[Eurogamer] GTX 1060: 3 GB vs 6 GB

[Keysplayr]

When they both have the same amount of RAM. You're trying to sell the idea that NVIDIA's 3 GB is actually better than having physically 1 GB more RAM.

What you just said doesnt actually refute that possibility. So it could be.

 

[Pantalaimon]

What you just said doesnt actually refute that possibility. So it could be.

And Israel and the arab countries could sign a peace treaty tomorrow.

 

[Keysplayr]

When they both have the same amount of RAM. You're trying to sell the idea that NVIDIA's 3 GB is actually better than having physically 1 GB more RAM.

Edited to add:
You're actually trying to use the same tack as NVDIA's PR regarding the 970 3,5 GB vs 4 GB issue. In that case they basically said 'You ingrate users should be happy we found a way to give you 4 GB on the card, instead of complaining that we did not tell you 0,5 GB of it is slower VRAM'.

Here you're trying to say 'Users should be happy NVDIA has a secret sauce to manage and compress VRAM that makes their 3 GB on their cards better than actually having physically 1 GB more on the card. So shut up about 3 GB not being enough'.

You see benchmarks. You see a lack of evidence showing 3GB isnt enough.
You see computerbase flat out say that nvidia seems to have a more efficient memory management system.
And yet here you are accusing me of marketibg for nvidia when we are all talking about 3rd party sources here.
Eurogamer and computerbase.
So, am I trying to sell what those two sources claim? Yes. Bigger question is,
Why arent you accepting their results in favor of attacking me claiming marketing?

Youre not making sense.

Is it that you do not like their findings?
You do not trust their findings?
You feel nvidia is in their pocket?
What?

 

[antihelten]

When they both have the same amount of RAM. You're trying to sell the idea that NVIDIA's 3 GB is actually better than having physically 1 GB more RAM.

The real question isn't whether 3GB plus better memory management is better than 4GB though (I personally very much doubt it is). The real question is whether or not it is significantly worse, and so far there doesn't really seem to be the case, it's very much a case of "lose some, win some" between the 1060 3GB and the RX 470 right now (with the 1060 generally having the upper hand, although that may potentially change in the future).

 

[justin4pack]

The real question isn't whether 3GB plus better memory management is better than 4GB though (I personally very much doubt it is). The real question is whether or not it is significantly worse, and so far there doesn't really seem to be the case, it's very much a case of "lose some, win some" between the 1060 3GB and the RX 480 right now (with the 1060 generally having the upper hand, although that may potentially change in the future).

Edited that for you.


Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[Azix]

Edited that for you.


Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

its kind of a mess. sometimes the 1060 3GB wins in dx11, sometimes the 470 wins in dx11. Same with 480 vs 1060 6GB/3GB. sometimes the 470 beats the 1060 6GB in dx12. More or less have to just look at which games you want to play including future ones. 3GB vs 4GB is an issue by itself.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Why arent you accepting their results in favor of attacking me claiming marketing?

I'm attacking your marketing effort on behalf of NVIDIA. It would seem you're just trying to get people buy this 3 gb card now and then have to upgrade quicker than they would have to if they'd put some more money towards the 6 gb card now. There's a difference in saying 'Sure 3 gb is fine' compared to 'Save some more money and get the 6 gb card instead, because while the 3 gb is ok, now it will more likely not be enough in the near future'. But I've noticed your lack of criticism towards anything NVIDIA.

 

[Bacon1]

Note that the 2GB 460 appears to be significantly power limited compared to the 4GB version (likely due to the lack a 6-pin connector), and cant maintain it's clockrate. So you have to be careful with drawing any conclusions about VRAM here.

On that note Computerbase.de did make an interesting observation when they played around with texture settings. Basically they found that the gap between the 2GB and 4GB 460 would diminish when texture settings were lowered clearly indicating that the 2GB was VRAM limited, the 2GB GTX 950 on the other hand didn't care, indicating that it wasn't VRAM limited. This along with the Techspot review posted above clearly supports the notion that Nvidia is better at VRAM management than AMD.

