Despite launching just a week ago, Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 8GB struggles in numerous games. In-depth testing by Australian reviewer Hardware Unboxed reveals a stark difference between the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB and its 16GB sibling. Despite sharing the same "RTX 5060 Ti" moniker, unsuspecting customers drawn by the $50 savings could snap up the 8GB model, unaware of its limitations. Testing shows a significant performance drop-off, frame time stutters, texture pop-in issues, and in some cases game crashes.

Nvidia opted to not send any reviewers the 8GB cards, so Hardware Unboxed bought a unit for independent testing. Considering many RTX 5060 Ti owners won't upgrade for several years, 8GB will become increasingly restrictive, and there's only so much upscaling and frame generation can do.

Both RTX 5060 Ti models use the GB206 die with 4,608 CUDA cores and a 128-bit interface. The RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti 16GB may favor the latter in memory capacity, but our testing and current street prices show the RTX 5070 wins that matchup. Despite the lackluster gen-on-gen improvements, the RTX 5060 Ti is still no slouch, landing within 10% of the RTX 4070.

As decent as the 16GB model might be, it's almost a no-brainer that slapping a limited 8GB frame-buffer would gimp the RTX 5060 Ti heavily. That's a memo Nvidia seemingly didn't get — or filed in the trash can while talking up neural rendering.