The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTThe Witcher 3
The third game in CD Projekt RED’s expansive RPG series, The Witcher 3 is our RPG benchmark of choice. Utilizing the company’s in-house engine, REDengine 3, The Witcher makes use of an array of DirectX 11 features, all of which combine to make the game both stunning and surprisingly GPU-intensive. Our benchmark is based on an action-heavy in-engine cutscene early in the game, and Hairworks is disabled.
In terms of absolute performance, I’m a bit surprised that the GTX 1060 can’t crack 60fps at 1080p. 57.6 isn’t too far off the mark, but for what’s otherwise meant to be NVIDIA’s ultimate 1080p gaming card, it’s not quite ultimate enough to hit 60fps on a year-old game.
In any case this does put GTX 1060 a bit farther behind the GTX 980 than usual, delivering around 94% of its high-end predecessor’s performance. Or to compare the card to GTX 960, it nets a 75% performance gain. Otherwise this also happens to be a game where the GTX 1060/1070 gap is a smidge larger than usual, with GTX 1060 delivering 70% of GTX 1070’s performance.
Finally, as for the RX 480 comparison, GTX 1060 is yet again solidly in the lead. Here we see it deliver 12-15% more performance than the 8GB RX 480, depending on the resolution.
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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.