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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Greeba77 - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I don't subscribe to some of the bitchier comments on here and I do read Anandtech because of the depth of the reviews. I do feel a trick or two has been missed on this one, because since the 1080 and 1070 review, the results came out elsewhere to show the low level API performance on the Pascal cards seemed to be a problem (the Vulkan Doom benchmarks were awful compared to the RX480). I was hoping this review would include a deeper dive in to this as it's a potential question mark on the 1060's future proofing vs the RX480.Thermalzeal - Monday, August 15, 2016 - link
I will please ask that you use "other" review sites for your insatiable impatient needs.No way AnandTech will be left out because it's the only site that Industry professionals actually read these days. And if for some reason this catastrophe happened...I'm pretty sure one call to Anand, and he'll walk right into Jen Hsun's office and take the card right out of his computer. Especially now that he's just hanging out at Apple. ,
Colin1497 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Clearly the last couple months have been unfortunate, as whatever dynamic has happened has corresponded with the most exciting time in the GPU world in years. The question is where he can get back on track. I doubt that Ryan is unaware of all of the issues surrounding this. We will see how he responds. :)just4U - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
100% certain he's aware of the criticisms.. as he does comment on some of them. Also a likely reason why Daniel Williams was brought on board to help with overflow.. Although I'd really like to see Ian take a stab at the video card reviews.. (just for sh... and giggles) as processors are not so interesting these days with incremental bumps... but they all have their niche areas to work with so whatever.The only real criticism I have would be the waiting game.. If Ryan says something will be ready on a certain date (or in a few days..) and then it takes weeks.. well shoot that's disappointing and shouldn't happen. But hey.. I was one of those happy with the Preview the Review was just icing on the cake (even if I disagree on the 480 vs 1060 assessment)
Ryan's good at what he does late or not, many of us look forward to Anandtech's takehome on new Video Cards.
ridic987 - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
what about his 480 vs 1060 assessment do you disagree with?just4U - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
He puts it at and around 10% faster than the RX480. The feel I am getting from most who have hands on experience with both cards suggest the 480 might be a little better.It reminds me of the 380/960 comparisons online initially.. both excellent products overall but after a lot of time with both I kind of felt ripped off by the 960 which I paid a premium for and it certainly wasn't as good as the 380.
Cygni - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Then go start your own review website, nerd. This one ain't yours, and nobody cares about how you think it should be run.Devo2007 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Actually, very few (if any) sites were sampled Titan X Pascal cards - has nothing to do with Anandtech's review schedule.Nagorak - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
They didn't sample anyone on Titan X it seems like.Tabalan - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
What about RX470? It would be nice to see some decent AIB cards compared. Also, I really would like you to add 2 charts in summary - overall performance and perf/$. This would help comparing your review to other reviews without going though all benchmarks and game tests.