefer that, also thanks to the higher resale value.
The aging GeForce RTX 3070 isn’t much of an upgrade either. While it’s a bit faster in rasterization, and ray tracing, it lacks support for frame generation and offers the same 8 GB VRAM size—I’m not convinced, especially not at a price of $320. Also, the more complex Transformer model runs with a slightly bigger performance hit on old GPUs, so I’d definitely prefer the RTX 5060.
Spending $380 for the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB will give you an extra 15% performance, for 25% more money, I guess this is “acceptable,” but definitely not an upsell that should be a high priority for you. Spending $430 on the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB will give you peace of mind when it comes to VRAM usage, but is an almost +50% cost increase that will not materialize in major FPS increases in most titles, because they don’t use more than 8 GB VRAM—especially at 1080p. The RTX 4070 12 GB offers a solid boost in performance and VRAM size, but at $500 it’s too expensive for most gamers in this segment.
NVIDIA just announced the RTX 5050, which is much slower than the RTX 5060—it’s only able to match the RTX 4060, so not a game changer. Maybe Intel has an ace up their sleeves, too, their bigger Arc Battlemage cards could add more competition, but the release date is completely unknown, some rumors say Q4, others say that those cards have been canceled.
