Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super review: Changing the game, again

Nvidia promised something Super is coming well over a month ago, and on Tuesday, it finally delivered. Spoiler alert: The wait was worth it.

The $399 GeForce RTX 2060 Super and $499 GeForce RTX 2070 Super pack fresh graphics chips and other improvements that help propel speeds far beyond their non-Super namesakes, shoring up weaknesses found in the original RTX 2060 and effectively shifting the entire RTX 20-series product stack up a performance tier—all for at or near the same price as before.

These Ti-upgrades-by-another-name kick a whole lot of ass, and that’s with an even more powerful GeForce RTX 2080 Super variant waiting in the wings for a July 23 launch. The GeForce RTX 2060 Super and 2070 Super will launch on July 9, a week from now, in both the Nvidia Founders Edition models we’re reviewing today as well as customized versions by board makers like EVGA, Asus, and Gigabyte.

The timing’s no coincidence. AMD’s long-awaited Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT are scheduled to release on July 7 with all sorts of cutting-edge technologies, from PCIe 4.0 to an all-new “RDNA” graphics architecture to 7nm transistors. AMD showed its duo knocking off the non-Super RTX 2060 and 2070 in early teasers, and priced its cards to take on Nvidia’s entry-level ray tracing options.

Are the Super upgrades super enough to spoil Radeon’s big day? Let’s find out.

Specs, features, and price

Brad Chacos/IDG

Nvidia equipped all its Super variants with bigger, badder GPUs, and in the case of the GeForce RTX 2060 Super, a more robust memory configuration as well. The original $350 GeForce RTX 2060 will remain available, though Nvidia expects the new Super variants to replace the vanilla RTX 2070 and 2080 in the market. Our coverage of the Nvidia Super and FrameView benchmarking tool releases details how the rejiggered RTX 20-series product stack will look heading into the summer.

Before we dive into things, let’s hit you with the specs. Here’s how the GeForce…