[Eurogamer] GTX 1060: 3 GB vs 6 GB

[poofyhairguy]

yeah, that whole 1GB makes all the difference, so much better future proof for sure...

It is a generational difference at the high end:

3GB - 780, 780 ti, 7970 Ghz
4GB - 970, 980, 290X

So if developers target recent high-end cards instead of older ones (which is a logical conclusion eventually) then the 1GB is a huge difference.

I don't think 6GB vs 8GB matters though.

 

[Erenhardt]

It's a HD texture pack not supposed to be run on a cards with 4GB or less memory, the performance reduction is the stutter prevention mechanism from the driver.

Those are standard in game textures, a core part of game, not some 3rd party DLC texture pack out of nowhere.

Dont really know. That is a very strange line-up though. A weaker card with more vram. Sticking with the nVidia cards only, I would probably just bite the bullet and go for a 1060 6gb. Some are available at around 250 or 260, and count of peace of mind and better longevity being worth the extra 50 bucks. Problem with 4gb cards is that it seems to be enough now, but it would could very well be borderline for future titles as well. Seems contradictory to me that a 3gb card with better memory management (1060 3gb) is so roundly criticized while 4 gb AMD cards are given a free pass.

They don't. I think anyone going for 4GB or less is going to be surprised how short lived his card is compared to other cards with more VRAM. I put my money where my mouth is and I bought 2x 8GB 480.
Just look at 960 in 2015:

A HUGE 23% difference in favor of 4GB card.
3GB 1060 is not only crippled on the VRAM side like 960 was, but also it is castrated on the GPU core front aswell. Makes it worse than 2GB 960 in 2015 in comparison.

Still a pretty good succesor to the 2GB GTX 960. These are the settings on which you aren't supposed to play with a mid-tier cards like this, and you also get a warning about it in the game while changing it. Really the only weakness of this card, but that's what you get for $50 less.
I probably wouldn't recommend it to the uneducated ordinary Joe who expects to 'max out' all games on a $199 card, but for those who know how to work around their own limits and lower some ingame settings it's a pretty sweet deal.

In the meantime cheaper 4GB 470 is chugging along without this problem. It offers you more VRAM for yesterdays games, and will provide it for the games of tomorrow - when it will be needed even more. Those cards are not about miximizing every setting. But when you have to sacrafice the most visually obvious one, it kinda sucks.

The same priced RX 470 4GB can play this game easily at those settings. So if GTX 1060 3GB cannot, it should be priced at $150.

As should the 4GB 470 IMHO.

Sure the 3Gb 1060 has no problems with real game play of the witcher 3 in novingrad which has massive amounts of different textures for all the people and buildings but not many effects,but drops performance in some canned benchmarks so naturally it must be the Vrams fault.
Don't believe the canned BS they are trying to feed you.

Witcher has not so massive amounts of textures with questionable quality.

You have a problem recomending a 3GB card, but no a 4GB card... yeah, that whole 1GB makes all the difference, so much better future proof for sure... the 4GB RX470/RX480 are the AMD version of the GTX960 2GB, and you said yourselft what happened with those.

Both are bad options and you should get 6/8GB card, but... That is not always an option.
It is 33% more VRAM whichever way you slice it. At lower price it is better deal IMHO. 1060 faster core is not fast enough to push you through one more generation, but 1 GB more VRAM on 470 can certainly do it.

It is a generational difference at the high end:

3GB - 780, 780 ti, 7970 Ghz
4GB - 970, 980, 290X

So if developers target recent high-end cards instead of older ones (which is a logical conclusion eventually) then the 1GB is a huge difference.

I don't think 6GB vs 8GB matters though.

Nailed it. At least for the most part. (970 VRAM )

 

[Shivansps]

It is a generational difference at the high end:

3GB - 780, 780 ti, 7970 Ghz
4GB - 970, 980, 290X

So if developers target recent high-end cards instead of older ones (which is a logical conclusion eventually) then the 1GB is a huge difference.

I don't think 6GB vs 8GB matters though.

Those are 2 year old cards or more, im talking about TODAY, 2 years ago it was another reality. And Kepler is +3 years.

 

[poofyhairguy]

2 years ago it was another reality.

Exactly, back then a 3GB card was more acceptable.

 

[fuccboi]

It's just wierd, when 1060 3gb pulls ~10fps in almost all benches ahead of similarly priced rx 470 it's nothing to write back home about, but when all the stars align for rx 470 and it does that same thing for a few brief moments and in a very specific situations(where you wouldn't take that card anyway) it's a "whole other tier of playable experience".