The quote from computerbase.de (roughly translated by me, if anyone speaks german fell free to provide corrections):
"The common denominator of all games: None of them go light on the graphics card memory. One or two steps lower texture details quickly shows that for the RX 460, 2GB is not sufficient for the settings. The opposite is the case for the Nvidia card: the GeForce GTX 950 with 2GB supports sometimes much higher FPS in the problematic games, up to 42 percent (F1 2015) ahead of the 2GB version of the RX 460. It can thus only be concluded that Nvidia in borderline cases has a more efficient memory management than AMD."

HardwareUnboxed found the opposite, that the 2GB was equal to the 4GB in most games.

The computerbase tests didn't try to get playable framerates either though, many of the tests have the cards under 30 fps. Wish either of them would have included 2/4 from Nvidia as well to see how those performed. Many of those games also had the 2GB 950 beating the 4GB 460, so hard to tell what was really the limiter, VRAM or the power of the card themselves.

F1 2015 for instance gains 15% fps just from going from one model 950 to another. The 460 4GB is 74% faster, so very hard to tell what the actual issue is in that game and where the bottlenecks are.

You note that the 2GB 460 is power bottlenecked, which could easily be the cause for the performance issues in F1 as well, not to mention the card we are talking about (3GB 1060) is also reduced parts not just VRAM, so again you can't say that memory alone is the limiter for it.

 

[HumblePie]

I don't understand the 1060 at all really.

3GB 1060 is a bit worse than the 470 4GB and the 1060 costs more.
6gb 1060 is a lot worse than the 480 8GB and the 1060 costs only about $10 less.

I just can't see myself recommending at the moment a 1060 over a 470 or 480 for the price to anyone currently. Although the 1060 6GB is ok to recommend to those that really dislike AMD for whatever reason.

Which I guess is okay as it rushed out to compete with the 470/480 quicker than Nvidia had previously put out the other mid tier cards after the high end released cards.

 

[Keysplayr]

I don't understand the 1060 at all really.

3GB 1060 is a bit worse than the 470 4GB and the 1060 costs more.
6gb 1060 is a lot worse than the 480 8GB and the 1060 costs only about $10 less.

I just can't see myself recommending at the moment a 1060 over a 470 or 480 for the price to anyone currently. Although the 1060 6GB is ok to recommend to those that really dislike AMD for whatever reason.

Which I guess is okay as it rushed out to compete with the 470/480 quicker than Nvidia had previously put out the other mid tier cards after the high end released cards.

Wait. What?
1060 3GB worse than 470? 1060 3GB often bests 480s. Nevermind 1060 6GB.

So...... No idea what context you're using or if the is any at all.

 

[HumblePie]

Wait. What?
1060 3GB worse than 470? 1060 3GB often bests 480s. Nevermind 1060 6GB.

So...... No idea what context you're using or if the is any at all.

Not with dx12 and more modern games with high textures. In older stuff it does.

Personally I went 1080 for a reason and couldn't really decide on the middle end which would be best bang for the buck this time around.

 

[Keysplayr]

Not with dx12 and more modern games with high textures. In older stuff it does.

Personally I went 1080 for a reason and couldn't really decide on the middle end which would be best bang for the buck this time around.

Yeah, ahead in DX11 and trades blows in DX12. That's not worse. That's better.

 

[antihelten]

HardwareUnboxed found the opposite, that the 2GB was equal to the 4GB in most games.

The computerbase tests didn't try to get playable framerates either though, many of the tests have the cards under 30 fps. Wish either of them would have included 2/4 from Nvidia as well to see how those performed. Many of those games also had the 2GB 950 beating the 4GB 460, so hard to tell what was really the limiter, VRAM or the power of the card themselves.

F1 2015 for instance gains 15% fps just from going from one model 950 to another. The 460 4GB is 74% faster, so very hard to tell what the actual issue is in that game and where the bottlenecks are.

You note that the 2GB 460 is power bottlenecked, which could easily be the cause for the performance issues in F1 as well, not to mention the card we are talking about (3GB 1060) is also reduced parts not just VRAM, so again you can't say that memory alone is the limiter for it.

HardwareUnboxed also concluded that the 1060 3GB was a perfectly decent GPU "For 1080p gamers the choice seems more obvious, save the money and get the 3GB model. I can’t imagine even in a year’s time the 3GB 1060 will suffer at this res.". So if we go by them I guess we can conclude that all this complaining about 3GB is just pointless.

