I’m desperately hoping to review graphics cards without the FUG of the broader controversy (or cuckolded market conditions), but the RTX 50 series was not particularly supportive in that regard. This time, a cloud of sadness is taking a breath from Nvidia itself as it attempts to trade access for accusations of the volatile RTX 5060 preview and greater coverage of its Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) feature.
Such a scheme suggests a surprising lack of faith in the core, non-frame performance of the RTX 5060, when true and intentional. But now I’ve spent some quality time on my cards myself – in pure hardware terms, it’s obviously independent of preview shenanigans for Tats, but obviously not that bad. It is not equipped with the 1440p cut price, but it is fine for an affordable 1080p pusher. Enough. Reasonable. There are few catastrophes that require PR running offensive lightning to hide MFG numbers.
But what about the driver? now there is disaster. And it was not because the initial review software for news hacking didn’t beat the tournament, but when both of the GPUs released on May 19th were released, I was able to access the RTX 5060 Game Reader Driver 576.52 update. The real problem is that it is the latest in a series of GeForce driver updates that have invited all sorts of unlimited errors, including my benchmark regulars, into the old game.
Like Horizon Forbidden West and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, they began to suffer from persistent frame rate drops they had never exhibited before. Meanwhile, Metro Exodus crashes at startup and F1 24 runs bad More than Nvidia’s valuable DLSS frame generation. Even if these are not RTX 5060 hardware failures, these driver issues are worse vibes around the graphics card that should be, like the RTX 3060, and after a while, like the RTX 4060 before that.
After all, this is a bunch of more affordable RTX 50 GPUs, and therefore the least taxable entry points (literally if you’re over a tariff land pond). In fact, the very model here, the nicely compact ZOTAC GEFORCE RTX 5060 solo is one of several that actually sells on RRP/MSRP, i.e. £270/$299. This is a segregation by the 2025 standard, especially if most RTX 5060 TI models already have some QUIDs. If there’s nothing else, it’s at least worth it I’m watching For some advantages.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Review: 1440p Benchmark
Certainly, 1440p may not be the best place to start a search. After various reboots and reloads, I finally got some available data from the 576.52 driver, and at native resolution, the RTX 5060 will have a more visible and smooth frame rate than the RTX 4060 in most games – Metro Exodus and Total War: Warhammer III especially. However, they were then forced to drop behind the old and inexpensive Intel Ark B580, simply generating a single extra frame to the Forbidden West. This is a weak GPU that allows the RTX 5060 to hold a draw only on both the Cyberpunk 2077 and the F1 24.
The key to getting closer to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, a potential challenger in the second market, but if you specified a 1440p rig on your budget, you can save money for the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. Partly because VRAM differences have become apparent in this kind of Rez, especially Forbidden West. Playable evidence suggests that 8GB is fine for most 1080p games despite complaints from tech enthusiasts these days, but the extra 8GB on top of that could help cope with the harshness of Quad HD.
Also, if you want to participate in pass tracing, you will need to invest more. Upscaling high-quality DLSS never reached 30fps on my RTX 5060, and again discussed the RTX 5060 TI. MFG could potentially raise the numbers, but I felt that only twice as many CyberPunk 2077 could be played remotely. At 4X, the input lag was off the charts, and Alan Wake II had a similar sense of slidge (a noticeable blurry look at the camera movement).
DLSS 4 is still the best in the best Upscaler/Frame Gen packages on Biz, but as I say every time it appears, it doesn’t serve as a way to smooth out low performance. It’s great to shoot very fast games and make them look even smoother, but it really requires a normal rendered frame foundation to generate new ones. Without it, it’s the same gaming hardware as sitting in a rusty wheelbarrow with Ferrari colouring. You will pick up some good speeds on the right hill, but will not enjoy the sensation.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Review: 1080p Benchmark
Life is much better at 1080p. The B580 still beats the RTX 5060 on Horizon, but only in a few frames it’s on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB from Metro and Cyberpunk. Even Warhammer III or Assassin’s Creed Mirage are not that late.
Extremely, there are appropriate improvements to the RTX 4060, especially Metro and Cyberpunk. This is also maintained by the application of normal ray tracing. Adding the ultra-high quality RT effect to Metro, the RTX 5060 was only available at 77FPS, while the RTX 4060 managed 62FPS.
Do you consistently fill out the highest quality 165Hz monitor? No, but you don’t have to do it for under 300 pounds. it’s okay. Enough. Reasonably, I remember someone said. In VRAM, you will probably need to consider whether you want to upgrade to 1440p within the shelf life of this card, but for the time being, it appears that you can get away with 8GB at 1080p. For one thing, I didn’t see much of that jittering in the Forbidden West. For one thing, Sidejump to Doom: The Dark Ages – its always-on raytracing and ultra-nightmare-like setting produced a smooth, stutter-free 73fps, again beating the RTX 4060 at 60fps.
Path trace remains a questionable effort, mind. The RTX 5060 was able to craze to superficially playable 30fps plus in both games with this low Rez, but as MFG tried to make up for the difference, this was not enough to avoid the off-et flood of input delays. The Alan Wake 2 wasn’t as blurry as 1440p, but instead it felt even more keen, just having super high quality raytraced at 44fps.
To be fair, I found a use case for MFG from the Dragon Age: The Veilguard. With DLSS enabled for ultra settings, quality and all raytracing effects, Nvidia’s technology has changed to 88fps at 2x and 150fps with 4x overrides. Importantly, neither result was accompanied by excessive delay thanks to the fact that the RTX 5060 was already running the game to an acceptable extent without them.
It’s a shame that we’ll have to rerun the tests every time these new framerate collapse occurs to get these numbers. This isn’t because of recent bad patches on the Bioware side, and it doesn’t matter how the RTX 5060 itself is designed. Zotac’s single fan keeps your peak GPU at a wise 68°C. No, this was because of my lifelong enemies over the last two days: those 576.52 drivers.
There is a possibility that they could be fixed and even replaced by something worse, but at this point there were enough failed drivers that were typically inherent to the RTX 50 series, but there were enough failed game prep drivers that were broken so that it would be a problem for the entire GPU family. Sadly, it should include the RTX 5060. At Nvidia’s own hands, this is the most powerful and flexible 1080p graphics card in its price range. nevertheless What makes up the phrase “Yes, you should buy this” is disproportionately difficult to say out loud. Why would someone invest in components when the drivers they need are so likely to break the game?
This review is based on retail units provided by the manufacturer.