 

[rgallant]

It's just wierd, when 1060 3gb pulls ~10fps in almost all benches ahead of similarly priced rx 470 it's nothing to write back home about, but when all the stars align for rx 470 and it does that same thing for a few brief moments and in a very specific situations(where you wouldn't take that card anyway) it's a "whole other tier of playable experience".

2560x1440 (1440p)

GTX 1060 3GB MSI GTX 1060 3GB GTX 1060 6GB GTX 970 4GB MSI RX 470 4GB RX 480 4GB RX 480 8GB
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA 32.4 33.5 37.4 32.7 29.6 31.0 33.8
Ashes of the Singularity, Extreme, 0x MSAA, DX12 41.3 41.6 41.2 35.9 40.1 40.7 42.7
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x 45.6 47.4 47.7 43.8 41.3 41.8 43.1
The Division, Ultra, SMAA 37.7 38.9 39.9 36.1 37.2 38.1 39.0
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA 42.7 43.9 45.0 39.6 39.2 40.7 42.3
Hitman, Ultra, SMAA, DX12 41.0 42.1 48.1 41.5 50.0 52.2 55.0
Rise of the Tomb Raider, Very High, High Textures, SMAA, DX12 47.8 47.8 49.2 46.1 43.2 45.0 45.8
The Witcher 3, Ultra, Post AA, No HairWorks 45.4 46.9 48.2 31.9 41.9 43.5 45.
I see +4ish to -9ish but nice try anyways 1440p is part of all benches.

 

[fuccboi]

You gonna game on these cards in the 1440p with these framerates? Try again, even the 8gigs are worthless here lol.

 

[AtenRa]

As should the 4GB 470 IMHO.

Im with ya, RX 470 4GB should have been at $150-170 MAX. And I and everyone else havent forgotten AMD talking about RX 480 at $199

 

[AtenRa]

You have a problem recomending a 3GB card, but no a 4GB card... yeah, that whole 1GB makes all the difference, so much better future proof for sure... the 4GB RX470/RX480 are the AMD version of the GTX960 2GB, and you said yourselft what happened with those.

When the 4GB RX470 is cheaper at $190 and its faster in the games that need more than 3GB then i will recommend it over the more expensive and one GB less GTX 1060 3GB.
If we were talking about 4GB vs 6/8GB cards i would recommend the 6/8GB cards.

 

[tweakboy]

Go future proof , get 6GB version youll need it in these new games that are coming. gl

 

[TheELF]

The Witcher 3 isn't a Directx 12 game. The whole point is Directx 12 games (even non native ones) are VRAM pigs.

We don't know if that matters until we see more minimums in those games.

Dx12 was supposed to improve things...
If things stay this way devs will be forced to provide a Dx11 path for years to come,so dx12 being a vram hog is a mute point,if it sucks and keeps sucking it won't be adopted.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Dx12 was supposed to improve things...
If things stay this way devs will be forced to provide a Dx11 path for years to come,so dx12 being a vram hog is a mute point,if it sucks and keeps sucking it won't be adopted.

Until Windows 10 is more widespread I don't see developers abandoning dx11 any time soon.

EDIT: And it's 'moot' not 'mute'. Sorry, pet peeve of mine.

 

[Bacon1]

Until Windows 10 is more widespread I don't see developers abandoning dx11 any time soon.

EDIT: And it's 'moot' not 'mute'. Sorry, pet peeve of mine.

Windows 10 64 bit is the most popular OS according to steam hardware survey. Most gamers should have updated if they had DX12 capable (and higher end) hardware. It was free upgrade for a year, no reason to stick with Win 7/8 for a gaming PC.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It's just wierd, when 1060 3gb pulls ~10fps in almost all benches ahead of similarly priced rx 470 it's nothing to write back home about, but when all the stars align for rx 470 and it does that same thing for a few brief moments and in a very specific situations(where you wouldn't take that card anyway) it's a "whole other tier of playable experience".

^^ This. So true.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Windows 10 64 bit is the most popular OS according to steam hardware survey. Most gamers should have updated if they had DX12 capable (and higher end) hardware. It was free upgrade for a year, no reason to stick with Win 7/8 for a gaming PC.

It doesn't change the situation that a still large number of people do not have Windows 10. If developers abandon DX11 now, they'd be abandoning a still large segment of players.

 

[Erenhardt]

They can still provide subpar dx11 path.
Or maybe Vulkan will take over as it is X-OS and X-platform.

 

[antihelten]

Maxing texture quality has very little impact on performance - that is if you have enough VRAM to support it. Otherwise it is chopfest.

Jaskalas post didn't specify maxing texture quality, it just said max settings, and in that case shading performance will be just as big of a bottleneck as VRAM 2-4 years from now (if not more so).

