Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Review

[Slumy__57]

We're not necessarily getting bad or good deals here in America on either card, they are both priced at exactly what their manufacturers said they would be released at. We're simply seeing a huge shortcoming in availability due to the popularity of both of the cards, and a few versions of the card are taking advantage of this on both sides by jacking up the prices.

 

[araczynski]

for all the hubbub about DX12 and AoTS, I'm not seeing the 480 "destroying" the 1060 like fanboys have been claiming. 2fps? please.

 

[rhysiam]

For that 4GB RX 480, there will be 1060 (or whatever they call it) 3GB version which will be priced at 200-220.

We don't even have official pricing on the 3GB variant yet, and a number of sites are reporting that it'll have a lower 100W TDP, with disabled resources and paired back clock speeds to match. Sounds more like a 1050 than a 1060. I also think 3GB is on the lean side for a modern GPU of this calibre. You could make the same argument about the 4GB RX 480, but for me personally, I'd be okay with 4GB, but not satisfied with just 3.

The 1060 (there is very little difference with pascal between reference and custom PCBs for overclockability) clocks to over 1800 by itself. with a little effort, it gets to over 2000. Memory easily overclocks to over 10Gbps.
that's about 17-18% overclock on core and over 20% on memory.
The typical RX 480 overclock is around 1400MHz on core - ~14%.
It looks like the 16nm TSMC is better than 14nm of the global foundries (and samsung - remember the iPhone CPUs ?) in terms of power efficiency, which supposed to provide more overclock.

Yeah, the OCing numbers look amazing until you look at the actual FPS gains in games which are much less impressive. I've commented on this above. Also, the stock cooler on the RX 480 is pretty terrible (on this we agree!). If you're forced to look only at stock cooling there's no question that the value of the 1060 goes up. But it's too early to talk about 480 overclocking until we've got a good sample of non-reference cards reviewed. You're speculating that TSMC is better, and you might be right, but remember AMD is already giving up almost 400mhz on the base clock and AMD obviously worked really hard (and arguably failed) to squeeze this card into a ~150W TDP requiring a single 6 pin. I could just as easily speculate that AMD have held the RX 480 GPU back considerably and once it has the appropriate cooling and power delivery it will OC better than a 1060. In the end of the day we won't know until we get a good sample of reviews with OCing.

 

[cdrkf]

@ n0ns3ns3 - you're talking nonsense ;-)

Already posted the cheapest UK prices , the cheapest 1060 is nearly 30% more expensive than the cheapest 480 , my maths is absolutely b fine thanks.
No interest in the American market at all , all over Europe that price difference looks to be the norm.
Americans are getting good deals on the 1060 & bad deals on the 480 - I have no idea why though.

I do not give a ... about greedy sellers in europe
Cards are supposed to cost about the same, if they are not - it's not the manufacturers to blame 😉
Where I live (not US and not EU) a custom 1060 is 15 euro more than reference RX 480. Which means "RIP AMD sales" in my country 😉

Personally, at the same price I'd still take an RX480 simply for the *massive* performance lead it has in DX12 / Vulkan (which Toms conveniently omitted most of the relevant titles- invariably due to nVidia press sample rules).

Power consumption and thermals, while better on the 1060 are hardly an issue on the RX480. It's a 160w card- so any reasonable PSU should run it and it's not going to require huge amounts of additional cooling into a case. I can't see that the 40w difference between the cards really amounts to any significant real world differences in build (you'll need a similar PSU for the 1060, it's not like that is bus powered vs the RX 480 needing external power for example). The reference temps didn't look bad on the RX480 either, and whilst it was slightly louder, it's still a quiet card. I'm sorry but I don't view this as the same argument nVidia had when the GTX 970 (at 160w) matched the R9 390 (at 280w). That was a serious choice- you'd arguably need to spend quite a bit more on PSU and cooling fans to accommodate a 390. That's just not the case here.

I guess the sensible answer (as with all graphics cards) is to look at the titles you play most and which card offers the best value / performance in those. Moving forward though I see the RX480 being the better buy- the numbers we are getting under DX12 and Vulkan are superb, and essentially nVidia aren't going to have the hardware capability to exploit that until Volta in 2018 when they *finally* add in hardware async (funny nVidia claim on the one hand it isn't necessary and can be implemented via software, while on the other are adding it into future hardware eh?)...

