The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTThe Division
The final first person shooter in our benchmark suite, The Division is a online-only game powered by Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine. The game’s design focuses on detailed urban environments and utilizes dynamic global illumination for parts of its lighting. For our testing we use the game’s built-in benchmark, which cycles through a number of scenes/areas of the game.
For whatever reason, the GTX 980 has always hit above its weight in The Division, and as a result this is the one game where the GTX 1060 can’t stay at parity with the one-time NVIDIA flagship. In fact this is another case where the GTX 1060 can’t quite muster 60fps at 1080p, falling just short at 58.9fps. However the ASUS card does get to do what the reference card cannot, with its factory overclock adding another 7% to the total.
Meanwhile compared to the AMD competition, this is the second instance of GTX 1060 and RX 480 coming in virtually tied. At both 1440p and 1080p the cards are off by less than 1fps, so while GTX 1060 is typically comfortably ahead of AMD’s best, that’s not always the case.
Finally, compared to the GTX 960 we’re looking at a 73% performance gain. Past that, the generational gains get especially large; by the time we’re looking at GTX 660, GTX 1060 delivers more than 3x the performance.
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Notmyusualid - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
Seems amazingly mis-priced.The lowest I see a GTX1060 for, on Amazon.co.uk is 260 GBP (delivered). That is $340 USD.
The pound didn't fall that much.
silverblue - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
True, but what taxes go on top of that $250? As a Brit myself, that's out of genuine curiosity.thesavvymage - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Taxes vary by location, in my state, Washington, sales tax is almost 10% (which i think might be the highest sales tax) so it'd land around 275. UK prices include taxes, US dont, so the price premium isnt as much as you'd initially thinkmdw9604 - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
Why aren't the 1080 performance numbers included in the Charts? This thing cost about half as much, would expect about half the performance. But b/c they were not included, can't cant really come to that conclusion.Ryan Smith - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
While the charts can handle more results, we're trying to keep things readable. If you want a 1080 comparison, Bench would be perfect for this.mdw9604 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Thanks for taking the time to reply, will check it out. Would think it would be useful to include the newest high-end nvida graphics cards for perspective.medi03 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Thanks for the review, Ryan.I've noticed difference in power consumption results between your and other sites (let's take TPU for example).
You are testing total power consumption, which, given PSU's 80%-ish efficiency, should give bigger differences between cards, than if testing power consumption of GPU alone (pcie/connectors).
On your site, ref 480 consumes 37 watt more than 1060.
Ref 1070 consumes 6 watt more than 480.
On TPU site (PCIe, "average gaming"):
1) 480 consumes 47 watt more, which, taking 80% PSU efficiency in account, is 58.7 watt more
2) 1070 consumes a bit less than 480
(review is for an AIB, but I'm comparing Ref vs FE numbers)
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Palit/GeForce_...
Any thought about why that might be? Can chips really vary that much? Is power consumption that different between different games?
Ryan Smith - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
"Can chips really vary that much?"Yes, especially since these cards are at times TDP limited .Move the temperature up or down by 5F and you'll get slightly different results with blowers, for example. That said...
"Is power consumption that different between different games?"
Absolutely. There can be a massive difference in the CPU load from the simulation, and on the GPU side there's the balance between texturing/shading/ROPing. We can't test all games, so with Crysis 3 we try to pick a game that offers a reasonable middle case. But if someone else uses a different game they can get very different results.
Greeba77 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Great review as always, however I was hoping this would also take in the recent benchmarks that have come out comparing the 1060 to the RX480 using Vulkan on Doom, in which I gather the Nvida card completely tanked. And of course whether this should have any bearing on any decision to buy anyway... if the regular performance is as clear cut as it looks then it seems the 1060 is a pretty good mid range upgrade choice for me (I have an R9 270X at the moment so it's a few generations old and this or an RX480 will smash it.)beck2050 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Great card for the money when prices settle down. Early adopters always pay more for popular tech.