Geforce GTX 1060 Thread: faster than RX 480, 120W, $249

[Silverforce11]

dude as I said ref 480 vs ref 1060 is not going to matter when we have custom 480 vs custom 1060 cards. You are going to see a lot of custom 480 reviews in the next 2-4 weeks which will clarify what I said. As I said earlier overall we will see <5% lead for Nvidia in DX11 and >5% lead for AMD in DX12/Vulkan. Right now the showpiece Vulkan title Doom is a mighty embarrassment for GTX 1060 as it gets thrashed by 25-30% by Rx 480. Sorry but thats just pretty darn amazing for Rx 480. If you average out the DX12 perf of Rx 480 and GTX 1060 in AoTS, Hitman, Gears of War Ultimate Edition, Quantum Break, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Total War Warhammer and Vulkan Doom you will see that the margin is >=10%. btw thats ref 480 vs ref 1060. custom 480 vs custom 1060 will see that gap widen while the dx11 lead of 1080 will shrink.

The same can be applied against custom OC 970 and 980. These cards are actually faster than the 1060, but you would recommend the 1060 due to more vram and more future proof.

So the same needs to be applied to the RX 480, more vram and more future proof.

 

[Head1985]

I know what you are trying to do with this comment (set it up that if I call 1060 VRAM gimped then how can I recommend the RX 480 4GB)? but that's not the point of my post at all. Leave the 480 out of it.

$190-230 GTX660 = closer in performance to the 670/680, has full VRAM of those cards
$250-300 GTX1060 = worse in performance to the 1070/1080, has less VRAM than their cards

I already typed out why that is. It's because GTX1060 is NOT a real x60 series card. It's a relabeling of the GTS450 GF106 / GTX550Ti GF116. What NV has done is taken a $129-149 level card and brought it up to $249-299 price levels. In order to make the GTX660Ti level card seem like a good value, they relabelled it as a GTX1070, and raised the price of the 1080 to $600-700, thus allowing the 1070 to look 'good' at $380-450. They would not have been able to relabel GTS1050 as a GTX1060 and call the GTX1070 as the real GTX1060Ti as that would have not allowed NV to charge as high prices for both of those cards. In order to raise the prices across tiers, they bumped up the marketing names. It's why GTX1060 is a GP106 not a cut-down GP104.

It's pretty easy to see NV's marketing BS over this generation.

GTX660Ti cost $299 and it outperformed the GTX580. Eerily familiar to the GTX1070 vs. Titan X?

GTX1060Ti should have cost $299 and it should have also outperformed the Titan X.

You bet it does! but now NV called it GTX1070 and raised the price to $380-450. The price increase from the $499 680 to a $599-699 1080 hides the fact that GTX1070 itself is also gimped and overpriced relative to the Kepler, nevermind Fermi generation where GTX1070 was nothing more than a GF104/114 GTX460/560 level card. Brilliant marketing and most of you fell for it since you are defending it.

$129-149 GTS450/GTX550Ti => $249-299 GTX1060 (marketing)
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Axle/GeForce_GTS_450_OC/

GF106 $129 GTS450 = 98%
GF104 $229 GTX460 = 152%

vs.

GP106 $249-299 GTX1060 = 97%
GP104 $599-699 GTX1080 = 163%

FACE the TRUTH and ADMIT IT: NV has more than doubled the prices of videocards in the last 6 years and manipulated the marketing names to hide this fact. The GPU-Z engineering names are the only thing left for tech savvy PC gamers to know the truth.

GTX1080 is really a GTX460/560Ti lineage/level card and Big Pascal is the true GTX1080.

Where do you think NV's doubling of gross margins came from in the same time period? From thin air?

Any objective and open-minded hardware user who reads my posts will see that NV's gross margins have skyrocketed and mimic exactly what's been happening with doubling of the prices in the same 2010-2016 time frame.

https://media.ycharts.com/charts/ff20bffe6ceb1ffe4423e6e26ec5896b.png

The fact that RX 480 is "insert any other reason" is irrelevant here. What's relevant here is that the GPU market is becoming more and more of a rip-off and you are all falling for it by defending it and not wanting to acknowledge what's happening in the industry.


===

And BTW, what I said about gamers could have bought a $250-275 R9 290 and skipped x60 NV next gen but instead they will pay $200 for a 960 and $200-250 for a 1060 to get marginally faster performance is also coming true. I called it in January 2015 when the $200 GTX960 vs. 250-270 R9 290 showdown started.

