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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DominionSeraph - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Aw, look at the fanboy complain that it isn't "fair" because they didn't only present AMD's strengths and Nvidia's weaknesses, but instead used tests representative of the gaming landscape.beck2050 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Nvidia has driver teams as well. Plus 22% with the latest Dx12 Hitman. 1060 will compete very well. Cooler faster less energy, and priced accordingly.eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
So much misinformation still going around. Gameworks effects are either CPU only, which have ZERO effect on the GPU, no matter the brand, like waveworks in just casue 3, or are GPU based, which can be DISABLED, like witcher 3's hairworks or HBAO+, or RotTR's HBAO+ and VXAO.Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
The benchmark suite was finalized back in May, when the DX12 version of Tomb Raider was rubbish. I talk a bit more about this in another comment, but basically we only periodically update the benchmark suite due to the amount of work involved and the need to maintain a consistent dataset for Bench. The plan is to do another update in September.Colin1497 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I understood that situation. Last thing you needed was to change the games when you were running behind. Just commenting on the change in the landscape over 2 months. Doom and Vulcan is obviously another thing. Looking forward to what you do next.Simplex - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
It's "Vulkan", not "Vulcan".MarkieGcolor - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Please include 4k, and crossfire/sli setups in your benchmarks. Otherwise I do not care about this late review.xenol - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
4K seems kind of pointless, we all know it's going to be sub 40FPS which few people are going to recommend this card for 4K gaming.Also what's the point of SLI on a card that doesn't support it?
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
If 4K is pointless then so are most of the 2560 tests which use ultra settings and produce <60fps.4K with medium settings, no AA would be much more interesting to me.
MarkieGcolor - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
True. I'm just saying it would be interesting.I understand that if you want 1060 sli you should just buy 1080, but I feel Nvidia disabled sli to keep the second hand market at bay and sell more new expensive cards.