Gameplay Performance – 1080p
On this page, we will look at the standard gameplay performance without enabling any special extended ray tracing options. However, note that several games we are using have ‘always on’ ray-traced calculated lights, and thus are ray-traced ‘always on’ games; in the mix, we will point those games out below. Those games below are: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Doom: The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Kingdom Come Deliverance II, and Star Wars Outlaws. Otherwise, all games are tested in native resolution as well as upscaled performance using the relative “quality” upscaling option.
We will be focusing on the 1080p performance on this page, but 1440p will be tested later in this review. Due to the fact of the GeForce RTX 5060 being a budget-tier video card, we may lower game settings as necessary to try and find the best ‘playable’ experience, but we will also push the GPUs hard to see what happens when pushed to the max. Note that for the video card comparisons, the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT and ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition are factory overclocked video cards, while the Intel B580 and AMD Radeon RX 7600 are reference spec video cards. Our main goal today is to see how much of an upgrade in performance the GeForce RTX 5060 is over the previous generation GeForce RTX 4060, and the competition cards equivalent to this same series and price range.
Alan Wake 2
In Alan Wake 2, we are running at the game’s highest settings, and the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC delivers a very playable experience at 1080p at nearly 70FPS average native resolution. That’s great news, and allows the game to play very smoothly. It appears that the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC offers a very worthy 30% upgrade in performance over the previous generation GeForce RTX 4060, both cards have the same 8GB of VRAM capacity, but the RTX 5060 is 30% faster, which surpasses every video card here. Even compared to the Intel Arc B580 (which does great btw), and the Radeon RX 7600 XT, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 16% faster.
Black Myth: Wukong
For Black Myth: Wukong, we are going to test two game settings because this game is so demanding. First, we wanted to push the GPUs to the max by trying out Cinematic Quality at 1080p, and well, we can see that no video card is playable at native resolution, or even with upscaling. However, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 35% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, and it is the fastest card in this very demanding quality mode, but let’s turn it down to something more playable below.
There we go, that’s a lot better, turning the game down to “High” quality settings. This game is now playable on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC at “High” 1080p at native resolution above 60FPS, and the game is smooth. We can see that the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is the only video card playable as well, for the others, you’ll have to use Upscaling at 1080p, but not the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 27% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and 7600 XT.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, like Black Myth Wukong, we really wanted to max out the GPUs and see what would happen when we pushed them. Well, at Epic quality, none of the video cards are playable at native resolution; however, only the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is actually playable with Upscaling enabled at very smooth performance. At Epic quality, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 42% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, which is very good in terms of raw performance upgrade. It’s about 28% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT.
When we lower the game down to “High” image quality, we find it is very playable on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC at native resolution 1080p, no need for upscaling, and it is the only video card to do so. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 43% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, which is a very good performance upgrade lift for a new game from the previous generation. It’s also 28% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is cake for the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC, easily producing the fastest results and playable performance at “Ultra” game settings at native 1080p. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 34% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and 22% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT. Intel Arc B580 does very well in this game, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 17% faster than it.
Doom: The Dark Ages
DOOM: The Dark Ages plays very well on the new MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC compared to the previous generation. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is able to play at native resolution 1080p on the “Ultra Nightmare” quality setting, which is the highest game setting. Even at native resolution, it’s averaging above 70FPS, so the game is very smooth. This means the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 36% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, which is respectable, and 58% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT. Intel Arc B580 also does well in this game, but MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC beats it also by 38%.
Horizon Forbidden West
If there was one game that gave us a little bit of stuttering at 1080p with the highest game settings, it was Horizon Forbidden West, but this was true for both 8GB cards. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is playable at 1080p native resolution with the highest settings, but it wasn’t the smoothest one of the bunch; the Intel Arc B580 and Radeon RX 7600 XT were with their increased VRAM capacity. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was only 16% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, limited in this game by its VRAM capacity at maximum game settings. The option here would be to lower the game settings to allow native resolution to be smoother. Intel Arc B580 is a surprising performance card for this game. That said, MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was playable with framerates this high, and AMD Radeon RX 7600 struggled the most with its 8GB VRAM capacity, absolutely dropping the ball, severely hurting FPS performance.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
In Indiana Jones, we were limited to running no higher than “Medium” settings, even at 1080p, due to a VRAM limitation. This game won’t run above “Medium” unless you have a 12GB card or higher. At medium quality settings, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC ran very well and had the highest performance. It was 29% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and 43% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT. Intel Arc B580 also did well in this game, but MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 32% faster.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
In Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, we were easily able to run at “Ultra” quality preset at 1080p and native resolution with smooth performance upwards of 70FPS. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 29% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, and 40% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT. Intel Arc B580 also did very well in this game, but MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 24% faster.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
In Stalker 2, we wanted to push the game’s settings as high as possible to push the GPUs first, so here we are running the Epic quality setting at 1080p. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is the only video card to give us 60FPS at 1080p Epic native resolution, so the game was playable. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 21% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, clearly bottlenecked by the higher game setting here, maybe even CPU bottlenecked to an extent.
In this graph, we have lowered the game setting to “High” and now this game is definitely smooth and playable on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 22% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, we think we are running into some CPU bottlenecks with this game. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 25% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT and 33% faster than Intel Arc B580.
Star Wars Outlaws
In Star Wars Outlaws, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is the only video card to give us over 60FPS at 1080p native resolution with “Ultra” settings. Now, that said, we think there is some VRAM limiting going on in this game on 8GB cards, even at 1080p. Note also that the upscaling performance doesn’t scale well because we are running into VRAM limitations on the RTX 5060. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 25% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060,40% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT, and 19% faster than Intel Arc B580.