Gaming Performance – 1440p
Now we are cranking it up to 1440p, and look, we don’t expect the GeForce RTX 5060 to do amazing at 1440p, but if we lower game settings, it can be ‘playable.’ 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.
Due to the fact that 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. 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, running this game at the highest settings at 1440p wasn’t the worst experience; it was actually kind of playable, especially with Upscaling enabled on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 31% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, and 21% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT and 16% faster than the Intel Arc B580, which does better than the rest.
Black Myth: Wukong
Black Myth: Wukong had no chance at 1440p, we had to lower the game settings down to at least “Medium” quality. At Medium quality, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC can barely reach 60FPS average, to be honest, you’d want to enable Upscaling here for a smoother and faster performance and response for this game which then gets you up to 95FPS average on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 29% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600 XT and 45% faster than Intel Arc B580.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
We definitely had to lower the game settings for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC to be playable. By lowering it to “Medium” quality at 1440p, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was nearer to 60FPS, but for the ultimate performance smoothness, you’ll want Upscaling in this game at 1440p with Medium quality settings. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC though, is very fast, compared to the other cards, it is 30% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and RX 7600 XT, and 43% faster than Intel Arc B580.
Cyberpunk 2077
We were rather impressed with Cyberpunk 2077 on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC, and Intel Arc B580 at 1440p. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC allowed a playable experience at “Ultra” game settings at 1440p native resolution above 60FPS, and that is just impressive to see. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is a whopping 44% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, which is just really great. It’s also 26% faster than the Radeon RX 7600 XT and 7% faster than Intel Arc B580, which surprisingly does well in this game.
Doom: The Dark Ages
Despite what the framerates say, Doom: The Dark Ages was a struggle at 1440p on “Ultra” for every video card listed here, and Ultra isn’t even the highest settings. The problem was just overall performance drag, and stuttering that we could feel, especially on the 8GB video cards. Now, Upscaling did help, and the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was playable with Upscaling enabled. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 32% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, which isn’t bad.
To try and find higher performance, and get to 60FPS at native resolution, we dropped the game all the way down to the “Low” settings, yep, Low. Even at Low, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is the only video card to break 60FPS at 1440p; the other cards can’t dream of it. Even at Low settings, you’ll still want to run Upscaling at 1440p for this game to be playable. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 34% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060.
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Forbidden West was a mess on 8GB video cards at 1440p at the highest game settings; it simply was not playable on each 8GB video card here. The Intel Arc B580 and Radeon RX 7600 XT ran it the smoothest, even if the RX 7600 XT was slower, it felt smoother and more responsive. FPS-wise, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 15% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, but again, this is due to it being limited by VRAM; this is why the B580 can beat it here. Lowering settings is needed for this game at 1440p on 8GB cards.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
We first tried “Ultra” settings at 1440p, just to see what would happen. We were actually surprised to find it not terrible, though not playable, maybe with Upscaling. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC was 39% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, though, and so that’s very good, and we wanted to show the potential there with the settings cranked up. Intel Arc B580 is pulling through, but MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 11% faster.
By lowering the game settings to the “Medium” preset, this game is very playable at native resolution 1440p at 85FPS, which is great. The Intel Arc B580 also does great in this game; the two cards are very close. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 35% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Radeon RX 7600 XT, and 7% faster than Intel Arc B580.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
We also wanted to crank up Stalker 2 at 1440p just to see what would happen at Epic quality. Well, this game is not playable at native resolution, but the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC does hit 60FPS with Upscaling even on Epic. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 25% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Intel Arc B580.
By lowering this game to “Medium” quality, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC offers a playable experience at 60FPS at native resolution 1440p. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 24% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 and Intel Arc B580.
Star Wars Outlaws
We also wanted to push things to the max in Star Wars Outlaws by trying out “Ultra” settings at 1440p, and well, to no one’s surprise, it isn’t playable, even with Upscaling. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 30% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 with maxed out settings.
By lowering this game to “Medium” quality, we do find we can hit 60FPS at native resolution 1440p on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC. However, we are still VRAM limited, ultimately, and thus Upscaling pushes us over the framebuffer and causes degradation in performance with Upscaling, so you’d have to further lower game settings to get better performance. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8G GAMING OC is 21% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060.
Discussion (10 replies)
Join Discussion →Remember when a new gen would trounce the previous generation next model up? Now we're just happy if it's faster.
It is at least way better compared to the 4060 than the 5070 was to the 4070.
With transformer model, it seems that 1080 max can be tested & viable at 1080p quality & 1440p balanced
However vram limit applies in following scenarios even then
[*]Open world games that use nanite like tech
[*]Older games that are 'unoptimized' & will never be optimized in future
[*]Games with adjustable texture cache pool size
[*]Games with insufficient texture
As we discussed elsewhere; at $229 (adjusted for inflation) or less I have no beef with 8GB cards. $300 is too much IMO. Better off eating instant ramen and making your own coffee i.e. cutting the budget elsewhere, until you have enough to buy a 9060XT 16GB.
Anecdotally: DLSS 4 TM immediately impressed me when using it on a 3050 6GB in Spidey Miles Morales. I was not expecting to get the level of playability and visuals it managed in combo with a 5600X3D.
The complication is that with tariffs, TSMC monopoly & shrinking node gains entry level is now $350
AMD has 9060 xt 16gb at $350 msrp
As per RGT Nvidia will have 5060 super 12gb also at $350 msrp
Although recent super rumours have not mentioned the 5060 super, so it's launch could be around Q2 2026
But the wheels of time are slowly shifting. The 9060xt 8gb is available with "rebate coupons" for $250
AMD has also launched the 9060 non-xt at $280 but whenever it is made available for wider public, I expect msrp to be $250 (with 9060xt 8gb completely disappearing from the market)
Unfortunately the times of $200 or less GPUs has permanently passed. You can probably get the 55w 7400xt but strictly only if your PSU will not support a discrete GPU
On slight tangent, I expect the 9060xt 16gb to be a long lived card as AMD is moving to 3nm with RDNA 5 as per leaks. & if you look at the proposed bus width to CU ratio then a RDNA 5 128 bit bus card would have 48 CUs. No way AMD is selling that for less than $400. So the 9060xt 16gb will have to be the 'entry level' for a long time, I think
I am not ready to buy into that definition of entry level. Feels like gaslighting straight from the IHV's propaganda machines. IMO, entry level is the following cards - RTX 5050, but it needs a $25-$30 price drop from MSRP, then it's good. Same will go for the RX 9600, if it's over $230 it's too expensive. Even if it is almost as fast as the 5060. The B570 10GB completes the entry level round up.
5060 Super will dominate sales if there are models at that price.
As mentioned, I think $229 is the acceptable price for entry level given inflation. And the 7400XT should be popular for rehabbing the glut of used 8th/9th gen office PCs into gamers.
I don't follow data on BoM or any of that jazz anymore, I'll take your word for it.
DAPUNISHER the n00b :D
Honestly, that needs to be fixed!
More like "The bull :poop: artist".
Nope still a newb. ;)
Looks like I am wrong on Lisa Su not releasing a 'budget' gpu next gen — a 3060 12gb replacement could be incoming (using cheaper & slower lpddr6 ram)
We now have the full RDNA 5 lineup
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