PC gaming is getting crazy expensive, at least if you want the latest and greatest hardware. So why not take local hardware out of the equation? I’ve been bullish on cloud game streaming alternatives like Xbox Game Pass and Nvidia GeForce Now as ways to play the newest high-end games at a discount.

And yet Nvidia allowed specific, cherry-picked reviewers to have early drivers anyhow if they agreed to a borderline unethical deal: they could only test five specific games, at 1080p resolution, with fixed graphics settings, against two weaker GPUs (the 3060 and 2060 Super) where the new card would be sure to win.

We run the RTX 5060 benchmarks through our graphics card test suite, to see if 8GB of VRAM can still carry this new $299 GPU to victory.