Anyway back to your point, yes HardwareUnboxed's numbers compared to computerbase.de's numbers clearly indicate that settings play a huge role in the gap between the 2GB and 4GB 460, however that wasn't really the point I was getting at. The reason why I quoted ComputerBase.de was because their numbers clearly showed that once settings are raised to a point were VRAM becomes a limit (note that the gap they saw is too big to be caused solely by the lower clocks of the 2GB version), Nvidia clearly does better. The conclusion must therefore be that under VRAM limited scenarios Nvidia's memory management outperforms AMD's (at least as far as the RX 460 vs. GTX 950 is concerned). Obviously if you lower settings to the point where VRAM is no longer a limiting factor, then it becomes irrelevant who has the better memory management.

Also I never said that the 1060 3GB was only limited by memory, I have no idea where you got that from. In fact my very first post in this thread pointed out that the exact opposite would very likely be the case in the future (i.e. the 1060 3GB being bottlenecked not just by VRAM, but also shader performance in the future).

 

[USER8000]

Great, so now we're back to your flawed arguments from page 1, btw you still haven't provided a link showing that the 460 768MB collapsed compared to the 460 1GB that I asked for, I would still love to see that.

In other news Guru3D has their review up. Their Hitman and Tomb Raider number seems to support the notion that TPU's numbers are outliers.

Guru3D is also interesting because they provide FCAT results, all in all there isn't much of interest to report here though. The GTX 1060 3GB doesn't really show any serious cases of stutter apart from scene changes, which is to be expected. It does a bit worse than the RX 470 in Hitman, whilst the RX 470 in turn does a bit worse in The Division. All in all nothing to write home about.

Once again the 1060 6GB is 6% faster on average, and the RX 470 is 5% slower (the 1060 3GB and the RX 470 are neck and neck across the 5 DX12/Vulkan games btw.).

So you are back to your flawed arguments that only maybe two people agree with you on - so instead of trying to make sure people spend more on graphics card over time,make this promise NOW:

"In the next two to three years,the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GTX1060 6GB,in ALL games including minimums and have similar frametimes".

Make that promise NOW to this forum and stand by it.

Make,it and promise everybody it will be the same - I predict it won't and stop spinning again since you are now trying to disagree with nearly everybody apart from your mate who has a 12GB card when he could have got a 6GB card which is faster.

I showed you the 8800GT 256MB results from Anandtech and you are so scared you ignore them,because you seem to want to make sure people waste their money due to E-PEEN.

Guru3D also said to get the 6GB card - so you are argueing with everybody that 3GB is fine,yet you are trying to stop people reading the review by saying " there isn't much of interest to report here though" since you are scared they will read the conclusion which is to buy the 6GB version.

 

[USER8000]

Also,looking at the Guru3D review:

Look at the comparison between the GTX1060 6GB and 3GB in those games - there is noticeable spikes in the frametimes.

Chimes with what the Digital Foundry saw.

They also saw stuttering in another game.

It seems some here are massively desperate to oversell the GTX1060 3GB,and yet Digital Foundry,which is more a site for gamers,said the following:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB - the Digital Foundry verdict

Going back to our GTX 1080 review, we were pleasantly surprised to see how well the old GTX 780 Ti held up on our modern benchmarking suite bearing in mind its 3GB of VRAM. The new GTX 1060 3GB has the same amount of memory but an additional two generation's worth of memory compression optimisations - the end result is that three gigs is indeed enough for top-tier 1080p60 gameplay - as long as you stay away from memory hogs like MSAA (which tends to kill frame-rate) along with 'HQ/HD' texture packs and extreme resolution texture options. By and large, the visual impact of these options at 1080p is rather limited anyway - generally speaking, they're designed for 4K screens.

That said, as good as Nvidia's compression technology is, it is lossless in nature, meaning that its effectiveness won't just change on a title by title basis, but at a per-scene level too, according to the content. And with the Hitman benchmark suggesting that even at 1080p, we might be hitting the three gig limit and seeing an additional hit to performance not caused by the reduced CUDA core count, we do have to wonder about the level of future-proofing this cut-down GTX 1060 has. The visual improvement found in super high resolution texture packs may be limited, but we certainly wouldn't want to drop down to medium quality artwork on future titles in order to sustain the expected level of performance.

