The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTSynthetics
As always we’ll also take a quick look at synthetic performance. While GTX 1060 is of course a cut down Pascal architecture part, how it has been cut down is interesting. Compared to GP104, GP106 has half the SMs and GPCs, but 3/4 the ROPs, which may prove to have an impact.
Starting off with tessellation performance, we find the GTX 1060 coming in just behind the GTX 980, showing that NVIDIA’s performance estimates generally apply not only to games, but synthetic tests as well. But perhaps more interesting is the fact that the card is neck-and-neck with the Radeon RX 480. NVIDIA has traditionally enjoyed a sizable geometry performance lead over AMD cards, but it looks like those days have come to a close.
Up next, we have SteamVR’s Performance Test. While this test is based on the latest version of Valve’s Source engine, the test itself is purely synthetic, designed to test the suitability of systems for VR, making it our sole VR-focused test at this time. It should be noted that the results in this test are not linear, and furthermore the score is capped at 11. Of particular note, cards that fail to reach GTX 970/R9 290 levels fall off of a cliff rather quickly. So test results should be interpreted a little differently.
As NVIDIA’s now entry-level VR card, GTX 1060 looks very good in the Steam VR test. A score of 7.9 Newells means that it’s comfortably above the 6.x range generally required, and it also means the GTX 1060 is comfortably ahead of the RX 480 in this scenario.
Finally, for looking at texel and pixel fillrate, we have the Beyond3D Test Suite. This test offers a slew of additional tests – many of which use behind the scenes or in our earlier architectural analysis – but for now we’ll stick to simple pixel and texel fillrates.
Starting with the pixel fillrate, we can see the impact of GTX 1060’s slightly more unusual ROP and GPC arrangement when it’s compared to the GTX 980. At 54.8 GPixels/second, GTX 1060 trails GTX 980 significantly. The card not only has fewer ROPs, but it has half of the rasterizer throughput (32 pixels/clock) as GTX 980. As we’ve seen in our gaming benchmarks the real-world impact isn’t nearly as great as what happens under these synthetic tests, but it helps to explain why sometimes GTX 1060 is tied with GTX 980, and other times it’s several percent behind. If nothing else, at an architectural level this is what makes GTX 1060 a better 1080p card than a 1440p card.
As for texel throughput, things are right where we expect them. GTX 1060 is virtually tied with GTX 980, and while it’s ahead of RX 480 in the process, it’s not by a massive amount.
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thkg - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Well the price landscape is not all accurate.The cheapest 1060 you can buy right now cost $299 (the FE model).
You right now can buy a RX 480 8G from newegg for $239 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
The pricing situation is complex at best, and frustrating at worst. At various times when I wrote this article $249 GTX 1060s and $239 RX 480s went in and out of stock. At the moment it was published, all 480s were out of stock and $249 and $279 1060s were in stock.The article is written with the best general advice I can give, which is based on the idea that manufacturers are frequently restocking the MSRP parts. But since things fly off the shelves so quickly, there's no real consistency day to day. (Or even hour to hour; that 480 is out of stock already). Ultimately you can get a $249 1060 about as easily as you can get a $239 480, which is to say not very (and it's not as if higher priced cards are usually any more available).
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Really?!! Do you know what shortage is? I clicked on that link and it said... not available.There ARE 1060s at $250 already. They are just hard to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Wrong link for the second one. This is it:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
It seems my brain isn't cooperating. Those links are correct. This is the additional link:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Fnnoobee - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Really, Anandtech? Date of this review is Aug. 15 and yet you're using Nvidia's latest driver but AMD Crimson 16.7.1? Really?! I could see if you published this around July 19 (you know, when the card actually hit shelves), but 16.7.2, which fixed the power draw and thermal issues on RX 480 and increased performance overall across the board, released July 7, almost a month ago! 16.7.3 released July 29, which other than providing bug fixes added a significant 10 percent performance boost for RoTR which you benchmarked. I could see if you were ignorant of these releases but you even published an article on your site on July 29. I knew right away before even looking at the details of your test set up when I saw your benchmarks on RoTR, because they're far lower than numbers I've consistently achieved on the benchmark at the same settings you have on my RX 480 at stock clocks (OC I achieved about 6-7 percent more). If you can't be bothered to properly update your tests to the latest drivers and software for both product lines so ALL products get a fair shake, why even bother reviewing or comparing a product in the first place? It smacks of laziness and not being very fair and objective.Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Thanks. 16.7.1 is actually a typo. All testing was done against 16.7.2 for the RX 480.As for 16.7.3, this came out much too late to be included in this review (since it takes longer than a week to produce). However I will need to go back and update the RX 480 results for that driver build for the forthcoming 470/460 reviews.
bill44 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Before I read it, does it mention audio and supported audio sampling rates?@Ryan Smith
I know.........not at hand.......blah, blah.
No one knows, it's not on the spec sheet, not in reviews, nowhere to be found.
Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I don't have that information or a means to test it. But was there a specific sampling rate you're looking for?bill44 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Thank Ryan.Yes please, 88.2KHz and 176.4KHz. Likelihood is that the other sampling rates will be supported.