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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Flunk - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
It doesn't seem like any of the large tech sites were sampled GTX Titan Xs. All the reviews I've seen are from small sites, most of which I've never heard of before. Maybe they're just borrowing retail cards from owners.fanofanand - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I read that Nvidia wasn't sampling Titan X's to any publications. It's possible that those smaller sites are run by hobbyists who bought the card themselves.jabbadap - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Just wondering are you doing those great in depth HTPC oriented graphics card comparisons in future.HideOut - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Or see review for the S7 since its just the same stuff.Psyside - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Please do NOT let Joshua Ho review ANY Samsung product anymore!fanofanand - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I agree with this, his reviews read like advertisement for Apple.rtho782 - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
And the 960! We're missing the immediate predecessor to this for comparison...Ballist1x - Monday, August 15, 2016 - link
What the review is missing is that the GTX 1060 is actually a replacement in pricepoint to the GTX 970 and therefore has only increased performance by 10-20% in the space of 2 years for the same price.The GTX 960 is a different price segment completely and therefore is not such a direct comaprison.
nathanddrews - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Too bad the $249 MSRP models aren't available anywhere. This is essentially marketed as a 960 replacement, but priced like a 970 replacement IRL.Cygni - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Cards at $249 have been in stock off and on with Newegg since launch. They may not be available right this exact second, but you shouldn't be waiting too long for stock at MSRP, as the article talks about.