Review: PNY GeForce RTX 5060 Ti OC

Not everyone wants to spend $1,000 or more on a graphics card for their PC. I personally know way more people gaming on modest, midrange cards than I do people with the latest and greatest. The newly announced RTX 5060 Ti, with a sub-$500 MSRP, could be the card you've been waiting for to replace an aging RTX 20 or 30 Series card.

Unfortunately, that could also mean these cards are hard to come by. The higher-end 50 Series GPUs still require active effort to get a hold of, although they do seem to be trickling out to retailers. A lower price, plus weeks of low stock, might create a feeding frenzy.

If you're updating an older system that's tied to a 1080p screen at 120 Hz or less, you’ll be very pleased with the performance and ease of use. If you're building a new system in 2025, you should at least be targeting 1440p, and I think there are other cards that will have a longer life at that resolution.

Form Factor and Power

While the more expensive 50-Series GPUs have a new 12V-2x6 connector, the PNY card I have just takes a classic 8-pin connector, which should help with compatibility in older systems. One minor nitpick is that the power connector itself is way over by the bracket at the back of the case. It’s technically closer to the power supply, but it may cause some awkwardness in modern gaming cases, or force you to re-run the cable.

Physically, it's extremely compact, which you'd expect from a card that's trying to squeeze into random leftover cases. The two fans might get the job done, but it certainly sounds louder than three, although these fans are quieter than my case fans during regular use. It has a silent mode as well, and I found the fans didn’t run all the time, especially at 1080p, so I don’t imagine this will be a bother.

Performance

I turn the settings all the way up for these games, which is what most folks will do when they get a new graphics card.

I love talking about the Steam Hardware Survey, which lets users contribute their system data to help guide developers in optimizing their games. A key detail here is that over half of the people surveyed have a 1080p main screen, with less than 20 percent playing at 1440p. With this card, we’re comfortably above 60 frames per second at 1080p in every game in our suite, which is great news for that majority of gamers who can’t or don’t want to upgrade their screen.

It's a little bit tougher at 1440p, but far from unplayable, at least for now. As games get more demanding, and with frame generation proliferating, you may find yourself outpaced within a couple years.

The 5060 Ti stacks up against the other cards basically where you'd expect performance-wise, but it's important to remember this is both the 16-GB variant and an overclocked model. The performance is just good enough for consistent 1080p at 60 fps that I expect you’ll have to compromise on settings with the 8-GB models. I’ll wait until I have them in hand to make a firm conclusion, but I imagine that is the lowest-performance card in the 50 Series that will be acceptable for modern games.

Frames for Free

I’ve discussed Nvidia’s new multiframe generation tech in the other GPU reviews, which uses machine learning to create extra frames between the “real” rendered frames. On the high-end cards, multiframe generation was the only way to achieve high-refresh 4K gaming, but on this card it’s more useful for getting consistently smooth gameplay at high-refresh 1080p, or getting over 60 fps at 1440p.

In Cyberpunk 2077, I was able to turn all the settings up except Path Tracing, and set Ray Tracing to “Psycho” and use Frame Generation to get up over 60 FPS. I imagine most people will turn it on as they tinker, see a huge boost to performance without a meaningful hit to the image quality, and use it forever.

I don’t blame you for following their lead, and I think that with cinematic, single-player games in particular, you’ll have a great experience. If you play a lot of fast-paced shooters or twitchy games, you’ll probably want to drop your settings instead.

Anecdotally, the sentiment in my gaming nerd circles is that people aren't even remotely interested in paying over $1,000 for a graphics card. Even if GPUs were closer to their suggested retail price, they don’t want to spend that much to get a system up and running. Frame generation could be the thing to squeeze some more life out of these cards while still saving some cash, even if it’s technically a compromise. If you already own a decent 1080p card, there likely isn't a reason to upgrade, but if your older RTX 20 or 30 series card is on the fritz, and you can snag of of these for retail, it's a worthwhile gaming companion. Otherwise, check out our list of the Best GPUs for even more options.