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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Leozn01 - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Why do you guys no longer include Sony Vegas Pro in your GPU reviews?Tech-Curious - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I've been watching the RX 480 and GTX 1060 on Newegg since about two days after the former's launch. In that time, I have seen the reference 8gb 480 flash in and out of stock 2-3 times.The only 480 that was consistently available was priced waaay over the MSRP (@ $300+, the one I can find right now is at $400). 4GB models, as far as I can tell, have been nonexistent. Most importantly for me, there has been no hint of an AiB-partner board available at a decent price.
By contrast, I've seen 1060s flash in and out of stock several times in the comparatively shorter period since the 1060 launch, many of them in the $250-260 range.
The kicker was when the 470 launched and all of a sudden there were a small army of overpriced third-party 470s occupying the market segment that 480's MSRP was supposed to cover.
So, reluctantly, I snapped up a $250 1060 to replace my aging 7850. I really wanted to buy an AMD card; I had been waiting for Polaris to launch for months -- but when you combine the 480's higher power consumption, its bad reference cooler, the initial PCI-power-delivery controversy, and the lack of stock/options for what has to be at least a month now, this is what happens.
Ryan's correct; neither company's exactly in a great spot with stock, but from a cheap seats it sure seems that nVidia executed better than AMD in the short term. Pity.
m16 - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link
I personally love blower cards. They're the best for SLI in smaller cases, but here the only good thing about them is being able to put them in small cases to begin with because there's no SLI connector.Bummer, but I bet the cards are still flying off the shelves.
Gastec - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Are you joking me? A 215% increrase in performance over GTX 960 (in Rise of the Planet of the Tomb Raider Apes) !!! Something is fishy, I can't see the performance difference in the specs. A 50-55% increase OK,but more...smelly fishy fish.Dorothycar - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
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