NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Review and Teardown – Effizient, surprisingly fast, but not with 8GB!

1 - Technische Daten und wichtige Einführung zum Speicherausbau 2 - Testsystem und Equipment 3 - Teardown: Platine und Kühler 4 - Materialanalyse und Wärmeleitmaterialien 5 - Gaming: Full-HD 1920x1080 Pixels (Rasterization Only) 6 - Gaming: WQHD 2560x1440 Pixels (Rasterization Only) 7 - Gaming: WQHD 2560x1440 Pixels, Supersampling, RT & FG 8 - DLSS4 und MFG: Cyberpunk 2077 im Detail 9 - DLSS4 und MFG: Alan Wake 2 im Detail 10 - Leistungsaufnahme über alle Einsatzbereiche und Effizienz 11 - Lastspitzen und Netzteilempfehlung 12 - Takraten und OC, Temperaturen, Geräuschentwicklung 13 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit

NVIDIA is now officially releasing the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti onto the end customer market, which means that the previously theoretical discussions about features, positioning and market strategy are now being put into practice. The classification of this card within the existing portfolio is likely to depend largely on how well it can hold its own against its direct predecessors and competitors in real-world scenarios. However, in view of the specification profile and the known limitations – particularly with regard to the 8 GB version – no exaggerated expectations should be placed on its performance.

Nevertheless, the RTX 5060 Ti could be relevant for a certain target group. Users who deliberately avoid the high-end segment because they cannot rationally or practically justify the extra price for top models may find an efficient and potentially overclockable alternative here. Especially from the perspective of upgrading older cards such as the GeForce RTX 3000 series or AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series, there is the opportunity to get into the latest technologies such as DLSS 4 and improved ray tracing units without breaking the bank. The decisive factor here will be the extent to which the new architecture can realize the performance advantage with lower energy requirements.

The recommended retail price (RRP) of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is USD 379 for the 8 GB version and USD 429 for the 16 GB model. At its market launch, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti was offered in an 8 GB version for 399 US dollars, while the 16 GB model was priced at 499 US dollars. This results in a nominal price reduction for both versions in direct comparison, with the 16 GB version in particular being significantly cheaper than its direct predecessor at 429 US dollars. While the 8 GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti is within a price range that is becoming increasingly critical in terms of features and memory, the 16 GB version finally offers the combination of capacity, throughput and architectural advantages that many users had already expected from the RTX 4060 Ti – but now at a significantly lower price.

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The question of efficiency under real load conditions also remains interesting, as I can already spoil some positive things in advance. If it turns out that the RTX 5060 Ti delivers solid performance with moderate consumption and at the same time offers greater scope for manual optimization, it could establish itself as an economically attractive option for cost-conscious users. It would thus appeal specifically to those users who value modern functions but deliberately forego maximum performance – whether for price reasons or due to the limited relevance of high-end performance in their everyday applications. I’ll come back to the possible but in a moment.

Today’s test deliberately uses the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Gaming Trio from MSI, a model that is already moderately overclocked at the factory and offers around 2 to 3 percent more performance than a reference card according to MSRP specifications. This is intended to exploit the potential of high-quality board partner designs without losing comparability with near-series cards. And it was also about how far you can take such a card with OC.

Important preliminary remarks on memory expansion and the clamshell process

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is available in two memory variants – with 8 GB and 16 GB GDDR7 – with the smaller version in particular again giving rise to criticism. A memory expansion of just 8 GB is no longer considered up-to-date in 2025, even in the mid-range, especially as modern games in WQHD resolution (2560 × 1440 pixels) regularly place significantly higher demands on memory capacity. This applies not only to the pure amount of data, but also to the way in which textures, shader caches and frame buffers are managed. Too little memory expansion inevitably leads to more frequent swapping to the slow system memory, which results in noticeable performance losses and inconsistent frame times.

The decision not to test the 8 GB variant is by no means only editorially motivated, but simply limited by availability. Neither Nvidia itself nor its board partners were able (or rather willing) to provide this configuration as a test sample at all. The manufacturers themselves have apparently recognized that this variant is hardly competitive in practical scenarios and are therefore avoiding making it appear in public reports. As a result, almost all the tests available to date refer exclusively to the 16 GB version, which is something you should definitely bear in mind.

The GeForce RTX 4060, which was again benchmarked in these benchmarks and also only has 8 GB of VRAM, provides a clear example of the problem of limited memory. Even in WQHD resolution, this card regularly reaches its limits when it comes to memory expansion. It is noticeable that Nvidia is trying to cushion the situation on the software side. The memory requirement is artificially reduced through targeted driver optimizations – usually by lowering texture resolutions and other detail levels early on. In The Last of Us Part One, for example, it can be observed that the graphics settings are automatically reduced in order to avoid stutters due to a lack of memory. Although these measures have a stabilizing effect, they also mean that the actual graphics quality lags behind what would have been possible on technically better equipped hardware.

