1060 or 480?

[Charlise]

Which is better between the tow when it comes to gaming? I have watched a lot of videos but still can't decide between the two I will pair it with An i5-4590 and 16gbs of ram.

 

[gussrtk]

give a little bit more info.... 480-4gb? 1060 3gb?

1060 will produce nicer graphics, but 3gb vram is pretty lean. 480 4gb would give you more bang for the buck.

if it's the upper scale ones you are talking about such as 480 8gb and 1060 6gb then just got for the 1060

 

[Karadjgne]

The 480 and 1060 butt heads in most applications, but where the 1060 wins, it wins by a larger margin than when the 480 wins, so is the slightly stronger card overall. This applies to both sets, the lower ram and higher ram. But both will pretty much max out settings of all most every game at 1080p, so it boils down to preferences. Team Green or team Red. AMD has greater ability to crossfire as any board with dual slots is crossfire capable. You'll need a more expensive board to run sli, and the 1060 itself is non-sli capable, so crossfire is an option with the 480. Nvidia tends to have more stable drivers and less compatability issues. Nvidia has gpu accelerated physX, amd cards rely on the cpu for physX functions. Amd usually requires a larger psu vrs nvidia in the same gpu bracket. Etc...

Each has benefits and drawbacks, the card for you will be the one whose benefits apply to you the most.

 

[kansaw]

Both cards will play 1080p at max game setting with dx11 and dx12 and either windows 7 or windows 10. Great cards!

DX11 will eventually die, as did DX9 (and other versions). Many new interesting features coming with DX12 over the next year+. Recommend future proofing with RX480.

See the November 2016 issue of Maximum Computing for testing of top 10 cards for price/performance. RX480 4GB wins hands down. I personally like the 8 GB version for the faster vram.