The VRAM limits will be more an issue though. History has shown us this with these PR edition cards which look good short term but over time don't do so good. Examples include:
1.)8800GTS 320MB vs 8800GTS 640MB
2.)8800GT 256MB vs 8800GT 512MB
3.)GTX460 768MB vs GTX460 1GB
4.)HD6950 1GB vs HD6950 2GB
5.)HD7850 1GB vs HD7850 2GB

There might be a few others I missed,but people should get the gist.

This is why Digital Foundry and Guru3D said to just buy the GTX1060 6GB instead.

With the exception of the GTX 460, all of the mentioned cards have double the VRAM. The competition for the 1060 3GB is the RX 470 with 4GB of VRAM, so quite a different scenario. And as far as the GTX 460 goes, the two versions didn't just differ in VRAM amount, they also had different ROP count and bandwidth, so again not really comparable.

The 6GB 1060 and the 8GB 480 will of course be more future proof, but those cards are also in completely different pricing tiers, and it should be obvious for everyone on this forum that moving up in tiers will provide more future proofing since that is the way it has always been, so that is just stating the obvious. The real question is if the direct competition (the RX 470) will be more future proof, since that is the alternative 1060 3GB costumers would actually be looking at.

Well... at reduced settings. Here is what happens when you increase textures:
https://youtu.be/y1RWItff0eQ?t=315
30% slower than 6gb 1060
20% slower than 470 4gb

You mean that's what happens in a single scene out of three.

The final results for the benchmark was 63.7 FPS for the 1060 3GB and 62.2 FPS for the RX 470 (based on last average FPS numbers seen in the video), or in other words the 1060 3GB was 2.4% faster on average.

The benchmark ran for a total of 1 minute and 19 seconds (based on the video), and the high VRAM scene lasted for 24 seconds. So if the the 1060 3GB was 16% faster overall and 20% slower in that scene, it must have been 9.5% faster in the other two scenes.

So the choice is then 20% slower in one scene (or inversely 25% faster from the perspective of the RX 470) vs. 9.5% faster in the other two scenes (or inversely 8.6% slower from the perspective of the RX 470). Which one is preferable would depend upon the kind of FPS you are seeing, but at a glance I wouldn't personally be able to say which is preferable.

Edit: I edited to use the correct number for very high textures.

The same priced RX 470 4GB can play this game easily at those settings. So if GTX 1060 3GB cannot, it should be priced at $150.

The RX 470 actually loses by more than 20% in the other two scenes (edit: only 8.6% with the correct numbers), and thus has a harder overall time playing this game, so I guess by your logic it should actually be priced at $100 or something equally silly then.

Edit: I used the wrong numbers (see above edits)

 

[sm625]

So you might have to turn down some settings 2 years from now if you have a 3GB card. But you will have to tweak settings no matter what. The 1060 3GB is still the best option for $200 or less. Dont forget that if you game for 5 hours a day for 2 years, you will save $40 just by using the GTX 1060 vs a RX470. The best thing about the GTX 1060 3GB is that it looks like there are no "bad" cards. Even the single fan models look like they run cool and quiet. Even if you are able to find a AMD competing solution for the same price, it is going to be a crappy blower model that runs at 85C and is 5 dB louder.

 

[antihelten]

So you might have to turn down some settings 2 years from now if you have a 3GB card.

For what it's worth this is the difference between high and very high textures in Tomb Raider:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

Example 5

 

[Erenhardt]

Jaskalas post didn't specify maxing texture quality, it just said max settings, and in that case shading performance will be just as big of a bottleneck as VRAM 2-4 years from now (if not more so).

VRAM is bottleneck already - 2-4 years down the road that core performance will be basically the same from the perspective of new cards.

You mean that's what happens in a single scene out of three.

The final results for the benchmark was 63.7 FPS for the 1060 3GB and 62.2 FPS for the RX 470 (based on last average FPS numbers seen in the video), or in other words the 1060 3GB was 2.4% faster on average.

The benchmark ran for a total of 1 minute and 19 seconds (based on the video), and the high VRAM scene lasted for 24 seconds. So if the the 1060 3GB was 16% faster overall and 20% slower in that scene, it must have been 9.5% faster in the other two scenes.

So the choice is then 20% slower in one scene (or inversely 25% faster from the perspective of the RX 470) vs. 9.5% faster in the other two scenes (or inversely 8.6% slower from the perspective of the RX 470). Which one is preferable would depend upon the kind of FPS you are seeing, but at a glance I wouldn't personally be able to say which is preferable.

Edit: I edited to use the correct number for very high textures.



The RX 470 actually loses by more than 20% in the other two scenes (edit: only 8.6% with the correct numbers), and thus has a harder overall time playing this game, so I guess by your logic it should actually be priced at $100 or something equally silly then.

