ASUS Prime RTX 5060 Ti 16GB Benchmark Review: A Balanced Refresh with Significant Upgrades

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB Benchmark Review: A Balanced Refresh with Significant Upgrades

Hello everyone. We know many of you have been eager to catch a glimpse of the RTX 5060 Ti review, especially the 16GB version. While reviews of some of the higher-end cards in this series have been out for months at this point, one of the big questions we've seen asked recently has to do with the 5060 Ti. Let's come to the point: the 16GB model is a great option for high refresh rate 1080p or even 2K gaming. The 8GB one, however, is still a problem; We've argued for years that any 8GB card priced above $350 is not worth buying. (don't Buy it)

Learning about the Blackwell Architecture (for the 5060 Ti)

The Blackwell architecture, in its application on the RTX 5060 Ti, isn't quite new in the revolutionary sense. It's more appropriately called an update of the previous RTX 4000 Ada design. We see a little bump in core counts, slightly higher clock rates, faster GDDR7 memory, and a small amount of incremental new features. Refresh cycles occur all across the industry, and occasionally that refresh will just leave its predecessor in the dust. The issue here was caused by hype created through premature marketing; the actual gain in performance wasn't quite so strong for the majority.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB Specifications

Let us have a glance at the figures for the 5060 Ti. It boasts 4608 CUDA cores, a 6% increase from the RTX 4060 Ti. While the core bump is trivial, the big upgrade is the memory bandwidth. Because of GDDR7, the 5060 Ti has 448 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is a significant upgrade from the 208-288 GB/s of the 4060 Ti models. As reported in previous reviews, the 4060 Ti performance was often hamstrung by its memory bandwidth, especially in memory-bound tasks. This boost in the 5060 Ti is sure to show in better game performance in games that heavily utilize VRAM and bandwidth.

Though this memory upgrade, the 5060 Ti remains generally less powerful than the RTX 4070 as a whole. The 4070 boasts more cores and a higher overall bandwidth. This serves to further ensure that the 5000 series, particularly on this tier, is more of a refresh than an entirely redone generational release. If you already possess a current RTX 40 series card, the 50 series might not be an attractive upgrade to you.

ASUS Prime RTX 5060 Ti 16GB: Card Design

We tested the Prime edition of ASUS for the purposes of this review. The design is consistent with other ASUS Prime cards we've tested – it contains three 90mm fans in a clean, all-black shroud. The GeForce and Prime logos appear in white, giving it a stealthy, professional look without annoying RGB lighting. It features a big thick metal backplate with pass-through to assist considerably with airflow. The card also includes an uncomplicated Dual BIOS switch to toggle between Quiet and Performance modes.

Connectivity includes the standard display outputs: three DisplayPort 2.1 connectors and one HDMI 2.1 connector. A major blessing for builders and upgraders is the power requirement: the card only requires a single standard 8-pin PCIe power connector. This is a major advantage, facilitating easier cable management and providing even those with slightly older or lower-wattage PSUs (approximately 500W) some means of using the card without significant problems.

Power Consumption and Temperatures

Power draw, in terms of consumption, is extremely low for the 5060 Ti. Under synthetic stress testing, it drew around 150 watts. Remarkably, in some specific games, power draw may fall slightly higher, to 170-175 watts. That is slightly anomalous in that stress tests should typically represent maximum draw, but it's within parameters expected operation for a GPU. Overall, the draw is low, indicative of its ability to operate with a modest 500W power supply, and having some headroom.

Temps were kept in check all the way through with the ASUS Prime model. Even when loaded hard and with manual overclocking turned on, the card's temperature never exceeded 60 degrees Celsius. Nice. Thanks to the low power usage of the card and the large, effective cooler design. The construction quality and cooling ability of this model are just amazing.

Overclocking Potential

We also experimented with overclocking. By increasing the power limit to 110% and raising the core clock by 300 MHz and the memory clock by 700 MHz, we gained around a 7% increase in performance. This is decent but isn't quite so good as we have found with some of the other 5000 series cards, like the 5070 or 5070 Ti, which had a more close to 10% increase. The overclocking potential here is good but not excellent.

Gaming Performance Benchmarks: 5060 Ti (16GB) vs 4060 Ti (8GB)

Key Note on Comparison:
Keep in mind that the comparison data here is between the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB. Ideally, we would compare 16GB models directly to each other, but the 8GB 4060 Ti was the equipment available for this review. The results, especially in memory-intensive games, will show a wider gap than a 16GB vs 16GB comparison would. Be aware of this limitation when looking at the data.