In the here and now, the three gig GTX 1060 is a good card with excellent performance at its £189/$199 price-point, but its VRAM allocation may well hit its limits more quickly than the four gigs found in the RX 470/480. None of the new wave of sub-£200/$200 graphics cards should be entirely ruled out, and this pared back GTX 1060 still packs plenty of punch - but investing just a little extra in the GTX 1060 6GB would be our recommendation. With certain six gig versions retailing under the initial suggested price-point, grabbing the more capable model needn't break the bank.

Guru3D said to get the 6GB version too.

Last Words

I really do have some mixed feeling for the 3 GB model of the GTX 1060. The slightly lower shader count doesn't bother me, the 3 GB should be fine if you stick at 1080P or a lower resolution, and yet still I am leaning very much to advise and steer you towards a 6GB model. You might not even use up the 6GB but it sure as heck will make the product more future proof. The driver issue I ran into was weird, I still need to further investigate but was solved and sorted by using an older driver. While writing this I realize it might even have been the High DPC Latency issue that we have seen popping up more lately. Dunno, more info once available. The card as tested today sells for 219 USD + 20 bucks for this particular MSI GAMING X model, and that remains to be good value for money alright. You'll play your games up-to 1920x1080 perfectly fine and using proper image quality settings.

Obviously that 3 GB framebuffer remains a bit of a discussion, again I would advise 6GB as I feel 4GB+ is the norm for proper mainstream gaming anno 2016. The card will tweak quite well, we however predict (once again) that any and all cards can achieve a stable ~2.1 GHz boost clock frequency. With the graphics memory you should be reaching 9 Gbps (effective data-rate) quite easily as well. Hey, for the bigger part Nvidia is in control of your tweak, not you. Still anno 2016 we have 120 Watt GPUs now passing the 2 GHz easily, and that is impressive at any level. MSI offers more value with the GTX 1060 3GB Gaming X. It is a lovely and well designed card with a proper silent cooler. If you can spot it for the right price, these cards can be little gems in the 1080P domain and offer good value in a cool looking yet silent package. But yes you might like it or not, I'll stick to what I stated. If you can spend the extra dough, go for that 6GB model.

The GTX1060 3GB defenders have no leg to stand on - both those sites have said to get the 6GB version - one that does FCAT testing and another which is more a GAMING orientated site.

My prediction is that they will keep on saying the 3GB version is fine,and then forget about it as more and more games have issues.

Then they will argue about something else,and forget about all the people they have mislead to buy the 3GB card.

 

[USER8000]

Yet,some of the low VRAM defenders here also ignore,this article from computerbase.de last year:

https://www.computerbase.de/2015-12/2gb-4gb-gtx-960-r9-380-vram-test/2/#abschnitt_frametimemessungen

The same people were probably saying 2GB was fine - 4GB is no point,etc.

Assassin's Creed Unity

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Far Cry 4

GTA V

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

It seems that both the GTX960 4GB and R9 380 4GB have better frametimes in all the games tested over the 2GB versions and that was last year. That is with cards which are considered not that powerful by modern standards at 1920X1080.

This is why the low VRAM defence crew need to be ignored - everytime they are shown VRAM causes issues OVER TIME,they ignore it and then try another angle.

Its a good thing I got a GTX960 4GB instead of the 2GB version - some here were pushing it as fine. Yet,it isn't and they went all quiet,just like the GTX1060 3GB defenders here will go all quiet,in another year or two.

So expect the next 100 pages of spinning from the same people,and they quietly they will bury all mention of the card in the next year,as it looks progressively worse and worse.

Yet,I also expect all of them will buy cards with plenty of VRAM,and then shout victim if someone queries it.

I look forward to all the most fervent GTX1060 3GB defenders using it as their main graphics card for the next few years.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Then they will argue about something else,and forget about all the people they have mislead to buy the 3GB card.

See, they are afraid that people will get the evil AMD's 470 4 gb card instead of the 1060 6 gb card if they admit that 3 gb might not have much longevity, which is why they are defending the 3 gb.


