Conclusion
The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G video card is our first look at NVIDIA’s new GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GPU, which launched on March 16th, 2025. Therefore, this review today comprises our launch review of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti gameplay performance and first look at the generational performance uplift versus the previous generation GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.
The NVIDIA MSRP for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is twofold: the 16GB GDDR7 VRAM capacity model has an MSRP of $429, and the 8GB GDDR7 VRAM capacity model has an MSRP of $379. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G that we reviewed today is GIGABYTE’s GAMING OC model card, with a 16GB GDDR7 VRAM capacity buffer, with an MSRP of $529.99. It carries a price premium, but offers a custom design and features with a factory overclock.
The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti sits just below the GeForce RTX 5070 on the hierarchy, and for this generation, similar to the last, NVIDIA is launching an 8GB and 16GB model. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is based on NVIDIA’s GB206 die and manufactured on TSMC N4P 4nm. It has 4,608 CUDA Cores, 144 5th Gen Tensor Cores, 36 4th Gen RT Cores, 48 ROPs, and 144 Texture Units. The GPU Boost Clock is set at 2572MHz. Memory consists of 8 or 16GB of GDDR7 on a 128-bit memory bus at 28Gbps, giving it 448GB/s of memory bandwidth.
For this generation, GIGABYTE has several flavors of GeForce RTX 5060 Ti video cards, in both 8GB and 16GB models. At the very top is the AORUS ELITE line, with only 16GB models. Just down below that is the line we are looking at today, the GAMING OC, where there will be 8GB and 16GB models. These are factory overclocked models, with custom designs using GIGABYTE’s WINDFORCE cooling. The factory overclock on our GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G is 2647MHz, which is a boost over the reference clock of 2572MHz.
Game Performance
To test the gaming performance of the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G, we focused on the 1080p gameplay experience. This was done so that we get a feel for the performance as it compares to the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti at a more reasonable resolution, which won’t bottleneck it as much, and also allow for higher framerates. When using Ray Tracing, 1080p will be a common resolution for actual playable framerates with these GPUs, and we can still run into VRAM limitations at 1080p as well in modern games. It isn’t always about ‘textures’, but rather game assets. Game assets are simply larger in today’s games, and consume more VRAM, regardless of the resolution, and features like DLSS Upscaling and Frame Generation, and Ray Tracing also consume more VRAM.
Let’s first focus on the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB FE comparison in raster performance, at native resolution. In Alan Wake 2 the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G was 17% faster, in Black Myth Wukong it was 18% faster, in Cyberpunk 2077 it was 26% faster, in Horizon Forbidden West it was 30% faster, in Indiana Jones it was 15% faster, in Kingdom Come Deliverance II it was 20% faster, in Stalker 2 it was 15% faster and in Star Wars Outlaws it was 10% faster. If we take the average of that, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G comes out to an average of 19% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB FE.
Now let’s take a look at the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB FE comparison in ray tracing performance, at native resolution. In Alan Wake 2, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G was 18% faster, in Black Myth Wukong it was 16% faster, in Cyberpunk 2077 it was 15% faster, and in Star Wars Outlaws it was 8% faster. If we take the average of that, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G comes out to an average of 14% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB FE. Overall, it looks like the Ray Tracing performance improvement generation to generation is less than the Raster performance for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.
We also found the GeForce RTX 4070 to generally be faster than the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G in both Raster and Ray Tracing performance, and more so in Ray Tracing. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G seemed to trail the GeForce RTX 4070 in Raster between 2-13% in performance, and in Ray Tracing between 12-17% slower than the GeForce RTX 4070. There was some back-and-forth between the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G and the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT in performance. Mostly, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G was either on par with it or generally faster. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G destroyed the Radeon RX 7600 XT.
Final Points
GIGABYTE has an appealing design with the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G graphics card. The multi-layered visual textured surface and color scheme give it a unique feel and look. The video card isn’t oversized, and has a very compact feeling to it, though most of it is heatsink, with screen cooling air pass-through, as the PCB is very small. GIGABYTE’s WINDFORCE cooling and server-grade conductive gel seem to do the trick quite nicely. This actually lends to its incredible thermals and temperatures we experienced with it, with very low GPU and VRAM temperatures.
The one feature, or gimmick, you could even say that it has is the sliding side plate. This lets you either have the GIGABYTE logo lit up in RGB or slide it over for a standard-looking RGB graphic. This isn’t exactly that exciting; it’s not really a feature that justifies an added cost for the card, but it is something unique GIGABYTE offers and allows user customizability in that sense. The features that really stand out to us the most is the custom VRM and power delivery designs, heatsink and shroud designs, cooling ability, power headroom for overclocking, DUAL BIOS, single 8-pin power connector, and simplicity in design.
Analyzing the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GPU performance, it becomes clear that the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti does offer a performance uplift over the previous generation GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, but perhaps not as much as one would hope, gen-to-gen. The performance difference is game-dependent, and we find that Raster has a larger boost over Ray Tracing performance, gen-to-gen.
It is also clear that VRAM framebuffer capacity matters, and for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is preferred for the best experience in today’s games, and moving forward. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GPU is capable of decent performance, as long as it isn’t burdened by the capacity of the VRAM. The GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G has appropriate VRAM to allow the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GPU to provide a great gameplay experience at 1080p and 1440p with DLSS Upscaling.
Overall, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G is a solid graphics card, though priced well above NVIDIA MSRP, it claims a price premium. In these uncertain times of pricing, you will simply have to look at what current pricing is at the time of purchase, and compare that with other cards around that similar price point to find the best value. If you are in the market for a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB video card, the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 5060 Ti GAMING OC 16G is more than a worthy option in that category.
