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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Raniz - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Good review, though I must say that calling it a review of a $249 MSRP card when neither of the cards actually reviewed has an MSRP of $249 is a bit weird.I think you should have at least one card that is actually priced at $249 in the review, even if the FE is supposed to be exactly the same as those cards.
Nephelai - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Never been a tin foil hat guy but I'm starting to believe nvidia is holding first borns on threat of including a GTX 980 TI or two in SLI in any review.MarkieGcolor - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Yes! The GPU market is wackedSushisamurai - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I feel sorry for you Ryan. So much work out put in and yet there's still so many people that blast you and Anandtech as if you owe the vendors and readers "timely" reviews. Don't let it get to you guys - they'll still come and read just like I do, as your site offers something many don't.Anyways, back on topic, I feel the MRSP is a little BS In Canada, Newegg sells the products at ~$280 USD (1 SKU), with the Asus Strix @~$330 (other SKU's listed >$330). For $100 over the 480 in CAD (only reference boards available ATM) that 1060's perf/$ is too intense, almost priced at the next bracket (1070's only $50-$100 off the 1060 price, might as well get the 1070 then). Neat to see the 1060 #'s in action, too bad there's a limit on overvolting and TDP for over clocking.
IKeelU - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
This review really needed some Doom vulkan to paint a more accurate picture of how these cards will perform in the future. I understand that Anandtech will expand on this review later on, but many of us are buying cards now (well, trying to at least).Simplex - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
I'd love to see more Vulkan based, but how realistic is it? How many games were announced to use Vulkan?How popular was Vulkan's predecessor (OpenGL) in the past?
Tech-Curious - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Problem is that the nVidia optimizations for Doom Vulkan haven't even been attempted yet. You can find a bunch of reviews that show the 480 blowing the 1060 out of the water in Doom Vulkan, but we really don't know how representative those results are.Those results are very encouraging for the 480 though, just in general performance terms.
Tech-Curious - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Correction, the quote I had in mind references async compute specifically. From Bethesda's Doom Vulkan FAQ:"Does DOOM support asynchronous compute when running on the Vulkan API?
Asynchronous compute is a feature that provides additional performance gains on top of the baseline id Tech 6 Vulkan feature set.
Currently asynchronous compute is only supported on AMD GPUs and requires DOOM Vulkan supported drivers to run. We are working with NVIDIA to enable asynchronous compute in Vulkan on NVIDIA GPUs. We hope to have an update soon."
https://community.bethesda.net/thread/54585?tstart...
eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review. I hope to see an HTPC review down the line, with a short 1060 or the upcoming 1050 (/Ti?).jackbutler - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Could we please see a review of the new HEVC/H265 encoding performance of GTX1060 vs RX480?