WHAT IS THE NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060?
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is the graphics card that PC builders on a budget have been waiting for. Unlike Nvidia’s top-end GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 cards, however, the GTX 1060 faces competition from AMD in the form of the Radeon RX 480.
With competition comes aggression, and the GTX 1060 is far closer to the RX 480 in terms of price than most were imagining. It’s more expensive and more powerful – but is it worth it? As it turns out, if you have the extra cash then yes it is.
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 – TECHNOLOGY
The GPU is based on a new Nvidia chip, the GP106. The headline-grabbing GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards both used the GP104.
So as far as chip design is concerned, instead of taking the form of a “binned” GP104 – a chip that wasn’t good enough to be a 1080 or 1070 – the GTX 1060 is a completely different product.
However, there are things that remain. The GTX 1060 is powered by the same Pascal architecture as its more expensive siblings, and therefore benefits from the 16-nanometre manufacturing process that enables Nvidia to cram more transistors on a given piece of silicon – without increasing power consumption and heat to the same degree.
The GTX 1060 has 1,280 CUDA cores performing the bulk of the graphics legwork, which is more than the 1,024 found on the previous-generation GeForce GTX 960. Intriguingly, the GTX 1060 has a higher boost clock speed than its bigger brother, the GTX 1070, topping out at 1.7GHz.
With a different chip design and fewer CUDA cores, the clock speed won’t translate to better performance, but the GTX 1060 should be able to play games at Full HD and 1440p – and that’s before we get to overclocking.
Away from the graphics chip itself, the GTX 1060 has 6GB of GDDR5 memory. This is 2GB less than the AMD Radeon RX 480, but still more than enough for today’s modern games at Full HD and 1440p resolutions. The memory runs at 8Gbits/sec, which is standard these days for GDDR5 memory.
Nvidia quotes the card as consuming 120W of power – significantly less than the RX 480’s quoted 150W – so the GTX 1060 should fit nicely into builds where power consumption and heat are limiting factors, such as home-theatre PCs and games console replacements.
The GTX 1060 is Nvidia’s cheapest VR-ready graphics card, which could prove to be a big selling point for those who are considering buying a headset in the next year or so.
NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 – DESIGN AND CONNECTORS
I was sent in the Founders Edition of the GTX 1060, which is a more expensive, Nvidia-built version of the card. In all likelihood this won’t be the version you end up buying, since Nvidia’s partners will likely have their own cheaper, custom versions in short order.
Still, it’s a great-looking card with die-cast aluminium highlights and a black plastic shroud. It isn’t the metal-fest of the 1070 or 1080, but it looks exciting nonetheless.
It’s just 9.8 inches in length, with just under a third of the length a result of an extended plastic shroud that contains some of the cooling kit and the fan. Expect third-party manufacturers to produce extremely compact versions of the 1060, with cards suitable for ultra-small desktops and living-room PCs.
You get three DisplayPort connectors, an HDMI 2.0b port and a DVI port here. The DisplayPort 1.4a connectors are ready for HDR gaming, too.
The GTX 1060 is an extremely capable card at Full HD resolutions and delivered well above 60fps in all the gaming benchmarks. In this section, I’m going to focus on 1440p performance, since this is an area where the GTX 1060 and the AMD Radeon RX 480 will go toe-to-toe.
Where relevant, I’ll mention any surprises in the other benchmarks. TrustedReviewstests all games at Full HD and 4K for completeness.
Dirt Rally
Dirt Rally is our easiest benchmark and represents newer games that don’t have the graphics and physics challenges of triple-A titles.
At 1440p, the GTX 1060 was a full 12% faster than the RX 480, which is a big news for those looking for a speed bump in slightly less-challenging games. This result was also reflected in the Full HD benchmark, while the RX 480 closed the gap at 4K but remained 8% slower.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a relatively challenging benchmark with plenty of lighting and particle effects, as well as a few physics challenges thrown in.
At 1440p, the GTX 1060 did a fine job of keeping frame rates playable, managing an average of 47.6fps – a score that’s nearly 8% faster than the RX 480.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Shadow of Mordor is one of the more difficult benchmark games we use, and we play it at its highest preset. The benchmark is short but packed with challenging lighting and particle effects, so provides a decent challenge for our benchmark GPUs.
Grand Theft Auto V
GTA V is probably our most challenging benchmark, with numerous textures, objects and NPCs to render alongside plenty of explosions, lighting and weather effects. For the GTX 1060 and RX 480, I ran the game at a combination of High and Very High settings with 4x MSAA.
If Hitman was an outlier in AMD’s favour then GTA V is quite the opposite. It achieved an excellent average 1440p frame rate of 59.2fps – a significant 29% faster than the RX 480’s 45.9fps. Both results are more than playable, but the GTX 1060 is definitely the best bet if your main game is GTA V.
3DMark: Fire Strike Ultra
Fire Strike Ultra is far too difficult a benchmark to be considered representative of any particular game, but its ability to completely overwhelm a GPU means that the scores it spits out are generally representative of overall grunt.
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