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The biggest downside of the 1060 is that it throttles at such low temperatures, about 75C. I personally don't like it when GPUs or CPUs can't take high temperatures. Maxwell could go into the 90s. At least the 1070 and 1080 are around 85C moreso.

 

[17seconds]

DX12 is not only asynchronous shading / computing but a lot more. But to be honest, I miss real DX12 games, using the complete feature sets to give an objective answer for the future. If a good implementation appears, I'm also very interested in to check out the scaling of such mid-range cards on different, also slower CPUs and to see, which advantages AMD or Nvidia cards may have or not. THIS is the one and only way to make any kind of prognosis.

Have you been following the latest non-"controversy" regarding the 3D Mark Time Spy demo? Well apparently some AMD fans didn't like that it performs well on Nvidia in DirectX 12, even better than AMD. Turns out, Time Spy may actually be a good implementation of DirectX 12 and a good indication of things to come, rather than these AMD developed titles people currently quote (i.e. Hitman, see below).
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/3DMark-Time-Spy-Looking-DX12-Asynchronous-Compute-Performance

And to Andrew: You already have Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman to balance out Project Cars, what more do you need?


And in case anyone still thinks Hitman is a great benchmark, think back a few years, nothing has changed.

 

[cdrkf]

DX12 is not only asynchronous shading / computing but a lot more. But to be honest, I miss real DX12 games, using the complete feature sets to give an objective answer for the future. If a good implementation appears, I'm also very interested in to check out the scaling of such mid-range cards on different, also slower CPUs and to see, which advantages AMD or Nvidia cards may have or not. THIS is the one and only way to make any kind of prognosis.

Have you been following the latest non-"controversy" regarding the 3D Mark Time Spy demo? Well apparently some AMD fans didn't like that it performs well on Nvidia in DirectX 12, even better than AMD. Turns out, Time Spy may actually be a good implementation of DirectX 12 and a good indication of things to come, rather than these AMD developed titles people currently quote (i.e. Hitman, see below).
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/3DMark-Time-Spy-Looking-DX12-Asynchronous-Compute-Performance

And to Andrew: You already have Ashes of the Singularity and Hitman to balance out Project Cars, what more do you need?


And in case anyone still thinks Hitman is a great benchmark, think back a few years, nothing has changed.

Time Spy shows a larger uplift on GCN than it does on Pascal- so I'm not sure what the 'controversy' is all about. The only thing it does highlight is nVidia have *improved* their DX12 capability with Pascal, but it's still relying on software whereas GCN has dedicated hardware.

Also you provide that graph as 'proof' of, not sure what to be honest, it's well established that the R9 290 / 290X were faster cards than the original 780 and Titan- and is why nVidia were prompted to release a full uncut GK100 die for the 780ti at a much reduced price vs the Titan (and the 290 / X being faster was based on an average of games). That chart looks fairly accurate for the time.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

For that 4GB RX 480, there will be 1060 (or whatever they call it) 3GB version which will be priced at 200-220.

We don't even have official pricing on the 3GB variant yet, and a number of sites are reporting that it'll have a lower 100W TDP, with disabled resources and paired back clock speeds to match. Sounds more like a 1050 than a 1060. I also think 3GB is on the lean side for a modern GPU of this calibre. You could make the same argument about the 4GB RX 480, but for me personally, I'd be okay with 4GB, but not satisfied with just 3.

The 1060 (there is very little difference with pascal between reference and custom PCBs for overclockability) clocks to over 1800 by itself. with a little effort, it gets to over 2000. Memory easily overclocks to over 10Gbps.
that's about 17-18% overclock on core and over 20% on memory.
The typical RX 480 overclock is around 1400MHz on core - ~14%.
It looks like the 16nm TSMC is better than 14nm of the global foundries (and samsung - remember the iPhone CPUs ?) in terms of power efficiency, which supposed to provide more overclock.

