Gameplay Performance – 1080p Ray Tracing
On this page, we will look at the extended ray tracing options available in some games. We will be focusing on the 1080p performance on this page, but 1440p will be tested later in this review. Because the GeForce RTX 5060 is 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
We know the GeForce RTX 5060 is not going to obtain the highest quality ray tracing performance, so we’ll be using lowered RT game settings. Here we are running the lowest “Low” preset RT option in Alan Wake 2 at 1080p, and well, no card is playable. Only with Upscaling is the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC playable at smooth framerates. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 29% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, and interestingly, performs on par with the Intel Arc B580, which has strong ray tracing performance.
Cyberpunk 2077
We are going to try two ray tracing settings in Cyberpunk 2077, the first one above is at “Ultra” ray tracing preset, just to see what happens. Well, this game isn’t playable at native resolution, but it is with Upscaling enabled, which is neat. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 22% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060. Intel Arc B580 once again does very amazingly with RT performance, but the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 19% faster.
There we go, that’s more like it, by dropping to the “Medium” RT preset, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is playable at native resolution 60FPS at 1080p. It is 34% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, and 21% faster than Intel Arc B580, which surprisingly does well again with RT.
Star Wars Outlaws
In Star Wars Outlaws, we are running the lowest NVIDIA RTX Direct Lighting RT option on “Low.” Even on Low, the game is not playable at native resolution, but the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is playable with Upscaling enabled. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 20% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Intel Arc B580.