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GTX 1060 is faster than GTX 980, for just a wee bit more cash than AMD's RX 480.
Mark Walton
| Specs at a glance: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 | |
|---|---|
| CUDA CORES | 1280 |
| TEXTURE UNITS | 80 |
| ROPS | 48 |
| CORE CLOCK | 1,506MHz |
| BOOST CLOCK | 1,708MHz |
| MEMORY BUS WIDTH | 192-bit |
| MEMORY BANDWIDTH | 192GB/s |
| MEMORY SIZE | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Outputs | 3x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0b with support for 4K60 10/12b HEVC Decode, 1x dual-link DVI |
| Release date | July 19 |
| PRICE | Founders Edition (as reviewed): £275/€320/$300; Partner cards priced at: £240/€280/$250 |
What a difference a little competition makes. Nvidia was always going to release the GTX 1060,
just like it released the GTX 960, GTX 760, and GTX 560 before that.
But few could have predicted how soon it would appear after the launch
of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070,
the company's first Pascal-based graphics cards. Fewer still expected
it to be faster than a GTX 980, a card that launched at £430/$550 and
still sells for a hefty £320/$400 today.
We've got AMD to thank. Its aggressively priced RX 480—which
offers excellent 1080p and VR-ready performance for a mere
£180/$200—brought the budget fight to Nvidia in a segment where its
competitor has traditionally struggled. If you want the fastest, buy
Nvidia; if you want the best value, buy AMD. The GTX 1060 changes that.
For the first time in a long time, Nvidia has a mainstream graphics card
that can compete on price and performance with AMD.
[Update, July 20: This story has been updated below with information on the launch-day stock situation for the GTX 1060 in both the UK and US.]
The GTX 1060 is (mostly) faster than the GTX 980; it runs cool and quiet with a light 120W TDP; and best of all the GTX 1060 costs £240/$250.
Yes, that's more expensive than the GTX 960's launch price, continuing
Nvidia's tradition of jacking up prices this generation. And yes, AMD's
RX 480 is a wee bit cheaper. But with around a 15 percent boost in
performance on average for a 10 percent jump in price over the
comparable 8GB RX 480, it's good value, and it overclocks like a champ
with very little effort.
The GTX 970 might have been the people's
champion in the last generation, commanding an impressive five percent
share of the Steam audience, but I suspect the GTX 1060 will fill that
role, particularly for those still on older 600- or 700-series cards.
It's a beast at 1080p, VR-ready, and it does a great job with 1440p too.
For the average guy or gal who plays on a 1080p monitor and wants to
one-up their console gaming friends, this is the graphics card to buy.
But can I actually buy one this time?
That's not to say the GTX 1060 is flawless.
Once again, Nvidia is offering two models: the more expensive Founders
Edition, which costs £275/$300 and comes comes with a smaller version of
the shard-like reference cooler used on the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, and
partner cards, which will come with a range of different coolers and
overclocks. Both are said to be available on launch day (July 19, 2016).
But if the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 have taught us anything, it's that
despite Nvidia's promises of a hard launch, getting hold of its latest
and greatest graphics cards is easier said than done.
Even now, stock of the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070
is sporadic, and it's pretty much impossible to buy one at the
advertised retail price. Nvidia's Founders Edition was launched under a
questionable premise (guaranteed availability of reference designs over
the full life cycle of the product) and while that's fine for system
integrators and Nvidia, the cards have been a disaster for consumers.
Nearly all the cards sold by partners have been priced the same as, or
more expensively than, the Founders Editions. The early availability of
those cards simply served as a fantastic litmus test for partners: if
people were willing to pay Nvidia's high prices early on, why charge
less afterwards?