The test rig used a high-end CPU to minimize bottlenecks and focus primarily on GPU performance.

Throughout our test suite, the RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) enjoyed an average 15% performance lead over the RTX 4060 Ti (8GB). This overall average needs to be weighed against the above remark regarding the 8GB limitation.

Individual Game Results:

• A Plague Tale: Requiem (2K): The 5060 Ti was roughly 18% ahead. A respectable jump, but not as fast as the 4070. At 4K, it was between 9% and 25%, due to increased memory bandwidth.
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2K/4K): A demanding game, but the difference was approximately 11% at both 2K and 4K – a relatively minor difference.
• Counter-Strike 2 (4K): Witnessed a fair increase, with the 5060 Ti being 20% better.
• Cyberpunk 2077 (2K): The 5060 Ti shone brightly here, 38% more powerful and even outpacing the 4070 in this specific test. At 4K, the lead was 47% over the 4060 Ti (8GB). When Ray Tracing is turned on, however, the lead switched to the 4070 since it had more RT cores. At 4K with Ray Tracing, the 4060 Ti (8GB) struggled horribly due to memory constraints.
• Dying Light 2 (2K): The 5060 Ti was 22% faster and just a stone's throw behind the 4070. They were effectively neck-and-neck at 4K, except the 4070 was two frames ahead. Ray Tracing still favored the 4070 but the 5060 Ti still enjoyed a 19% advantage over the 4060 Ti (8GB) at 4K with RT, where the 8GB card struggled considerably with memory.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2K): The 5060 Ti was merely 11% quicker. When driven to 4K, the difference widened by a bit to 15%, though the 4070 was considerably faster.
• Horizon Forbidden West (4K): The 5060 Ti rendered around 73 FPS and was 19% quicker compared to the 4060 Ti (8GB), demonstrating again the limitation of 8GB VRAM at 4K. This reading (11-20%) was repeated repeatedly across many games.
• The Last of Us Part I (Memory Intensive): Highly memory-hungry game. The 5060 Ti was 50% faster than the 4060 Ti (8GB). This wide difference is primarily due to the memory shortage of the 8GB card in this scenario. At 4K, the difference was 9%, and the game even crashed on the 8GB card.
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (2K): The 5060 Ti trailed by 13%. Under 4K, the difference was 18%.
• Resident Evil 4 Remake (2K): The difference was 18%, though texture settings had to be dialed back on the 4060 Ti (8GB) to prevent crashes. Under 4K, the difference expanded to 21% for the 5060 Ti.
• Stalker 2 (2K): The average of the 5060 Ti was approximately 50 frames, a 13% better strength. At 4K, the game would crash on the 8GB card. This further supports the problem with high-priced 8GB cards – they just don't possess sufficient memory for being future-proofed, particularly at higher resolutions or settings.
• Starfield (2K): The difference was minimal at 10%. At 4K, the difference widened to about 13%.
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Generally accepted as a good reference point for sheer compute performance. The 5060 Ti was 19% faster. At 4K it ranged from 9% to 23%.
• The Witcher 3 Next-Gen (Ray Tracing): Blackwell architecture seems to be preferred by this game. The 5060 Ti was 24% more efficient than the 4060 Ti (8GB) at 2K. At 4K, the performance difference widened to 40%, perhaps because the 8GB 4060 Ti hit VRAM ceilings.

Testing the ASUS Prime Model

The 16GB ASUS Prime version of the 5060 Ti that we tested is, in all honesty, flawless in terms of build. Like we said, the cooling is excellent, the materials feel premium, and the card itself is quiet, almost silent under load. Its non-RGB, stealth design is also aesthetically pleasing for those who desire a more professional or low-key build.

Conclusion and Overall Assessment

Overall Assessment: A Capable, But Unexciting, Refresh (16GB Version Only)

The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is a good graphics card. It's not revolutionary or particularly exciting compared to the leap seen in some previous generations, but it's also far from a bad performer, especially if you factor in the 16GB VRAM. Old as it might be, our review is based entirely on the 16GB variant – we'd actively advise against purchasing the 8GB variant for modern gaming if it's significantly over budget prices.

It performs flawlessly as a choice for 1080p high refresh rates, soothing 60+ FPS gaming at 2K, and higher refresh rates at 2K via DLSS technologies.

And that concludes our deep dive into the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB gaming performance. We hope the breakdown assists your decision.

Thank you for reading along.