Thinking of upgrading to this card, the EVGA 06G-P4-2066-KR GeForce RTX 2060 KO Gaming, 6GB GDDR6, Dual Fans, Metal Backplate (https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-06G-P4-2066-KR-GeForce-Gaming-Backplate/dp/B083GH7LXW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=RTX%2B2060&qid=1596236314&sr=8-1&th=1)  in hopes of taking my system to the Recommended settings. Will this card do that, I'm currently running a Radeon RX 580. Will I notice a increase in performance with the new card. Sorry for the silly questons but I know nothing about video cards. Thanks for all your help!

John Snyder Jr

Yes but really you should either go 2070 super or better for the significantly more hrsprs for vr  or wait for the 30000 series cards coming if you can.

Thanks for the suggestion CaptainNick but I really didn't want to spend that much money. 

John Snyder Jr

If you can fit it in the budget go for the 2060 super then, the extra vram will be super beneficial then. Either way it’s a significant upgrade from the 580, but most of the newer stuff you really want at least 8gb of vram especially moving forward for a couple years

I think I'd be inclined to look at GPUs which were sporting more than 6GB of VRAM, because it is below what MS have said was ideal. and even if they had not said this, I would still be of the opinion that more than 6Gb is a good idea. Don't forget that the specs Asobo have recommended, are for a bog standard, straight out of the box copy, with not a single expansion. And how long is this going to be the case for most people? Throw a PMDG 747 at it and you can expect those recommended specs to look a bit on the slim side.

Now it is true that the DDR6 VRAM of the card you are looking at will have a quick throughput, but any computer is only as good as its weakest link, so if that thing is shoving data around at a rate of knots, but the rest of the system is not similarly blessed in terms of speed, that's a recipe for a bottleneck, with a GPU which is also below the recommended numbers in amount of VRAM.

The official MS specs for video card VRAM are 2Gb minimum, 4Gb recommended, and 8Gb ideal. Now keep in mind that Asobo are still working on optimising things to match up with this published spec of set ups, and so the chances are that as ever, they're a bit on the optimistic side, as they always are in marketing blurb. There's a good reason for that too. No game developer is going to want to put out a statement that says: 'you'll be needing a 12Gb GPU to even have a prayer with this baby!', because people would see that and say, well forget that!

So, I would take that list of 2, 4 and 8Gb requirements, and regard 8Gb as the target you should at least be aiming for on something in the same ballpark price-wise, because I think 8Gb of DDR5 will do better than 6Gb of DDR6. And one with even more than 8Gb if you can find something like that without having to sell a kidney to fund it. And whilst you are at it, I'd say having 32Gb of RAM is probably not a bad idea too if you can manage it.

Expect people to disagree with this assessment, and they may have a valid point, but I think what I've said is not a bad suggestion.

Edited August 1, 20205 yr by Chock

What card would you recommend with 8GB? I have 32GB or RAM already 🙂

John Snyder Jr

That's up to you really, I'm sure you'll find something suitable of an equivalent price to the one you were looking at which fits the bill. I really don't like recommending specific hardware which is expensive; if someone bought something that didn't do the job based on a suggestion I'd made, I'd feel bad.

Just pushed the button on a MSI - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card - Black/Gray, about $150 more than I wanted to spend but hey it's MSFS 2020 🙂

John Snyder Jr

10 minutes ago, John Snyder Jr said:

Just pushed the button on a MSI - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card - Black/Gray, about $150 more than I wanted to spend but hey it's MSFS 2020 🙂

John Snyder Jr

Good choice. And you also did the right (if always slightly painful) thing of seeing something a bit better which is really what you want, and which if you had not bought you'd end up wishing you had, and going for that. 

Did pretty much the same kind of thing with some RAM I bought today; was umming and aahing about whether or not to go for the more expensive larger capacity and theoretically better choice. In the end thought, well if I don't, I'll wish I had, so I pulled the trigger on the pricier one.

I wait for the gtx 3080 if it is more than 30% faster than my gtx 1080TI if not, i stick with what i have, i will not pay 1500$ for a gtx 2080TI