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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
189 Comments
View All Comments
thkg - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Well the price landscape is not all accurate.The cheapest 1060 you can buy right now cost $299 (the FE model).
You right now can buy a RX 480 8G from newegg for $239 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
The pricing situation is complex at best, and frustrating at worst. At various times when I wrote this article $249 GTX 1060s and $239 RX 480s went in and out of stock. At the moment it was published, all 480s were out of stock and $249 and $279 1060s were in stock.The article is written with the best general advice I can give, which is based on the idea that manufacturers are frequently restocking the MSRP parts. But since things fly off the shelves so quickly, there's no real consistency day to day. (Or even hour to hour; that 480 is out of stock already). Ultimately you can get a $249 1060 about as easily as you can get a $239 480, which is to say not very (and it's not as if higher priced cards are usually any more available).
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Really?!! Do you know what shortage is? I clicked on that link and it said... not available.There ARE 1060s at $250 already. They are just hard to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Wrong link for the second one. This is it:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
It seems my brain isn't cooperating. Those links are correct. This is the additional link:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Fnnoobee - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Really, Anandtech? Date of this review is Aug. 15 and yet you're using Nvidia's latest driver but AMD Crimson 16.7.1? Really?! I could see if you published this around July 19 (you know, when the card actually hit shelves), but 16.7.2, which fixed the power draw and thermal issues on RX 480 and increased performance overall across the board, released July 7, almost a month ago! 16.7.3 released July 29, which other than providing bug fixes added a significant 10 percent performance boost for RoTR which you benchmarked. I could see if you were ignorant of these releases but you even published an article on your site on July 29. I knew right away before even looking at the details of your test set up when I saw your benchmarks on RoTR, because they're far lower than numbers I've consistently achieved on the benchmark at the same settings you have on my RX 480 at stock clocks (OC I achieved about 6-7 percent more). If you can't be bothered to properly update your tests to the latest drivers and software for both product lines so ALL products get a fair shake, why even bother reviewing or comparing a product in the first place? It smacks of laziness and not being very fair and objective.Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Thanks. 16.7.1 is actually a typo. All testing was done against 16.7.2 for the RX 480.As for 16.7.3, this came out much too late to be included in this review (since it takes longer than a week to produce). However I will need to go back and update the RX 480 results for that driver build for the forthcoming 470/460 reviews.
bill44 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Before I read it, does it mention audio and supported audio sampling rates?@Ryan Smith
I know.........not at hand.......blah, blah.
No one knows, it's not on the spec sheet, not in reviews, nowhere to be found.
Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I don't have that information or a means to test it. But was there a specific sampling rate you're looking for?bill44 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Thank Ryan.Yes please, 88.2KHz and 176.4KHz. Likelihood is that the other sampling rates will be supported.