The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTRise of the Tomb Raider
Starting things off in our benchmark suite is the built-in benchmark for Rise of the Tomb Raider, the latest iteration in the long-running action-adventure gaming series. One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 4 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
NVIDIA promised GTX 980-like performance for the GTX 1060, and this is more or less where they’ve landed under Tomb Raider. The otherwise stock clocked GTX 1060FE underperforms GTX 980 by only a frame or two, delivering about 97% of the performance, while the factory overclocked ASUS card makes up the difference and takes the lead. Or to compare things to the next tier up, GTX 1060 is delivering about 72% of GTX 1070’s performance for about 65% of the price.
Meanwhile the performance gains over the past generation GTX x60 cards are remarkable. Whereas GTX 960 struggled to break out of the 30s on framerate, GTX 1060 just cracks 80fps. This is 215% of GTX 960’s performance, more than doubling its predecessor. Some of this I don’t doubt comes down to memory – our GTX 960 is the more common 2GB variety – but it also goes to show once again how 2GB cards are now VRAM limited under modern games. And the performance gains are even greater if we go back to 2013’s GTX 760 or 2012’s GTX 660. GTX 960’s one disappointment was that it didn’t make as much progress over GTX 760 as everyone would like, but GTX 1060 more than makes up for this.
As for the AMD competition, things shape up about as you’d expect. In our look at RX 480 we found that it delivered GTX 970-like performance, while GTX 1060 is slated to deliver GTX 980-like performance. As a result we see the GTX 1060 lead by around 15% at both resolutions for Tomb Raider.
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fanofanand - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Out of curiosity I searched the site, the last comparison of ANY sort was completed on 11/20/13 by you guessed it, Anand himself. Far as I can tell, there has not been a single comparison article written since Anand's departure.Mr Perfect - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Sssh! I was trying to get one going, if they hear you they won't do one. >_<Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Anand hasn't written a video card article in about 8 years. You may want to check the byline on that article again.Anyhow, I don't know if we'll do a custom 1060 roundup in particular, but you will be seeing more custom card reviews. This is what Dan Williams is on staff for.=)
Mr Perfect - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Excellent, looking forward to Dan doing some custom card reviews.fanofanand - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I said "of any sort". I actually read the article again because he always had a way of explaining things. I wasn't complaining, this site isn't a "comparison" kind of site.Ranger1065 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
While the same can't be said of the motherboard section, that is an excellent point and something that I very much regret as well. A certain Swedish gentleman does an excellent job in that area, but OMG the English....Ranger1065 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Perhaps a custom 1080 review by Christmas then. I mean Christmas 2016...xenol - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Blower styles are limited to basically the reference design these days, which is now basically limited to the FE cards. The real problem with some of these AIB SKUs is that they're wider than normal. I couldn't fit a MSI Gaming X in my FTZ-01 because the power connectors were too close to the side of the case. I was able to fit a EVGA ACX 3.0 SC in there though and it runs relatively well. It does help the case is compartmentalized more or less.Colin1497 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I know you've been behind, but Rise of Tomb Raider is running faster in DX12 than DX11 on AMD and about the same on both with the 1060 with the latest patches, I believe. Probably what you did with Hitman would be more appropriate? Maybe a one page followup article that includes some analysis and testing with the latest drivers/patches?prisonerX - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
It's almost comical the way Anandtech cover for Nvidia. Benchmarking Gameworks titles without disclosure, slyly avoiding DX12 and Vulcan game benchmarks (you know, what people will mostly be using these cards with, going forward) that favor AMD.I don't blame them, getting pre-release cards to write reviews is their bread and butter, and Nvidia has not been shy about punishing those who do not toe the line.