| GTX 1080 | GTX 1070 | GTX 1060 | GTX Titan X | GTX 980 Ti | GTX 980 | GTX 970 | GTX 780 Ti | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA Cores | 2,560 | 1,920 | 1,280 | 3,072 | 2,816 | 2,048 | 1,664 | 2,880 |
| Texture Units | 160 | 120 | 80 | 192 | 176 | 128 | 104 | 240 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 48 | 96 | 96 | 64 | 56 | 48 |
| Core Clock | 1,607MHz | 1,506MHz | 1,506MHz | 1,000MHz | 1,000MHz | 1,126MHz | 1,050MHz | 875MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1,733MHz | 1,683MHz | 1,708MHz | 1,050MHz | 1,050MHz | 1,216MHz | 1,178MHz | 928MHz |
| Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Speed | 10GHz | 8GHz | 8GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz | 7GHz |
| Memory Bandwidth | 320GB/s | 256GB/s | 192GB/s | 336GB/s | 336GB/s | 224GB/s | 196GB/s | 336Gb/sec |
| Memory Size | 8GB GDDR5X | 8GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 | 12GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 3GB GDDR5 |
| TDP | 180W | 150W | 120W | 250W | 250W | 165W | 145W | 250W |
Nvidia has crossed its heart, pinky sworn, and
given me its word that this won't be the case this time, but I'm going
to be keeping a very close eye on GTX 1060 stock. If I can't buy one at
the advertised partner price on launch day, expect a strongly worded
update to this review.
Update, July 20: As predicted, stock of the GTX 1060 is hard to come by. In the UK, Cards were briefly sold at £239 at Scan, Ebuyer, and Overclockers, but have since sold out. Overclockers is taking pre-orders, or will gladly sell you a Gainward version of the card that's priced at £10 above the MSRP. Scan also has a Palit card in stock at £250.In the US, NewEgg currently has stock of the Zotac GTX 1060 at the correct MSRP of $249, but orders are limited to one per customer. Be quick if you're interested: all other cards at $249 are sold out, with even the more expensive partner cards like the $329 Asus Strix on back order. Best Buy also had cards from PNY and EVGA at $249, but has also sold out. Some retail Best Buy stores may have stock on shelves if you're lucky.Meanwhile, availability of AMD's RX 480 is mixed. There's plenty of stock of the 8GB version of the card in the UK, and now at just £5 over the MSRP. That said, the cheaper 4GB card has all but disappeared from online stores, although Overclockers will sell you one for a hugely inflated £215—just £5 less than the 8GB version. In the US, neither Best Buy or NewEgg currently has stock of either version of the RX 480.Despite prices currently at £10 above the MSRP, the GTX 1060 launch is better than that of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Both of those cards are still selling for inflated prices online. Given that the cheaper 4GB version of the RX 480 still isn't an option at the moment, the conclusion still stands: the GTX 1060 is the card I'd recommend to most gamers looking for the best graphics performance without spending a fortune.And now back to the original story...
It's also worth noting that by comparison, the RX 480 has a had a far smoother retail rollout. Sure, AMD had a PR problem with the card's power draw—something
that's been somewhat resolved by a recent driver update—but
availability of the RX 480 has mostly been good. Right now it's possible
to buy an 8GB model at just £5 above the MSRP.
If you do decide to plump for the pricier
Founders Edition, you get a multifaceted shroud made out of aluminium,
as you do with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, although it's slightly shorter
at 240mm, and has an opaque black plastic section on top instead of a
clear window. Inside are two copper heat pipes along with a dual-FET
power-delivery system and custom voltage regulators. There's 6GB of 8GHz
GDDR5 memory, along with a 1,506MHz GPU base clock and a 1,708MHz boost
clock, just above that of the GTX 1070. Nvidia says the GTX 1060 will
easily overclock to 2GHz, and my tests confirm that. There's plenty of
headroom here for those who like to tweak.
Power is handled by a single six-pin PCIe
power connector, with the card sporting a 120W TDP (the GTX 980 had a
165W TDP), continuing the impressive efficiency improvements of TSMC's
16nm FinFET manufacturing process. Connectivity is handled by three
DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.0b port with support for 4K60 10/12b
HEVC decode, and one dual-link DVI port.
At the heart of the GTX 1060 is a new Pascal chip, dubbed GP106. Essentially, the 200mm²
GP106 die is a chopped-in-half version of the GP104 (as used in the GTX
1080 and GTX 1070), leaving five Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) made up
of 1,280 CUDA Cores and 80 Texture Units. Those are bound to 48 ROPs
and 1,536KB of L2 cache, while the 192-bit memory system results in
192GB/s of memory bandwidth. All are huge improvements over the GTX 960.
