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GTX1060-Feature

Nvidia'due south GTX 1080 and 1070 may win the overall operation contest, only they don't stand for the bulk of the GPU market. According to both AMD and Nvidia, they sell far more GPUs in the midrange than the luxury market. Today we'll be reviewing Gigabyte's GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6GB to come across how it compares with a range of electric current and previous-generation hardware from both AMD and Nvidia.

The GTX 1060 is a testament to the thought that less is more than. At first glance, this card doesn't look competitive compared with what both AMD and Nvidia take previously shipped. The 1060 has ane,280 cores, lxxx texture mapping units, and 48 ROPS (1280:80:48). Compare that to the RX 480, with its 2304:144:32 configuration, and it's obvious nosotros've got ii fundamentally dissimilar 14nm architectures in play. Even assuasive for differences in clock speed, AMD congenital a carte du jour that emphasizes texture throughput and memory bandwidth, while Nvidia's GPU focuses on pixel fillrate.

GTX1060-Specs1

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming we accept on the demote today has a maximum boost clock of 1847MHz in OC Style and a top clock of 1809MHz in Game Mode (go along in listen that Nvidia's Boost technology can exceed these clock speeds nether the right circumstances), while the RX 480 tops out at 1266MHz. The 6GB of retention is a step upwardly from previous 28nm GPUs at this cost point, but the retentivity bus is narrow, at just 192 bits. Total bandwidth for the GTX 1060 is 192GB/s compared with 256GB/southward of bandwidth for RX 480 and 224GB/s for GTX 980.

If you've read our coverage of the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1070, you'll recognize the GTX 1060's cooler and fan layouts. Both of the G1 Gaming GPUs pull air from within the example rather than through a blower, and cuts the number of fans from three on the GTX 1070 to two here. Otherwise, the two coolers are nearly identical. Both utilise heatpiped heatsinks, fans that spin in alternating directions, LEDs that lite upwards when the fans are stopped at idle, and an identical fan blade pattern. Power is provided by a unmarried eight-pin PCI Express connector for both the GTX 1060 and 1070. This is unquestionably overkill for the GTX 1060, which has a rated TDP of just 120W, but it could give the GPU a scrap more than oomph when overclocking.

Gigabyte-Crop3

Gigabyte offers a decent utility for handling overclocking and GPU color customization. See our GTX 1070 review for more details.

The Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1060 and G1 Gaming 1070 both use the same Xtreme Software Tuner, so I'll refer y'all dorsum to the GTX 1070 review if you have specific questions. Overall I quite liked the Xtreme Software Tuner — I find the UI easier and more intuitive to apply than EVGA's Precision 10, though this is a thing of personal gustation. You can customize the GTX 1060'southward visual effects and patterns the aforementioned mode you can with the GTX 1070.

The other matter the 1070 and 1060 share is support for Nvidia'south Turbo Boost 3.0, and that's worth touching on again. While Gigabyte specifies a maximum boost clock of 1809/1847MHz depending on your chosen fashion, that'southward non the GPU's bodily max clock.

GPU-Boost-3

Nvidia'southward Boost 3.0 allows the GPU to burst higher than its actual listed heave clock, sometimes by extensive margins. Our tests prove that the GTX 1060 G1 Gaming can actually hit 1949MHz and hold this clock under load, though it'll drop back to 1923MHz in some titles. This is a further five.5% overclock higher up listed clock.

Test setup, comparing points

All GPUs were tested with a Haswell 5960X eight-core CPU and an Asus X99-Deluxe motherboard. Nvidia's 368.81 and AMD's 16.seven.3 commuter were used for the appropriate cards. All of our power consumption figures were run using an Antec 750W eighty Plus Gold PSU, not the larger-but-less efficient Thermaltake 1200 eighty Plus we used for a number of older reviews.

