Galax GeForce RTX 2060 Super EX Review

Name: Galax GeForce RTX 2060 Super EX
Brand: Galaxy

W1zzard

on Jul 24th, 2019,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Galaxy

(14 Comments) »

Introduction

Earlier this month, NVIDIA released it GeForce RTX Super series graphics cards that are designed to go up against the Radeon RX 5700-series "Navi" graphics cards. Since then, AMD has launched their Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT, which we thoroughly reviewed. NVIDIA designed the RTX 2060 Super to beat the RX 5700 without stepping on the RTX 2070's toes, while the RTX 2070 Super uses the larger 13.6 billion-transistor "TU104" silicon to compete with the RX 5700 XT.

NVIDIA carved the original RTX 2060 out of the "TU106" silicon by disabling a quarter of its memory subsystem and enabling just 1,920 out of the 2,304 CUDA cores available on the silicon. The original RTX 2070 maxes out this chip. The new RTX 2060 Super has the full 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus with which it talks to 8 GB of memory. NVIDIA also upped the CUDA core count to 2,176, just a TPC short of the RTX 2070. The RTX 2070 Super is carved out of the larger "TU104" silicon by enabling 2,560 out of the chip's 3,072 CUDA cores, while leaving its memory subsystem untouched.

During our reviews of the original RTX 2060, we noticed that almost all PCBs had pads for 8 memory chips, which leads us to believe that the RTX 2060 Super was part of NVIDIA's plans all along. It wouldn't surprise us to find out that most custom-design RTX 2060 Super graphics cards are based on the existing RTX 2060 PCBs with all memory pads populated and only the very premium overclocked models using the larger PCB meant for the RTX 2070. With their custom-design boards, NVIDIA allows their partners to innovate not just with cooling, but giving their cards a small degree of factory overclocking and increases to the board power limit.

In this review, we take a look at the Galax GeForce RTX 2080 Super EX, which is actually the first graphics card from Galax we review in a decade. Unlike other vendors, Galax isn't asking for a price premium over the RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition, yet includes features like idle fan stop, a better cooler, and an overclock out of the box.

GeForce RTX 2060 Super Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX Vega 56	$300	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$280	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$450	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RTX 2060	$340	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1080	$500	2560	64	1607 MHz	1733 MHz	1251 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5X, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Galax RTX 2060 Super EX	$400	2176	64	1470 MHz	1695 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 5700	$350	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$500	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$700	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RTX 2070	$480	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 5700 XT	$400	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$500	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit

Packaging and Contents

You will receive:

Graphics card
Documentation
2x PCIe power cable

The Card

Galax is going for a straight-edged, understated look with their card. The dominant color is "black" with some white highlights. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate. Dimensions of the card are 29.0x12.5 cm.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.0 and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports. Compared to the Founders Edition, one DisplayPort and one USB-C connector have been removed, probably to reduce cost.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz with a single cable or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.

At CES 2019, NVIDIA announced that all their graphics cards will now support VESA Adaptive Sync (aka FreeSync). While only a small number of FreeSync monitors have been fully qualified with G-SYNC, users can enable the feature in NVIDIA's control panel regardless of whether the monitor is certified or not.

The board uses one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 300 watts of power draw.

The GeForce RTX 2060 Super does not support SLI.

These voltage-measurement points are located near the top edge of the card; they are partially covered by the backplate, though.

Disassembly

Galax's cooler uses four heatpipes and provides cooling for the VRM circuitry and memory chips, too.

The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt-modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use them in your articles or forum posts.