Of note is the fact that the GTX 1060 uses the full implementation of
GP106, leaving room for Nvidia to use a binned version of the chip for
cheaper cards.
GPU Boost 3.0, Fast Sync, HDR, VR Works Audio,
Ansel, and preemption (an alternative approach to asynchronous compute)
make a return too (check out our GTX 1080 review for
more details), as well as the ability to render multiple viewpoints in a
single render-pass. The latter is especially useful for VR where,
instead of rendering one eye and then rendering another, the GTX 1060
can render both viewpoints at once, drastically speeding up VR
performance. Not many games have implemented the feature just yet, but
Nvidia says that it's coming to major engines like Unreal and Unity
soon.
What's missing from the GTX 1060 is support
for SLI. Nvidia has been slowly dialling back support for multiple
graphics cards that use Pascal, starting with only allowing two-way SLI in games
(up to four work in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark), and then simply
removing it entirely in the GTX 1060. This is completely at odds with
AMD, which actively pitched using Crossfire when it launched the RX 480.
It's a shame Nvidia has removed SLI support, but given that scaling and
support varies drastically from game to game, going with a single card
has always been the better option, particularly at this mainstream price
point.
Performance (and why you should overclock)
| Test system specifications | |
|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-5930K, 6-core @ 4.5GHz |
| RAM | 32GB Corsair DDR4 @ 3,000MHz |
| HDD | 512GB Samsung SM951 M.2 PCI-e 3.0 SSD, 500GB Samsung Evo SSD |
| Motherboard | ASUS X99 Deluxe USB 3.1 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX1200i |
| Cooling | Corsair H110i GT liquid cooler |
| Monitor | Asus ROG Swift PG27AQ 4K |
Each game was tested at 1080p, 1440p, and UHD (4K) resolutions at high or ultra settings at stock speeds. I also overclocked the GTX 1060 to put Nvidia's 2GHz claims to the test, and I'm pleased to say that it passed and then some. With zero voltage or fan tweaks I was able to overclock the GTX 1060 to 2,025MHz on the GPU, and a hugely impressive 9,050MHz on the memory. Those that are willing to crank the fan speed or tweak the voltage are likely to get even more, while partner cards that add extra power delivery and better cooling will help things along.
On the synthetics and science side there's the standard 3DMark Firestrike benchmark (again, run across three resolutions), as well as LuxMark 3.0, CompuBench, and FAHBench (the official Folding@Home benchmark) to test compute performance.
As mentioned, the GTX 1060 overclocks well; if you've got a half-hour to spare, there are plenty of free performance gains to be hand. I saw around an eight percent boost across the board with my overclock, which was great for that 1440p games that didn't quite reach a locked 60FPS at stock speeds. That eight percent boost also means the GTX 1060 totally surpasses the GTX 980, although it's worth noting that the GTX 980 was a good card for overclocking too. Against the much older GTX 780 Ti, the GTX 1060 comes out on top too, with significant gains across most games.
But with the GTX 1060, Nvidia comes back fighting. This is a graphics card that's not only significantly faster then the RX 480, but uses less power, overclocks well, and offers a better VR experience to boot. Sure, you're paying a little more for the privilege—provided Nvidia and its partners actually get them in stores at the MSRP this time—but if I had to choose between the two, the GTX 1060 is the card I'd save up a little longer for and buy. It's simply a better, more ambitious product.
1080p gamers, would-be VR explorers, and e-sports players who crave hundreds of frames per second look no further: the GTX 1060 is the graphics card to buy.
The good
- Better performance than a GTX 980 makes for fantastic 1080p gaming
- Aggressively priced to take on the RX 480—and it's faster too
- Sharp reference cooler design
- 120W TDP
- Plenty of overclocking headroom
The bad
- No SLI support
The ugly
- Yet another pricey Founders Edition that stiffs partners and consumers
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