The expanded video system of the Polaris-based cards just gives them the edge when there are more pixels to push around and larger textures to paint. It’s the same story when you look at gaming using higher resolutions too. It’s often a few fps on average ahead of the Radeon crew, so if you pick your battles things still look great for Nvidia’s mainstream maestro.īut when it comes to modern APIs, such as DirectX 12 or the criminally underused Vulkan APIs, then the Radeon GPUs pull ahead. When you’re looking at legacy, DirectX 11 gaming performance the GTX 1060 still has the legs to give AMD’s RX 580, and even the new RX 590, a bloody nose. PCGamesN Test Rig: Intel i7 8700K, Asus ROG Strix Z370-F Gaming, 16GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4, Corsair HX1200i,
Zotac also has a micro version which should be the darling of the small form factor crowd as it’s also one of the cheapest versions of the full 6GB card that you can buy. MSI extended the PCB to allow for extra cooling and space for improved power components, but there are also mini-ITX versions of the card too as the reference PCB is shorter even than that of the RX 480. It’s a great platform for the overclockers looking to push their GPU further, but is rather pricey compared with the stock-clocked cards. We have also tested the seriously overclocked, and overclockable, MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G. In terms of the 6GB pricing you can pick one up for as little as $250 (£220), though that does put it more expensive than the RX 580 in 8GB trim. Though it’s cobbled together from left-over parts meant for GTX 1080 cards that are no longer needed, and performance is suggested to be lower than the stock cards too. There have been other variants released over the years, notably a GP104-based version with GDDR5X is now being touted.
Nvidia has also released a 3GB version of the GTX 1060 which provides a decent level of gaming performance, but lacks its big brother’s chops at higher resolutions. This top GTX 1060 release sports a healthy 6GB of GDDR5 memory, running at 8,000MHz. The Nvidia GTX 1060 was the first mainstream Pascal-powered card to come out of the GeForce stable, and featured a different GPU to the GTX 10, though still sported all the architectural goodness which made those cards such desirable pixel pushers. And now that the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 have arrived, utterly replacing it with GTX 1070-level performance at the top, you would have to be a special kind of consumer to buy one new. But with AMD’s RX 580 just outperforming it overall – most especially on price – and the newer RX 590 improving on that lead, it’s become an increasingly tough card to recommend. Whatever…Īnyway, the GTX 1060, despite being a geriatric GPU now, has still been one of our favourite mainstream cards even this long down the line. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, launched in a Blaise of glory almost two years ago now, knocking the RX 480 off its performance perch and giving a swift shoeing to the ageing GTX 980 on the way past.