This is precisely the central problem with the RTX 5060 Ti with 8 GB: an objective comparison with the 16 GB version is hardly possible if technical limitations in the background are compensated for by measures that are not openly communicated and the FPS figures are therefore still very similar. For less tech-savvy buyers, this creates the deceptive impression that both variants are identically powerful apart from the memory – especially if price comparison portals or retailers do not provide clear information on the memory configuration. Unfortunately, the risk of making the wrong decision is correspondingly high.

Both versions of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti use GDDR7 memory with a capacity of 2 GB per chip and rely on a 128-bit wide memory interface consisting of four 32-bit channels. The 8 GB version is simply equipped – one memory chip per channel – while the 16 GB version uses two chips per channel thanks to the clamshell process, i.e. one on the front and one on the back of the board. This doubles the storage capacity without changing the effective bandwidth, as there are still only four physical channels available. The available throughput therefore depends solely on the memory clock and the bus width, but not on the number of modules.

In contrast, the GeForce RTX 5070 uses six real 32-bit channels, which gives it a 192-bit interface. It also uses 2 GB GDDR7 modules, but achieves a nominal memory capacity of 12 GB. Although the capacity is lower than the 16 GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti, the effective memory bandwidth is significantly higher due to the wider interface. This not only allows a higher data rate, but above all has a positive effect on the efficiency of access in memory bandwidth-limited workloads, such as in high resolutions with active ray tracing or in very texture-intensive scenarios.

The advantage of the RTX 5060 Ti in its 16 GB configuration compared to the 8 GB variant is therefore the higher memory capacity, which may be relevant for future titles with large texture packages or extensive streaming usage. The serious disadvantage, however, is that this larger capacity is not flanked by a wider connection. The memory throughput remains at the same level as the 8 GB version, meaning that the increase in capacity only has a positive effect when large amounts of data are actually required but do not need to be moved simultaneously at high bandwidth. In addition, although the clamshell method saves space due to the double connection per channel, it is not loss-free from a technical point of view. Signal integrity deteriorates due to longer conductor paths and more complex switching processes between the chips connected in parallel. Although the impact on latency is low, the validation effort increases.

The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti with the GB206-300 in direct comparison to the previous model

Compared to the RTX 4060 Ti, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is a technically significantly advanced mid-range graphics card whose improvements are manifested in several key aspects. The new card is based on the Blackwell architecture (GB206), while the RTX 4060 Ti is still based on the previous Ada-Lovelace architecture (AD106). The number of CUDA cores has been increased from 4,352 to 4,608, as has the number of RT and Tensor cores. At the same time, the clock frequencies have also increased moderately, which boosts pure computing power in all areas.

The introduction of GDDR7 memory, which is connected to the RTX 5060 Ti with an effective data rate of 28 Gbps, is particularly significant. Despite the memory interface still only being 128 bits wide, this results in a nominal memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s – an increase of more than 55% compared to the RTX 4060 Ti, which only achieves 288 GB/s with GDDR6 at 18 Gbps. The memory configuration can be configured with either 8 GB (one module per channel) or 16 GB (two modules per channel using the clamshell method). The throughput remains constant despite the higher capacity, as the memory channels remain the same width and number. The 16 GB version is only more future-proof due to the additional VRAM, but not in terms of transfer performance.

Another technical advance of the RTX 5060 Ti is the support of PCI Express 5.0. While the RTX 4060 Ti is connected with PCIe 4.0 x8, the new generation also uses eight lanes, but benefits from the doubled bandwidth per lane. The resulting maximum bidirectional data rate thus increases from around 16 GB/s to around 32 GB/s. Even if this advantage hardly comes into play in many gaming applications, it can become relevant in memory-critical situations – especially during swapping processes.

The fact is that the RTX 5060 Ti has been improved in almost all technical parameters compared to the RTX 4060 Ti. The introduction of GDDR7, the higher bandwidth, the modernized architecture and PCIe 5.0 support make it a much more modern GPU. The question of whether 8 GB of VRAM will still be sufficient in 2025 is decisive for the practical relevance of the respective variant. While the architecture is making great progress, the version with reduced memory expansion remains a clear bottleneck in this respect.

The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Gaming Trio from today’s test has three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and one HDMI 2.1a port on the slot panel. This means it covers all common monitor connections and supports resolutions up to 4K with high refresh rates and variable frame rate technologies such as G-Sync or HDMI VRR.

MSI uses the new 12V 2×6 connection, which is increasingly being used in more powerful models.