Overclocking

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.

OC: Rise of the Tomb Raider - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality (DX11)

OC: Ashes of the Singularity - 1920x1080 - Extreme Quality (DX12)

OC: Crysis 3 - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality + FXAA

OC: The Witcher 3 - 1920x1080 - Ultra Quality (No Hairworks)

OC: Grand Theft Auto V - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

OC: Grand Theft Auto V - 99th Percentile Framerate - 1920x1080 - Very High Quality

OC: Load Power Consumption - Crysis 3

OC: Load Power Consumption - FurMark

OC: Load GPU Temperature - Crysis 3

OC: Load GPU Temperature - FurMark

OC: Load Noise Levels - Crysis 3

OC: Load Noise Levels - FurMark

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.           

Power, Temperature, & Noise Final Words
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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 wacked
  • Sushisamurai - 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?

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