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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Samus - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
You are free to go elsewhere. Just about everyone else is content waiting for the most detailed and balanced reviews of products on the Internet. For free no less. 20 years ago you had to pay CR or someone like that for unbiased reviews.close - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
Then isn't it ironic that you always seem to think that it's all about yours ddriver?snowmyr - Tuesday, August 9, 2016 - link
compared to your happiness? I mean you seem so upset you replied to your own post all because you misread the statement "We weren't sampled" like it was a complaint instead of just a statement of fact. Entitled people suck balls.DominionSeraph - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Like the GTX 960 review?Morawka - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
guru3d is right up there with anandtech on deep dive analysis.damianrobertjones - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Sire like Engadget will eventually die as sites like The Verge and Engadget thrive. Why? They're shiny, lame, breeze over the details and make people feel great about their purchases. In other words: They're filled with absolute rubbish, paid for articles, which annoys the heck out of me.Just look at Tom's Hardware... they might as well shut down.
Chaser - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Really? they've gotten great, indepth reviews out on all the Nvidia Pascal cards much faster than here.Vorl - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
That comment only works if they EVER give the reviews. There are cards they have never reviewed... so you don't get your answers no matter how long you wait.... I am not talking specific manufacturers, I am talking whole series of cards like the 960.. and so far the 1070 and 1080... I poke at this a lot because I have been coming here for years, it's even in one of my opening tabs for my browser... but they are starting to lose my faith in their ability to remain relevant.I remember when they used to do roundups and such.. haven't seen one of those in quite a while. It's not like the video world is saturated with news all the time and keeping them busy.
Ranger1065 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I am 100% with you on this ddriver, screw anyone who disagrees. Criticism is needed.Ryan Smith - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
Criticism is more than welcome; it's how we get better.=) I do ask that it be constructive, though.