Baiting is not allowed
Markfw900

 

[Keysplayr]

Also,looking at the Guru3D review:

Look at the comparison between the GTX1060 6GB and 3GB in those games - there is noticeable spikes in the frametimes.

Chimes with what the Digital Foundry saw.

They also saw stuttering in another game.

It seems some here are massively desperate to oversell the GTX1060 3GB,and yet Digital Foundry,which is more a site for gamers,said the following:







Guru3D said to get the 6GB version too.




The GTX1060 3GB defenders have no leg to stand on - both those sites have said to get the 6GB version - one that does FCAT testing and another which is more a GAMING orientated site.

My prediction is that they will keep on saying the 3GB version is fine,and then forget about it as more and more games have issues.

Then they will argue about something else,and forget about all the people they have mislead to buy the 3GB card.

Ah, you snuck in 1440 frametime shots. 1060 3GB is a good 1080 card.
And of course if you can afford better, you buy better. By your logic, people should never buy until they eventually save enough money for the TitanX. It has the most longevity of any card available and you should not settle for anything less than 12GB of VRAM because mirrors edge hyper is already putting a hurt on 8GB GPUs.
Leg to stand on? How about two?

 

[USER8000]

See, they are afraid that people will get the evil AMD's 470 4 gb card instead of the 1060 6 gb card if they admit that 3 gb might not have much longevity, which is why they are defending the 3 gb.

Wow,so brand purchase justification. They even are jumping on me since I suggested buying the 6GB version,and so did Guru3D and the Digital Foundry.

But,they are making sure they duck the most important question,that all of us need to be asking them,which is will they promise the following:

"In the next two to three years,the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GTX1060 6GB,in ALL games including minimums and have similar frametimes".

Make that promise NOW to this forum and stand by it.

That is all that everybody needs to ask - no point showing them anything,they will just ignore it,so we need to clarify that stance with a promise to the forum.

I appreciate the GTX1060 6GB has more shaders,so hence the 10% difference.

 

[USER8000]

Ah, you snuck in 1440 frametime shots. 1060 3GB is a good 1080 card.
And of course if you can afford better, you buy better. By your logic, people should never buy until they eventually save enough money for the TitanX. It has the most longevity of any card available and you should not settle for anything less than 12GB of VRAM because mirrors edge hyper is already putting a hurt on 8GB GPUs.
Leg to stand on? How about two?

Because I am the target market for the card. I had a GTX660TI and now a GTX960,so a GTX1060 is my upgrade on the Nvidia side and your argument of 2560X1440,well guess what mate?? People do upgrade monitors over the lifespan of their cards.

In the UK,you can get monitors with abover 1080P resolution(well increased amount of pixels at least) from £180 onwards(including widescreen ones),and you only don't like the 2560X1440 results since Digital Foundry said the GTX1060 6GB did not have any stuttering - the 3GB did.

You also don't seem to get,we are paying £190 to £200 for a GTX1060 3GB(median prices),and the GTX1060 6GB can be had from £230 onwards. The previous generation GTX960 could be had for like £150 a few months ago(thanks BREXIT!!).

We are paying almost GTX970 level pricing for a GTX1060 3GB now,and plenty of people I knew bought a GTX970 instead of a GTX960,so that £30 to £40 is really not that much in reality.

£190+ is higher end Core i5 pricing too.

For a person who has been here long enough - you should no better. The 8800GT 512MB was 40% more expensive than the 8800GT 256MB and even that massive saving did not make it look better in the end.

The GTX1060 6GB is not massively more expensive than the GTX1060 3GB and also has more shaders.

History has shown us what happens to these cards,and the Digital Foundry and Eurogamer are gaming sites who happen to test hardware. If they say to get the 6GB version,that means they are not mincing their words.

This is the site,who after all has tried to push people away from consoles,by even trying to test lower ends systems and comparing them with a console. Very few sites have tried to that.

Now will you make this promise:
"In the next two to three years,the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GTX1060 6GB,in ALL games including minimums and have similar frametimes".

That is all that is needed now. People like me say no. What is your viewpoint??