Yeah, the OCing numbers look amazing until you look at the actual FPS gains in games which are much less impressive. I've commented on this above. Also, the stock cooler on the RX 480 is pretty terrible (on this we agree!). If you're forced to look only at stock cooling there's no question that the value of the 1060 goes up. But it's too early to talk about 480 overclocking until we've got a good sample of non-reference cards reviewed. You're speculating that TSMC is better, and you might be right, but remember AMD is already giving up almost 400mhz on the base clock and AMD obviously worked really hard (and arguably failed) to squeeze this card into a ~150W TDP requiring a single 6 pin. I could just as easily speculate that AMD have held the RX 480 GPU back considerably and once it has the appropriate cooling and power delivery it will OC better than a 1060. In the end of the day we won't know until we get a good sample of reviews with OCing.

The thing is, that I've seen people modifying the RX 480 with liquid cooling and still stuck at the same 1400MHz.
Some went with more advanced "more expensive than the card" solution and got 1500MHz. The LN2 experiment without temperature and power limits ended at 1700MHz. That says all about polaris overclockability
Don't expect custom cards to be shipped with over 1400Mhz - and those will be binned expensive cards.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

@ n0ns3ns3 - you're talking nonsense ;-)

Already posted the cheapest UK prices , the cheapest 1060 is nearly 30% more expensive than the cheapest 480 , my maths is absolutely b fine thanks.
No interest in the American market at all , all over Europe that price difference looks to be the norm.
Americans are getting good deals on the 1060 & bad deals on the 480 - I have no idea why though.

I do not give a ... about greedy sellers in europe
Cards are supposed to cost about the same, if they are not - it's not the manufacturers to blame 😉
Where I live (not US and not EU) a custom 1060 is 15 euro more than reference RX 480. Which means "RIP AMD sales" in my country 😉

Personally, at the same price I'd still take an RX480 simply for the *massive* performance lead it has in DX12 / Vulkan (which Toms conveniently omitted most of the relevant titles- invariably due to nVidia press sample rules).

Power consumption and thermals, while better on the 1060 are hardly an issue on the RX480. It's a 160w card- so any reasonable PSU should run it and it's not going to require huge amounts of additional cooling into a case. I can't see that the 40w difference between the cards really amounts to any significant real world differences in build (you'll need a similar PSU for the 1060, it's not like that is bus powered vs the RX 480 needing external power for example). The reference temps didn't look bad on the RX480 either, and whilst it was slightly louder, it's still a quiet card. I'm sorry but I don't view this as the same argument nVidia had when the GTX 970 (at 160w) matched the R9 390 (at 280w). That was a serious choice- you'd arguably need to spend quite a bit more on PSU and cooling fans to accommodate a 390. That's just not the case here.

I guess the sensible answer (as with all graphics cards) is to look at the titles you play most and which card offers the best value / performance in those. Moving forward though I see the RX480 being the better buy- the numbers we are getting under DX12 and Vulkan are superb, and essentially nVidia aren't going to have the hardware capability to exploit that until Volta in 2018 when they *finally* add in hardware async (funny nVidia claim on the one hand it isn't necessary and can be implemented via software, while on the other are adding it into future hardware eh?)...

Both 480 and 1060 can do good 1080p and somewhat decent 1440p gaming. So for me, they are equal performance wise.
I'd go with nvidia for the shadowplay and cooler temperatures.
But l am not going to get any of them, I got my 1070 (for MSRP) for my needs and quite happy with it

 

[Samer1970]

I was expecting better results .. AMD is the better option for mid range cards... unless Nvidia lowers their price

 

[Samer1970]

For that 4GB RX 480, there will be 1060 (or whatever they call it) 3GB version which will be priced at 200-220.

We don't even have official pricing on the 3GB variant yet, and a number of sites are reporting that it'll have a lower 100W TDP, with disabled resources and paired back clock speeds to match. Sounds more like a 1050 than a 1060. I also think 3GB is on the lean side for a modern GPU of this calibre. You could make the same argument about the 4GB RX 480, but for me personally, I'd be okay with 4GB, but not satisfied with just 3.

