Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti review: A great graphics card for PC gamers to grow into

For the right price

🏆 Review score: 4.0 out of 5

🏅 Editor’s Choice Award

Pros

• ✅ 🎮 Solid gaming performance across Full HD, QHD, and even 4K

• ✅ 📈 15% faster than the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti at a suggested lower price

• ✅ 🧠 Significantly more memory bandwidth

• ✅ 🍃 Relatively low power draw and heat buildup

• ✅ 🔨 Founders Edition is in the future to help push prices down

Cons

• ❌👎  8GB variant isn’t a great value for $50 off

• ❌ 🤑 Aorus RTX 5060 Ti Elite 16G is priced the same as a $549 Nvidia RTX 5070 Founders Edition

• ❌ ☝️ Only one $429 MSRP model available for now

The Shortcut Review

The Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti might look like the most toned-down Blackwell graphics card, but this GPU delivers surprisingly good 4K gaming performance. I was able to play old and new games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and GTA V Enhanced Edition at 4K ultra settings with maximum ray tracing effects. What’s more, this is Nvidia’s most power-efficient and cool-running GPU of the latest generation, making this an excellent pick for small form factor PCs.

Unfortunately, like all graphics cards released this year, starting pricing is only a suggestion. While this GPU should cost $429, the Aorus RTX 5060 Ti Elite 16G I’ve reviewed costs $549, making it as expensive as the Nvidia RTX 5070. Even with a 150MHz factory overclock, this GPU doesn’t perform nearly as well as the Nvidia RTX 5070, so this particular version of the RTX 5060 Ti is a hard sell without some kind of deal to bring it closer to its $429 price.

If priced closer to $429, the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti is a fantastic graphics card for starting PC gamers. The GPU can easily tackle Full HD, QHD, and even most 4K gaming needs. Its lower power needs and heat output also make it an excellent fit for starting PC gamers or building smaller rigs.

Full Review

⚖️ Hard sell. The Nvidia RTX 5060 delivers admirable performance in our benchmarks, but it comes with a heavy asterisk. The Aorus RTX 5060 Ti Elite 16G I tested costs as much as an Nvidia RTX 5070, but as you can see, there’s a significant performance gulf between them. The 2.722GHz factory overclock over this GPU’s standard 2.572GHz boost clock isn’t enough to justify the big price bump over a standard.

💰 Great value for the right price. Now let’s consider the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti’s performance if this GPU were closer to its proper $429 price. It delivers fantastic QHD and Full HD gaming performance. It falters a bit with 4K gaming, but it also punches up to outshine the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, a more expensive $599 graphics card. This would be a fantastically flexible graphics card for starting PC gamers if its price went down to $475-$450. Unfortunately, this price jump largely depends on how tariffs and the market play out this year.

🎮 4K capable. Beyond benchmarks, the Nvidia RTX 5060 16GB is a surprisingly capable GPU for 4K gaming. I was able to get Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Space Marine II, Doom: The Dark Ages, and South of Midnight all running at 4K ultra settings with maximum ray tracing at 60fps with just balanced DLSS – no multi-frame generation needed. The frame rate for all these games only dipped as low as 55fps, which is an impressive feat for this mid-range graphics card. The Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, meanwhile, struggles at 50fps with low ray tracing settings.

💵 $429 “starting price.” The Nvidia RTX 5060 16GB is marketed to sell for $429, but that’s really only a starting guideline MSRP for this GPU. The only version of this card even close available for $429 is the PNY RTX 5060 Twin Fan. The version I’m testing, the Aorus RTX 5060 Ti Elite 16G, is a much more expensive $549 card, which is precisely how much the more capable Nvidia RTX 5070 should cost. Nvidia also tells me that it will release a Founders Edition of the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti in the future, so that should also help sway the Aorus RTX 5060 Ti Elite 16G’s price to go down.

👬🏼Two variants? There are two versions of the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti, one with 16GB of VRAM and the other with 8GB of VRAM. Aside from the difference in VRAM, both versions of this GPU are identical down to CUDA cores, clock speeds, and memory bandwidth. This 8GB version is a little more affordable at $379 vs $429, which might be tempting, but spending a little more for the 16GB variant is better in the long run. If you’re really looking to save, consider the $299 Nvidia RTX 5060 and $249 Intel Arc B580.

🧐 Is 8GB of VRAM enough? While you can run most games at 4K Ultra at 60fps and not even hit the 8GB limit – I was able to do this with Doom The Dark Ages, GTA V Enhanced, and Red Dead Redemption 2 – other games will need more. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, for example, can’t run at ultra settings with only 8GB of VRAM. Video memory is essential for storing textures, shaders, and any visual data the GPU needs to recall to render graphics. The necessary amount of VRAM has only increased since ray tracing was introduced.

🔌 Lower power needs. The Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti is a far less power-demanding graphics card. It sips up to 180W of TDP, which is a far step down from the Nvidia RTX 5070 that slurps up to 250W. You also thankfully don’t need any 12-pin power converter; it just needs one standard eight-pin PCIe plug direct from your power supply.

🧊 Chill out. Thanks to running with far less power, the RTX 5060 Ti keeps much cooler than the rest of Nvidia’s RTX 50 series so far. I only saw this GPU’s temperatures peak at 69° C and average out around 58° C. Comparatively, the Nvidia RTX 5070 to Nvidia RTX 5090 ran as hot as 81° C.

Should you buy the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti?

Yes, if…

• ✅ ➕You want a graphics card that can level up in resolution with

• ✅ 🖥️ You’re looking for an upgrade from an Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti or older

• ✅ 🍃 You want a relatively power-efficient and cooling-running GPU

No, if…

• ❌ You’re only gaming at 4K (get the Nvidia RTX 5070)

• ❌ Finding a better deal is essential (get the Intel Arc B580 instead)

Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.