Dissimilar the GTX 1070, the GTX 1060 faces multiple potential competitors from both Nvidia and AMD. Nosotros've compared the GTX 1060 against AMD'due south RX 480, as well as the older AMD Fury (now downwardly to as trivial as $310 due to toll cuts), Nvidia'southward own GTX 980, and the Hawaii-derived R9 390.

Hovering over any comparison of mod GPUs is the specter of street pricing, and this is where things get ugly. In theory, the RX 480 is a $240 GPU competing against a GTX 1060 6GB expected to offset at $250. In reality, the RX 480 has been bouncing around betwixt a low of $259 and spikes as high as $300. As we discussed before this calendar month, AMD's current GPU stack has skewed x-15% to a higher place list toll for most ever card and RX 480'south selling at the official SEP (Suggested E-tail Price) of $239 take been very difficult to find.

Equally of this writing, the RX 480 tends to sell for roughly $259, the R9 390 starts at $289, and the Sapphire Nitro Fury is $309. The Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is a $289 carte and tin can be purchased at that cost. That's a substantial disbelieve over the GTX 980, which typically sold for $450+ when Maxwell cards were Nvidia's top-end family unit. GTX 1070 cards are slipping towards their $379 MSRP simply haven't hit it however; the least expensive cards available today are $399.

Our price assay will focus on where these cards are priced today, but will acknowledge MSRP prices every bit well. We're focusing on 1080p with this coverage due to the popularity of that resolution and the fact that neither the RX 480 nor GTX 1060 are really 4K-capable GPUs. We've included the GTX 1070 as an example of a "halo" card, to illustrate how much additional performance an extra $100-$120 can buy you.

Benchmark results

Acknowledging 4K

4K is in a fleck of an odd spot right now, specially at this price point. AMD explicitly marketed the RX 480 every bit a GPU for 1080p to 1440p and our spot checks confirmed this. Historically, GCN GPUs accept scaled better at 4K than their Maxwell counterparts. The RX 480, in dissimilarity, does non, probably because of its 32 ROP limit and comparatively low pixel fill rate (the RX 480 is a 2304:144:32 pattern, while the R9 390 is a 2560:160:64 architecture). Whether any of these cards are good plenty for 4K depends a slap-up deal on how much item you lot are willing to cede for college resolutions. The minimum GPU we'd realistically recommend for 4K would be the GTX 1070, but that doesn't mean we can't go some useful mileage out of comparing the GTX 980 confronting the GTX 1060 to see if any bottlenecks in Pascal get apparent. If yous buy the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming, could the card's modest specs become an issue a few years from now?

4K-Perf

In a word: No. While we wouldn't recommend any of these GPUs for loftier-terminate 4K, yous aren't giving up operation by going with the GTX 1060 as compared with the GTX 980. The Strix Fury is faster than either card in every test, only concord that thought — nosotros're going to swing back around to talk near the Fury.

Power consumption

We mensurate load power consumption via Metro Last Lite Redux at 1920×1080 with Very High detail and SSAA enabled. We loop the benchmark three times and record our power consumption values during the third run to requite the card time to heat up.

GTX1060-RawpowerConsumption

The R9 390 draws more power than fifty-fifty the Asus Strix Fury, even though that card packs considerably more punch. HBM saves AMD a considerable corporeality of power. Let'south see what happens when we gene power efficiency into the equation and summate how many watts, on average, each GPU requires per average frame of animation.

GTX1060-PowerEfficiencyI adopt watts-per-frame to frames-per-watt considering it lets us talk nearly numbers that are larger than 1. In this chart, smaller numbers hateful the carte du jour is more than ability efficient. The Radeon Nano remains the most power-efficient GCN GPU AMD has always congenital and is within xc% of the GTX 1060'south absolute power efficiency. The GTX 1070 wins the overall power-efficiency prize.