The 1060 (there is very little difference with pascal between reference and custom PCBs for overclockability) clocks to over 1800 by itself. with a little effort, it gets to over 2000. Memory easily overclocks to over 10Gbps.
that's about 17-18% overclock on core and over 20% on memory.
The typical RX 480 overclock is around 1400MHz on core - ~14%.
It looks like the 16nm TSMC is better than 14nm of the global foundries (and samsung - remember the iPhone CPUs ?) in terms of power efficiency, which supposed to provide more overclock.

Yeah, the OCing numbers look amazing until you look at the actual FPS gains in games which are much less impressive. I've commented on this above. Also, the stock cooler on the RX 480 is pretty terrible (on this we agree!). If you're forced to look only at stock cooling there's no question that the value of the 1060 goes up. But it's too early to talk about 480 overclocking until we've got a good sample of non-reference cards reviewed. You're speculating that TSMC is better, and you might be right, but remember AMD is already giving up almost 400mhz on the base clock and AMD obviously worked really hard (and arguably failed) to squeeze this card into a ~150W TDP requiring a single 6 pin. I could just as easily speculate that AMD have held the RX 480 GPU back considerably and once it has the appropriate cooling and power delivery it will OC better than a 1060. In the end of the day we won't know until we get a good sample of reviews with OCing.

The thing is, that I've seen people modifying the RX 480 with liquid cooling and still stuck at the same 1400MHz.
Some went with more advanced "more expensive than the card" solution and got 1500MHz. The LN2 experiment without temperature and power limits ended at 1700MHz. That says all about polaris overclockability
Don't expect custom cards to be shipped with over 1400Mhz - and those will be binned expensive cards.

Wasting money to watercool mid range card is stupid . One should only watercool high end cards , for the extra price of the water block will put you in the price range of the better card nullifying the advantage altogether.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Wasting money to watercool mid range card is stupid . One should only watercool high end cards , for the extra price of the water block will put you in the price range of the better card nullifying the advantage altogether.

The people I posted above, were curios how far polaris can be pushed. They found the answer.

I water cool my cards for some time. Spent once ~70$ on GPU+RAM block and VRM block. can put it on most nvidia's x70, x80 and above cards and can fit in smaller form factors.
Less moving parts, heat is moved away from the case -> less airflow needed. Totally worth it for a quite cool operation. Though the most you get with cards that are 250-300watts (stock or overclocked).
Definitely going to keep it and the next upgrade will be targeting mini ITX.

 

[Lee Neighoff]

Where are DX12 reviews? Hitman DX12? Time Spy? 1060 gets rekt in DX12. Nvidia biased review again, also project Cars? How is this even a benchmark, obviously gimped for Radeons.

The GTX 1060 scores 100-200 points higher in Time Spy with async on, and even more with it off. The two trade blows in DX12 games, and the GTX 1060 takes some pretty substantial leads in DX11.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gtx-1060-leaked-benchmarks/
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/21.html

 

[refillable]

Sorry, but to be honest, testing CARS is very futile. We will never know how good it performs compared to competition. Please use another game ASAP.

 

[Samer1970]

Wasting money to watercool mid range card is stupid . One should only watercool high end cards , for the extra price of the water block will put you in the price range of the better card nullifying the advantage altogether.

The people I posted above, were curios how far polaris can be pushed. They found the answer.

I water cool my cards for some time. Spent once ~70$ on GPU+RAM block and VRM block. can put it on most nvidia's x70, x80 and above cards and can fit in smaller form factors.
Less moving parts, heat is moved away from the case -> less airflow needed. Totally worth it for a quite cool operation. Though the most you get with cards that are 250-300watts (stock or overclocked).
Definitely going to keep it and the next upgrade will be targeting mini ITX.

The water Pump and Radiator fans are Noisy ... Air cooled cards/CPU produce lower noise than water cooled PC..

Water cooling is for maximum benchmarks , not noise reduction ... I found Air cooling to be less noisy ... Especially with MSI cards and Noctua CPU coolers they are very silent .

you can make water cooling less noisy , but you will pay tons for expensive fans (Push/Pull) each expensive fan around $25 ... Thats $100 for fans only ... waste of money .