These cards need to last two years maybe three years at the price-point. Everybody I know who is a gamer,and has bought a £190 to £250 has kept it at least two years. That is over the last 15 years.

Only people I know who change it quicker are hardware enthusiast mates,who generally spend more anyway on their graphics cards.

 

[USER8000]

Plus another thought - the GTX1060 6GB will have more use as a hand me down card in a few years time,and will no doubt have a higher resale value too.

 

[Dribble]

In all those games above where the 3Gb (or 2Gb 960) has significantly lower fps or higher frame spikes or whatever if you had adjusted the settings to some slightly less memory intensive ones (ie drop texturing or anti-aliasing a notch) it would have done fine. You know you can't always run everything at max settings - you tweak the settings for your card.

The same will be true in 3 years time, you'll have to run at less memory intensive settings then the 6Gb. That's fine, you spend less money you get less performance. Thing is it won't be much less performance because the major bottleneck for visuals will be shader power (which is very similar) not memory, and visual loss for dropping textures/AA slightly is not that great.

 

[USER8000]

In all those games above where the 3Gb (or 2Gb 960) has significantly lower fps or higher frame spikes or whatever if you had adjusted the settings to some slightly less memory intensive ones (ie drop texturing or anti-aliasing a notch) it would have done fine. You know you can't always run everything at max settings - you tweak the settings for your card.

The same will be true in 3 years time, you'll have to run at less memory intensive settings then the 6Gb. That's fine, you spend less money you get less performance. Thing is it won't be much less performance because the major bottleneck for visuals will be shader power (which is very similar) not memory, and visual loss for dropping textures/AA slightly is not that great.

Or you spend the £30 to £40 more and be able to run the games at decent settings still,and have a better resale value if you decide to upgrade the card. 8800GT 256MB cards had much worse resale values than the 8800GT 512MB.

Over three years,that is like a £1 a month.

People easily spend £20 to £50 a month on a phone contract when a cheaper phone would be probably fine.

I had a GTX960 2GB,which I returned,but my GTX960 4GB was noticeably better in some games,and when the computerbase.de article came out,I was not surprised,and that was within the first 12 MONTHS of the GTX960 being released.

You need to consider the Digital Foundry said the following:

[QUOTE
That said, as good as Nvidia's compression technology is, it is lossless in nature, meaning that its effectiveness won't just change on a title by title basis, but at a per-scene level too, according to the content. And with the Hitman benchmark suggesting that even at 1080p, we might be hitting the three gig limit and seeing an additional hit to performance not caused by the reduced CUDA core count, we do have to wonder about the level of future-proofing this cut-down GTX 1060 has. The visual improvement found in super high resolution texture packs may be limited, but we certainly wouldn't want to drop down to medium quality artwork on future titles in order to sustain the expected level of performance.
In the here and now, the three gig GTX 1060 is a good card with excellent performance at its £189/$199 price-point, but its VRAM allocation may well hit its limits more quickly than the four gigs found in the RX 470/480. None of the new wave of sub-£200/$200 graphics cards should be entirely ruled out, and this pared back GTX 1060 still packs plenty of punch - but investing just a little extra in the GTX 1060 6GB would be our recommendation. With certain six gig versions retailing under the initial suggested price-point, grabbing the more capable model needn't break the bank.[/QUOTE]

That is the problem,and I saw it with friends who bought the 8800GT 256MB,it came to a point the VRAM meant you need to drop texture settings lower and lower. Steam itself says cards are either 1GB,2GB or 4GB. Now if you are a dev pushing a next generation game you will be targetting at least 4GB of VRAM - those 4GB cards are most like the GTX970 and GTX980.

Nvidia has top end cards with 6GB and 8GB VRAM,and wait until the Fury X replacement is released - expect AMD to push VRAM too as their R9 390 and R9 390X have 8GB of VRAM too. They basically said they were optimsing on a per game basis for the 4GB VRAM in the Fury X.

This is why I was always a bit dubious about it compared to the GTX980TI.

The GTX1060 6GB will also have a better resale value if you decide to upgrade sooner too.

It will also be able to handle a monitor upgrade better,if you get a higher resolution monitor(like an ultrawide).

Edit to post.

Over time the average gamer will probably spend more on their graphics cards than the rest of their computer.

