The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but it not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
While more often than not GTX 1060 trails GTX 980 by a couple of percent, in GTAV the tables get turned. Now GTX 1060 has the lead, albeit a trivial 1-2%. The net result is that much like its last-generation predecessor, GTX 1060 can deliver framerates in the mid-40s at 1440p, but you need to go to 1080p to average better than 60fps.
Meanwhile compared to GTX 960 we’re looking at another case where more VRAM and GPU performance improvements combine to make GTX 1060 punch above its weight. Here the new NVIDIA card outperforms the last-generation x60 card by 93%. Otherwise compared to the more powerful GTX 1070, we’re looking at about 73% of that card’s performance.
Finally, this is another game where the GTX 1060 compares very favorably to the RX 480. Here NVIDIA leads by 30%.
Shifting gears to 99th percentile framerates, the story is much the same as with the averages. GTX 1060 retains a comfortable lead over the competition and in the process stays above 30fps, even at 1440p.
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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.