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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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...