The GTX1060 6GB will last you longer,and as a result it will be costing you less over time anyway.

It also comes with a small premium over the GTX1060 3GB - 10% more shaders and double the VRAM is a decent step-up in specifications.

 

[Keysplayr]

Or you spend the £30 to £40 more and be able to run the games at decent settings still,and have a better resale value if you decide to upgrade the card. 8800GT 256MB cards had much worse resale values than the 8800GT 512MB.

Over three years,that is like a £1 a month.

People easily spend £20 to £50 a month on a phone contract when a cheaper phone would be probably fine.

I had a GTX960 2GB,which I returned,but my GTX960 4GB was noticeably better in some games,and when the computerbase.de article came out,I was not surprised,and that was within the first 12 MONTHS of the GTX960 being released.

You need to consider the Digital Foundry said the following:

[QUOTE
That said, as good as Nvidia's compression technology is, it is lossless in nature, meaning that its effectiveness won't just change on a title by title basis, but at a per-scene level too, according to the content. And with the Hitman benchmark suggesting that even at 1080p, we might be hitting the three gig limit and seeing an additional hit to performance not caused by the reduced CUDA core count, we do have to wonder about the level of future-proofing this cut-down GTX 1060 has. The visual improvement found in super high resolution texture packs may be limited, but we certainly wouldn't want to drop down to medium quality artwork on future titles in order to sustain the expected level of performance.
In the here and now, the three gig GTX 1060 is a good card with excellent performance at its £189/$199 price-point, but its VRAM allocation may well hit its limits more quickly than the four gigs found in the RX 470/480. None of the new wave of sub-£200/$200 graphics cards should be entirely ruled out, and this pared back GTX 1060 still packs plenty of punch - but investing just a little extra in the GTX 1060 6GB would be our recommendation. With certain six gig versions retailing under the initial suggested price-point, grabbing the more capable model needn't break the bank.

That is the problem,and I saw it with friends who bought the 8800GT 256MB,it came to a point the VRAM meant you need to drop texture settings lower and lower. Steam itself says cards are either 1GB,2GB or 4GB. Now if you are a dev pushing a next generation game you will be targetting at least 4GB of VRAM - those 4GB cards are most like the GTX970 and GTX980.

Nvidia has top end cards with 6GB and 8GB VRAM,and wait until the Fury X replacement is released - expect AMD to push VRAM too as their R9 390 and R9 390X have 8GB of VRAM too. They basically said they were optimsing on a per game basis for the 4GB VRAM in the Fury X.

This is why I was always a bit dubious about it compared to the GTX980TI.

The GTX1060 6GB will also have a better resale value if you decide to upgrade sooner too.

It will also be able to handle a monitor upgrade better,if you get a higher resolution monitor(like an ultrawide).

None, and I mean none of what you are preaching here refutes the fact that the 1060 3GB is an excellent 1080 card. If thats youre budget, thats whats available. Or, save for that TitanX. Better get to savin!!

 

[USER8000]

None, and I mean none of what you are preaching here refutes the fact that the 1060 3GB is an excellent 1080 card. If thats youre budget, thats whats available. Or, save for that TitanX. Better get to savin!!

None, and I mean none of what you are preaching here refutes the fact that the GTX1060 6GB is an excellent 1080p card and capable entry level 1440p and its better than the GTX1060 3GB for a small premium over time,and will have a better resale value. If thats your budget,you will be able to afford the GTX1060 6GB,and I proved I think VRAM is important by buying a Titan X with 12GB of VRAM,despite the aftermarket GTX980TI 6GB cards being faster.

The fact,that you are also posting much more in this thread than me,seems to make me thing YOU are preaching more than anyone else.

Despite the fact YOU are preaching so much,it seems one of the best gaming review sites in the world,Eurogamer,has suggested the GTX1060 6GB is the better buy after using both cards.

Now will you make this promise to Anandtech forums:
"In the next two to three years,the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GTX1060 6GB,in ALL games including minimums and have similar frametimes".

So now put your money where your mouth is.

Both you and your mate are doing everything but making that promise I see.

So either make that promise or don't bother replying to me. I will just repeat the question again.

Edit to post.

I expect you will waffle your way out of it.