The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTOverclocking
For our final evaluation of our GTX 1060 cards, let’s take a look at overclocking.
We’ll start things off with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition. This card has a 3+1 power delivery system and a 116% TDP limit. Like the earlier GTX 1080 and 1070 cards, the GTX 1060FE can be “overvolted” to 1.093v to unlock an additional boost bin.
| GeForce GTX 1060FE Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1506MHz | 1706MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1709MHz | 1909MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 1911MHz | 2100MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 8Gbps | 9Gbps | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.062v | 1.093v | ||
We were able to overclock the GTX 1060FE’s GPU an additional 200MHz (12%), bringing the boost clock to 1909MHz. Unsurprisingly, this is very similar to the GTX 1080 and 1070, both of which overclocked by around 200MHz as well. Consequently it looks like both GP104 and GP106 seem to have similar voltage/frequency curves. Meanwhile we were able to push the memory another 1Gbps (13%) to 9Gbps.
Our other GTX 1060 is ASUS’s ROG Strix GTX 1060 OC. This card features a more advanced cooler and 6+1 power delivery system, but it also ships with a factory overclock. So all things held equal it’s likely that there’s not as much headroom for additional end-user overclocking. Meanwhile the card also ships with a built-in OC setting via ASUS’s GPU Tweak II software, which offers a small, virtually guaranteed overclock.
| ASUS Strix GTX 1060 OC Overclocking | |||||
| Stock | OC Mode | Overclocked | |||
| Core Clock | 1620MHz | 1646MHz | 1720MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1848MHz | 1874MHz | 1948MHz | ||
| Max Boost Clock | 2025MHz | 2050MHz | 2113MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 8.2Gbps | 8.2Gbps | 9.2Gbps | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.062v | 1.062v | 1.093v | ||
As expected, due to its factory overclock the ASUS GTX 1060 doesn’t offer quite as much end-user overclocking. We were able to add another 100MHz (5%) to the GPU, half that of the stock clocked GTX 1060FE. Though it should be noted that in absolute terms the ASUS card has overclocked a bit farther than NVIDIA’s card, with a base clock 14MHz higher and a boost clock 39MHz higher. Meanwhile we got a slightly higher memory overclock out of the card as well, with the card topping out at 9.2Gbps, 1Gbps (12%) over the card’s shipping memory frequency.
The overall performance gains and resulting power/temperate/noise costs are about as expected. The additional overclock helps the performance of the GTX 1060, but it’s nowhere near enough to close the gap with the GTX 1070. Meanwhile the final overclocks of the NVIDIA and ASUS cards are close enough that their peak performance is neck-and-neck.
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osxandwindows - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Finally!.A timely review from anandtech.
osxandwindows - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Now, where is the HTC10 review, the new titan, and the note 7?Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
HTC 10: In progress (Josh is nearly done)Titan X Pascal: We weren't sampled
Note7: No comment
ddriver - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
"Titan X Pascal: We weren't sampled"What do you expect? They send units to be reviewed for publicity, which requires the unit be reviewed immediately after it is received, and the review published the moment NDA expires. But if it takes you months after the official release to review stuff - why bother sending you samples? Keep on sloth gear and you might end up having to purchase all the hardware you want to review...
ddriver - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
And please don't go with the "but we go in depth" stuff - there is nothing preventing you from publishing detailed stuff later on. Because otherwise you are implying some absurdity like "we're too good for timely reviews" which is plain out silly.zepi - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I'm happy to read average results from techpowerup, guru3d on whatever random site I happen to find my way to.I come to Anandtech to find out WHY the cards perform the way they do, not to answer the question of HOW they perform.
ddriver - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Sure, because it is all about you happiness...mmrezaie - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Well mine too. I do not care about others shallow reviews. I like how Anandtech goes deep about these reviews. Maybe it is a niche portion of visitors, but AT is being famous because of these reviews.Fnnoobee - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Deep in reviews? They're not even doing they're test on the latest AMD Crimson drivers, 16.7.3, or even 16.7.2, which released almost a month ago. Yeah, real deep testing there. /smkaibear - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Ah, the irony of ddriver complaining that anandtech doesn't make him happy, then telling zepi off for pointing out anandtech makes him happy...