 

[n0ns3ns3]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

 

[Samer1970]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

not really , The Air cooler from Noctua comes with the expensive fans included in the price , The case fans are cheap because they dont need to be High Pressure fans , just silent air flow fans which are cheaper.

I use 140 fans , positive pressure design ( 4 total)

 

[n0ns3ns3]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

not really , The Air cooler from Noctua comes with the expensive fans included in the price , The case fans are cheap because they dont need to be High Pressure fans , just silent air flow fans which are cheaper.

I use 140 fans , positive pressure design ( 4 total)

Have you tried a custom liquid loop ? Air coolers are not there and will never be there.
My ambient is above 30C for 7-8 months a year. Air coolers rely on case flow, GPU + CPU generate a lot of heat which is locked in case. Can your overclocked GPU run at 40C on air ? can your CPU stay below 50 while gaming ?
Can you do that without jetplan with 4 fans ?

 

[Samer1970]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

not really , The Air cooler from Noctua comes with the expensive fans included in the price , The case fans are cheap because they dont need to be High Pressure fans , just silent air flow fans which are cheaper.

I use 140 fans , positive pressure design ( 4 total)

Have you tried a custom liquid loop ? Air coolers are not there and will never be there.
My ambient is above 30C for 7-8 months a year. Air coolers rely on case flow, GPU + CPU generate a lot of heat which is locked in case. Can your overclocked GPU run at 40C on air ? can your CPU stay below 50 while gaming ?
Can you do that without jetplan with 4 fans ?

lol , I know temps are better using Water Cooling this is no big secret .. I was talking about the noise/performance ...

 

[n0ns3ns3]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

not really , The Air cooler from Noctua comes with the expensive fans included in the price , The case fans are cheap because they dont need to be High Pressure fans , just silent air flow fans which are cheaper.

I use 140 fans , positive pressure design ( 4 total)

Have you tried a custom liquid loop ? Air coolers are not there and will never be there.
My ambient is above 30C for 7-8 months a year. Air coolers rely on case flow, GPU + CPU generate a lot of heat which is locked in case. Can your overclocked GPU run at 40C on air ? can your CPU stay below 50 while gaming ?
Can you do that without jetplan with 4 fans ?

lol , I know temps are better using Water Cooling this is no big secret .. I was talking about the noise/performance ...

Noise is also better if done right

 

[redgarl]

^ some people have to go back to school.
RX 480 = 240$ (MSRP)
GTX 1060 = 250$ (MSRP and there are cards at this price like EVGA)

That means that GTX 1060 is ~4.2% more expensive.
Even with the same performance, but with better overclockability, lower heat generation and better power consumption, it worth it

One is 8GB, the other one 6GB...

In that case I am using my super upper card and go for the 4GB since there is no use for more at 1080p and 1440p which these cards are aimed for.

That's get use to 200$ vs 250$... yeah, 25% more for a card that cannot match the RX 480 at DX12, multi-gpu and Vulcan.

 

[redgarl]

I have rads and pump and other parts for almost 10 years ...
Yes, i spent about 400-500$ on that setup, it is much quieter than air if done right.
Also performs much better.
For air cooling you need same expensive fans. i found that i need 6x120mm fans to have a decent airflow for overclocked system.

not really , The Air cooler from Noctua comes with the expensive fans included in the price , The case fans are cheap because they dont need to be High Pressure fans , just silent air flow fans which are cheaper.

I use 140 fans , positive pressure design ( 4 total)

Have you tried a custom liquid loop ? Air coolers are not there and will never be there.
My ambient is above 30C for 7-8 months a year. Air coolers rely on case flow, GPU + CPU generate a lot of heat which is locked in case. Can your overclocked GPU run at 40C on air ? can your CPU stay below 50 while gaming ?
Can you do that without jetplan with 4 fans ?

lol , I know temps are better using Water Cooling this is no big secret .. I was talking about the noise/performance ...

Noise is also better if done right

No because you have a pump and a fan...

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Yes I have fans... all of them are below 1000rpm

 

[Guest]

Why is project Cars included? Why is Doom not running with DX12? This seems like a very curiuos selection of games.

 

[kiniku]

This is a GTX 1060 review. Not an AMD 480 SLI comparo against a GTX 1070.