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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Younanomous - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
So would it be a good investment to go for the 1070 for 1080p if I plan t keep the card for 3+ years? I'm always told that the X70's are overill for 1080p.JamesAnthony - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Thanks for another Excellent review.The review shows the GTX 1060 is an excellent value/performance card.
While there is a bunch of arguing back and forth I think it's fairly clear to say that:
a. There is a huge installed base of people with monitors running 1920x1080
b. The GTX1060 offers excellent performance from a price / performance standpoint
c. For most intents and purposes the GTX 1060 and RX 480 8gb have similar performance under most applications and give or take a bit are similar in price & the prices will drift down a bit as supply finally fully catches up with demand. (I was able to land 2 of the Overclocked Zotac ones at $275 each on launch day).
d. If you have a lot of brand loyalty (in my case Nvidia drivers just work better for me), you'll pick based on your preference, and then people who truly don't care (I think there are less of those) can pick based on specific things they want, but neither is a bad choice unless you have to have FP64 then it's AMD only.
The RX 460 is going to be quite interesting from the extreme cheap budget / power capped viewpoint if it comes in around the $120 range & has a 75w power draw that doesn't need a power connector.
I'd love to see a GTX 1050 that was PCIe power only and could go standard single slot or low profile single / dual slot to compete. (with it being able to go single slot, low profile as the ultimate idea).
loop - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
buy rx 480 or gtx 1060?elessar25 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
I read on Eurogamer that AMD's GPUs outperform NVIDIA on "close to metal" APIs like DX12. Although this review proofs without a doubt that the GTX 1060 is more powerful overall than the RX 480, I'm curious if this will hold true going forward? For someone who wants to future-proof their system, which is the better GPU? Disclaimer: I'm not a fanboy and I currently run a GTX 670.Greeba77 - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
This is pretty much what I was getting at in my above comment, curious to know...Tech-Curious - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
We don't know, but it seems reasonable to guess, based on recent history, that:1.) AMD's relative performance will likely increase, whereas nVidia's will probably decrease with time, as a result of driver optimizations for the former and the lack thereof for the latter. Keep in mind that this isn't necessarily an indictment of nVidia or a compliment to AMD; it could be interpreted as nVidia's optimizing their drivers better at the outset, leaving them less headroom to improve. But for whatever reason, past-gen nVidia cards seem to fall back relative to their competition later on.
2.) AMD will tend to gain more from DX 12. Whether "gaining more" means that any particular AMD card will outperform its nVidia counterpart is a whole 'nother issue.
Hrel - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Wow, based on these numbers AMD needs to drop their prices at least $40 to even be viable, let's not even talk about competitive.Fuck, so now we officially have a monopoly in the CPU and GPU space.
Younanomous - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
It's not a monopoly if you have another choice, even if that other choice isn't as good in your eyes.Casecutter - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Would've been nice to see where a $249 unit (with lower end dual fans) slots into this line up. This Asus doesn't really impress for $315 (working a $15 rebate right today).thunderwave_2 - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
For the upcoming RX 480 review, could you post power, temps and noise results for the Compatibility mode? (they perform almost identically, so performance results might be redundant)