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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fanofanand - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
You keep saying that but there are no 1060s that can be bought for $249. MSRP is meaningless when none sell at that price.eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
...and you keep at it as if it isn't the same with 480s. I just looked for 8GB 480s on newegg. All out-of-stock except for one model that is going for $400!!!I suppose you've never heard of shortages. There are $250 1060s. They simply sell as soon as they get restocked.
Dr. Swag - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Any word on the progress of the rx 480 review? I haven't seen any good dives on the Polaris architecture so I'm really stoked on your review!Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I want to do a bit more on the Polaris architecture, but it will have to wait until after RX 470 and RX 460.Dr. Swag - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Ah OK. Thanks for the response!xenol - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Anyone else chuckle at the heatsinks past the fan that apparently aren't attached to anything?DanNeely - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Yeah those stubs are cosmetic; but there's not much to them either.Tom's has a detailed teardown of the cooler. A few ornamental fins on the front edge with the entire actual heatsink between the blower and case exhaust holes. The 1080's is about the same.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce...
tipoo - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Pretty funny, main heatsink comes off and that little heatsink nub remains. Maybe it manipulates airflow to the fan, at most? Or, more likely, it's just cosmetic to make this look like a bigger GPU.Mr Perfect - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
When you inevitably do a custom card round up, could you please get some blower style fully exhausting cards in there? It would be immensely helpful for the SFF crowd who can't stuff a tipple fan behemoth in the case, much less dump 120 watts of heat in there. Off hand, Asus has the Turbo, Gainward has one and Galax has another.fanofanand - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
When was the last time Anandtech did a custom card roundup? They don't really do that sort of thing anymore.