The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTRise of the Tomb Raider
Starting things off in our benchmark suite is the built-in benchmark for Rise of the Tomb Raider, the latest iteration in the long-running action-adventure gaming series. One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 4 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
NVIDIA promised GTX 980-like performance for the GTX 1060, and this is more or less where they’ve landed under Tomb Raider. The otherwise stock clocked GTX 1060FE underperforms GTX 980 by only a frame or two, delivering about 97% of the performance, while the factory overclocked ASUS card makes up the difference and takes the lead. Or to compare things to the next tier up, GTX 1060 is delivering about 72% of GTX 1070’s performance for about 65% of the price.
Meanwhile the performance gains over the past generation GTX x60 cards are remarkable. Whereas GTX 960 struggled to break out of the 30s on framerate, GTX 1060 just cracks 80fps. This is 215% of GTX 960’s performance, more than doubling its predecessor. Some of this I don’t doubt comes down to memory – our GTX 960 is the more common 2GB variety – but it also goes to show once again how 2GB cards are now VRAM limited under modern games. And the performance gains are even greater if we go back to 2013’s GTX 760 or 2012’s GTX 660. GTX 960’s one disappointment was that it didn’t make as much progress over GTX 760 as everyone would like, but GTX 1060 more than makes up for this.
As for the AMD competition, things shape up about as you’d expect. In our look at RX 480 we found that it delivered GTX 970-like performance, while GTX 1060 is slated to deliver GTX 980-like performance. As a result we see the GTX 1060 lead by around 15% at both resolutions for Tomb Raider.
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lilmoe - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
This is becoming the next "where is Kai" thing. This is getting redundant and, frankly extremely rude. Stop. I started enjoying some of their content AFTER Anand left.There's quite a bit of bias, but regulars can ignore all that and focus on the important info they're looking for.
We made it clear to them that we expect better in terms of quality and timely delivery. I'm sure they listened and took 7 Notes.
TallestJon96 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I think this is the best card of NVIDIAs lineup so far. Generationally, it destroys the previous card, which frankly the 960 sucked, especially compared to the 760 or the 970. The 960s only saving grace was the $200 price point. 2gb wasn't good, the 970 crushed it, the 380 was a better deal, and even the 760 beat it sometimes.Compared to the 960, its 80% faster, has 3x times the ram, and costs $50 more.
Most importantly, this card will be a success vecause it is the card that can easily handle 1080p60 at a good price. Like the 970 before it, the gtx 1060 handles 1080p with ease, and will continue to do so with 15% more performance than the 970 and 2gb more ram.
I will recommend this card to many people.
fanofanand - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I love that people keep claiming this is a $250 card. Maybe someday, but that day isn't today.bananaforscale - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Maybe it is, excluding (VAT and import) taxes, margins and such.HollyDOL - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Cheapest model (from Zotac) around here costs $326 :-(eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
There are four $250 1060s on newegg, with the same specs as the FE version.fanofanand - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
You mean the listings titled "out of stock"? Of course there are higher priced versions available. Surprise surprise.eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
As if 480s aren't out of stock. The point is, there ARE $250 1060s. Availability is another matter.bug77 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
It says "ships in 3-5 days" on most of them, so I don't see your problem.Mugur - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
In my country the Zotac mini 1060 is cheaper with the equivalent of 25$ than the cheapest RX 480 8 GB...