Price / functioning ratios

The GTX 1060 has debuted in a crowded field of still-potent older GPUs and fresh competition from AMD's 14nm midrange. Both AMD and Nvidia have struggled to deliver their GPUs in quantity and at their official price points. Unfortunately for AMD, Nvidia has done a ameliorate chore of ensuring its midrange GPUs are available and hitting their toll targets. Nosotros uncertainty it'southward an blow that the GTX 1060 has come downwards to MSRP and so apace, given that it'due south also the only category where AMD is competing on 14nm at the moment, but we've got to make our recommendations based on what's happening in the market place today. Right now, the cheapest RX 480 you can buy is $259, not the $239 AMD targeted.

The Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is generally faster than the RX 480 across our unabridged suite of DX11 titles. The two cards are closest in Visitor of Heroes 2, where the GTX 1060 leads by three%, and uttermost autonomously in Full War: Rome two, where the GTX 1060 leads past 26%. The R9 390 offers stiffer competition, merely the GTX 1060 all the same leads the 28nm GCN GPU in all of our DX11 benchmarks, all while drawing much less ability.

The most interesting friction match-up at the $300 price indicate is between the Gigabyte GTX 1060 and the Asus Fury Strix. At $310, the Fury is just seven% more than expensive than the GTX 1060, and it offers higher performance in multiple games in our exam suite. While it doesn't win every DX11 criterion, it ties in COH2, Dragon Historic period: Inquisition, and Total War: Rome 2. Shadow of Mordor, BioShock Infinite, and Metro Last Light Redux are all wins for Team Ruby-red.

The RAM limitation on Fury makes this a tougher call than it might exist otherwise. All of AMD's Fury and Nano GPUs are limited to 4GB of RAM. That'southward fine for 1080p or 1440p today, but gaming memory requirements do tend to tick upward as time passes. Both AMD and Nvidia have started equipping GPUs in the $200 to $300 price segment with more 4GB of RAM, which implies they think larger frame buffers will matter to this price segment in the future.

If y'all're the kind of heir-apparent who buys a new GPU every 18 to 24 months, aren't especially concerned with ability consumption, and programme to spend those months gaming at either 1080p or 1440p, there'due south a good case to be made for the Asus Strix Fury. Its overall performance is proficient and the cost premium over the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is pocket-sized.

The GTX 1060 isn't without advantages of its ain, still. Its larger VRAM buffer ways there's less take chances a cutting-edge title will run into RAM trouble a year or two from now, its power consumption is lower, and information technology's a bit cheaper, at least in the US. If you program to keep your GPU for three to iv years and don't want to run into retentivity problems, the GTX 1060 may be the better long-term bet.

Equally for DirectX 12 and Vulkan, as much as I'm tired of typing this, it's withal hard to get a fix on the long-term functioning implications of these APIs. Tomb Raider's DX12 version is still quite Nvidia-friendly on Pascal cards. Other titles, similar Ashes of the Singularity and Doom, prove very strong results for AMD. I've a long-standing policy of recommending GPUs based on where the market is now, not what benchmark scores might show half dozen months from now, and while DX12 and Vulkan are coming forth nicely, DX11 continues to be the dominant PC API.

Conclusions

The Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming packs all of the features we liked about its GTX 1070 big brother in a lower price indicate. The card's modest stats hide a GPU with a hefty punch. Information technology's performance is equal-to or better-than the GTX 980 in every examination we ran, fifty-fifty at 4K, where we'd wait Maxwell to stretch its legs a bit more. The GTX 1060 is proof that specs don't e'er tell the whole story and it punches harder than you'd expect equally a consequence.

It'south besides a GPU that's difficult for AMD to lucifer. Fury's $310 price bespeak competes well against the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming on price and performance, but is limited to a 4GB frame buffer and draws considerably more power. Information technology's likewise a physically larger card, which can limit its usefulness in some cases (pun intended). If the RX 480 was reliably selling for $239, the $fifty price delta betwixt Polaris and this particular iteration of Pascal would requite AMD some animate room. As things stand, Nvidia and Gigabyte have staked out a very strong position for themselves in the midrange market. Nosotros're going to go along our eye on GPU prices as they continue to evolve, simply for now the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is in a form of its own.