The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTAshes of the Singularity
Sorely missing from our benchmark suite for quite some time have been RTSes, which don’t enjoy quite the popularity they once did. As a result Ashes holds a special place in our hearts, and that’s before we talk about the technical aspects. Based on developer Oxide Games’ Nitrous Engine, Ashes has been designed from the ground up for low-level APIs like DirectX 12. As a result of all of the games in our benchmark suite, this is the game making the best use of DirectX 12’s various features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threaded work submission and high batch counts. What we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, but it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.
Ashes is a game that in our GTX 1080 review we found AMD does rather well in, with their last generation cards still challenging GTX 1070 at times. So I was surprised to see GTX 1060 and RX 480 so close here. At 1440p GTX 1060 trails by just a couple of percent, and at 1080p it’s a dead heat. Given that of all of the games in our current benchmark suite this is the game that AMD seems to do the best on, it’s notable that GTX 1060 can keep up with AMD’s card even when it’s on the backfoot. Given that NVIDIA is charging a slight price premium for the GTX 1060, it’s helpful for NVIDIA that the card never falters against its slightly cheaper competitor. That said there is also the spoiler effect of the cheaper 4GB RX 480, but that’s a slightly more complex matter for the conclusion of this article.
Meanwhile on a generational basis, GTX 1060 continues to deliver GTX 980-like performance. Or against the GTX 960, we’re looking at a considerable 74% performance improvement. GTX 1060 is even fast enough to do better than 30fps at 1440p with the Extreme settings, which for an RTS is perfectly playable. However GTX 1070 still has a significant lead over the GTX 1060 here.
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Mikuni - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Avidemux works pretty well.onemoar@gmail.com - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
here is my luxmark scoreoverclocked EVGA GTX 1060SC
http://www.luxmark.info/node/2919
Mustalainen - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I think i have commented once or twice on any article here but just had to do it again. The people in the comment section are just out right arrogant. You expect the reviewer to provide the detailed reviews on the same day a product is released? Can you guys cut the guys at Anandtech some slack? I bet they do their best in order to provide us with these reviews (which by the way are free). If you are not happy with the quality of the article, go somewhere else (but i bet you always come back here just because these guys do a great job). So what if the review is lagging with a month or two, if you are such an enthusiast go and buy the card/device yourself.fanofanand - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
They would receive their samples weeks ahead of time. How do you think so many day 1 reviews get posted?Sushisamurai - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
there is some truth to @fanofanand, but that's assuming anandtech also gets their review samples ahead of time as well - which you really can't prove. Those assumptions can be toxic.Mustalainen - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
So assuming this is not the authors full time job they should try to rush the review for the release date? And as stated in the other comment, you can only assume they get review samples ahead of time? There are so many day 1 reviews from other sources because when they have receive the review sample the review is about reading the technical details on the box (and test 5-10 different games and report the fps if its a gpu). Do you want Anandtech to become such an site?yannigr2 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
This review makes GTX 1060 look much better than RX 480, compared to other reviews. Just an observation.MarkieGcolor - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Agreed. AMD really needs to release their high end. I wonder if they are in cahoots with Nvidia. Why wouldn't they release a card that can beat titan x when they totally could? With this new process both companies are holding backsilverblue - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
Vega isn't ready yet, that's why they've not done it.Jman13 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
That's because they ignored a lot of things where the 480 is better: such as DX12 on RotTR, where the 480 pulls essentially even with the 1060. The games list also ignores Doom, which is a HUGE win for the 480, and is included in most other review sites games suites. I understand the difficulty in altering and adding games to the suite, but I do think the discussion could have focused on the fact that there is a split between these two cards depending on which APIs are used. The 1060 is clearly the better card in DX 11 games. The 480 has generally performed very well in DX 12 games, being even in some and notably better in others. The only Vulkan game, Doom, shows a HUGE lead for the RX 480, but who knows how representative that is at this point.Long term, the 480 will probably be the faster card for newer games that use DX12, while the 1060 will be faster for most current and older games, as well as several newer games for the next year.