Edit: I used the wrong numbers (see above edits)

Rx470 is faster in scene 2 and 3. Take a second look.

So you might have to turn down some settings 2 years from now if you have a 3GB card. But you will have to tweak settings no matter what. The 1060 3GB is still the best option for $200 or less. Dont forget that if you game for 5 hours a day for 2 years, you will save $40 just by using the GTX 1060 vs a RX470. The best thing about the GTX 1060 3GB is that it looks like there are no "bad" cards. Even the single fan models look like they run cool and quiet. Even if you are able to find a AMD competing solution for the same price, it is going to be a crappy blower model that runs at 85C and is 5 dB louder.

You have to turn down settings day one on 3GB card (actually RoTR is now couple of months old)
Also,don't know where you buy your cards, but here the custom 470 are cheaper than even the crappiest 1060 3GB.

Also, cryptomining will nullify all power costs of 470 and will offset some of the purchase expanses.

For what it's worth this is the difference between high and very high textures in Tomb Raider:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

Example 5

May as well play on console...

 

[moonbogg]

Crysis 3 looks absolutely incredible with very fine detail, and even at 3440x1440, the game doesn't break 3gb Vram. This whole "new games need more than DOUBLE the Vram" is nothing but a racket to sell new cards. That's it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It's just wierd, when 1060 3gb pulls ~10fps in almost all benches ahead of similarly priced rx 470 it's nothing to write back home about, but when all the stars align for rx 470 and it does that same thing for a few brief moments and in a very specific situations(where you wouldn't take that card anyway) it's a "whole other tier of playable experience".

You are misquoting me. The "whole other tier of playable experience" is related to the $50 more expensive 6GB 1060, not the 470.

Dont forget that if you game for 5 hours a day for 2 years, you will save $40 just by using the GTX 1060 vs a RX470.

Yeah and if you mine Ethereum all the time you don't game a 470 will pay for itself in six months in a location with reasonable power prices.

Example 5

This one shows a pretty stark difference for sure.

So the choice is then 20% slower in one scene (or inversely 25% faster from the perspective of the RX 470) vs. 9.5% faster in the other two scenes (or inversely 8.6% slower from the perspective of the RX 470). Which one is preferable would depend upon the kind of FPS you are seeing, but at a glance I wouldn't personally be able to say which is preferable.

It is obvious what is preferable-which one keeps the minimums above 60fps. I am not advocating someone should always get the 470, but in this one example the 1060 "ran up the score" on scenes where every card got well over 60fps (aka the 3GB 1060 did like 100 fps and the 470 did 80 fps) while in intense scenes the 3GB card was going down into the low 40s on FPS while the 470 stayed closer to 60 fps (and the 6GB 1060 stayed locked at 60 fps). In this situation I would take the 470 all day as it's the actual best playable experience for someone with a 60hz screen (which is most people).

That is what I keep saying, the averages don't tell the story of the 3GB 1060. Averages hide spikes of sub-60 fps playback in the times when the card goes way above 60 fps (which is useless for gameplay) . We need more reviews that show us minimums to tell the whole story.

 

[Arachnotronic]

So you might have to turn down some settings 2 years from now if you have a 3GB card. But you will have to tweak settings no matter what. The 1060 3GB is still the best option for $200 or less. Dont forget that if you game for 5 hours a day for 2 years, you will save $40 just by using the GTX 1060 vs a RX470. The best thing about the GTX 1060 3GB is that it looks like there are no "bad" cards. Even the single fan models look like they run cool and quiet. Even if you are able to find a AMD competing solution for the same price, it is going to be a crappy blower model that runs at 85C and is 5 dB louder.

Wow, I wish I had time to game for 5 hours a day for 2 years. I get maybe 1hr every couple of days

 

[s44]

Still a pretty good succesor to the 2GB GTX 960.

Eh, I don't think so. This feels more like the 320mb 8800GTS to me. Maybe you don't need all 6gb, but you sure do need more than 3.

Remember that the last time Nvidia did a cut-down mainstream (460) the vram was only cut from 1gb to 768mb, not halved.

 

[fuccboi]

Also,don't know where you buy your cards, but here the custom 470 are cheaper than even the crappiest 1060 3GB.

Also, cryptomining will nullify all power costs of 470 and will offset some of the purchase expanses.

Yeah and if you mine Ethereum all the time you don't game a 470 will pay for itself in six months in a location with reasonable power prices.

Here in europe you get a dualfan gtx 1060 3gb for the price of the Rx 470 4gb with a blower.

Also I've proved you wrong on the cryptomining in the other thread already, the GTX 1060 3GB is actually equal or even better at it than RX 470 4GB all things considered.