Everyone Knows this.Problem is NV have almost Monopoly and they can charge what they want.
I also buy 450USD GTX1070 because there is no other card from AMD.I want buy rx 480, but its just slow and oc like crap.From my GTX 970 1500/8000 it will be downgrade.
Lets face it Nv have monopoly and if you want buy GPU you need buy NV.(if you want better card than GTX970)

Btw rx480 should be way faster than 390x.It should be around NANO/FURY performance, but something hold it back.
If rx480 was at nano/Fury performance at stock with good 20% OC i will buy rx480 and not GTX1070.But its not.

 

[sirmo]

Not to get too far off topic, but I owned a lot of Quantum Fireballs, not a single one ever failed. Although there were built before Maxtor bought them.

Back on topic, the 1060 is priced lower than I expected. I think this with the fact that it was released very early shows that nVidia really does not want the 480 to get a foot hold. Even though quantities of the 1060 are a very low in comparison to the 480 launch, just the fact that its for sale can sway a lot of people. Even if it may take a month for them to be able to actually buy it.

I had a few Maxtor drives fail on me.

 

[Silverforce11]

If rx480 was at nano/Fury performance at stock with good 20% OC i will buy rx480 and not GTX1070.But its not.

If RX 480 was Nano/Fury with 20% OC, it wouldn't be $199/$239.

Come on man. It's a cheap mainstream GPU that's actually sold at a low price.

You bought a 1070 because you wanted it now, and don't want to wait for AMD's mid-range & high-end Vegas. Let's not pretend that AMD doesn't have these more powerful GPUs coming.

 

[sweetusernames]

If RX 480 was Nano/Fury with 20% OC, it wouldn't be $199/$239.

Come on man. It's a cheap mainstream GPU that's actually sold at a low price.

You bought a 1070 because you wanted it now, and don't want to wait for AMD's mid-range & high-end Vegas. Let's not pretend that AMD doesn't have these more powerful GPUs coming.

I mean, that would literally be a miracle wouldn't it? If it had Fury/Nano performance, it would be a $239 card with 80% the performance of a $399 card. That's just expecting a tad bit too much.

If you have a GTX 970/R9 290+ card, you're probably not the target market for the RX 480. I feel that a lot of people buying RX 480/GTX 1060 would be first-time PC gamers or people upgrading from 660 Ti's and HD 7870s.

 

[Mondozei]

From my point of view, the 1060 is a bit of a pointless card, it's the same price per shader core as the 1070, if you compare either price point. (~5 Cuda cores for a dollar). At least the 1080 at this same core price commands a 100 dollar premium.

With a 2560x1080 ultrawide monitor people are going to need the extra 50% performance of the 1070, if the 1060 is billed as a 1080p card. With all the cards on the table, it's probably easy to make a monitor choice now. Certainly the ultrawide is a better choice than 16:9 2.5K stuff (AKA 4x 720p) than Nvidia has been pushing, even though the pixel counts are comparable.

What a tsunami of nonsense. The 1060 is a lot cheaper than the 1070. Just looking at performance for ultrawide, which less than 5% of all gamers have(probably even less) makes even less sense for comparison.

For the average mainstream gamer with a limited budget, the 1060 makes a lot of sense.

 

[Mondozei]

If RX 480 was Nano/Fury with 20% OC, it wouldn't be $199/$239.

Come on man. It's a cheap mainstream GPU that's actually sold at a low price.

You bought a 1070 because you wanted it now, and don't want to wait for AMD's mid-range & high-end Vegas. Let's not pretend that AMD doesn't have these more powerful GPUs coming.

Timing matters.

AMD's reference GPU launches have been utter disasters in recent years. The 290/290X were fundamentally better GPUs than their competitors from NV, but that did not become clear well after a year of their launch.

And no, blaming mining is not good enough. The reference cooler was astonishingly bad and loud. The driver optimisations didn't start until well into 2014.

The less said about the Fury debacle the better.

People's initial impressions are important. If a 1060 performs better than a 480 at launch and is actually in stock at similar prices, then that will create a lasting impression.

Oh, and AMD as usual fucked up the 480 launch by having messed up the voltage regulation of the 480. Why can't they get such a simple thing as a decent reference card going off the ground? Why is it so hard for them?

By the time the AIBs come out and the driver optimisations start to kick in, the 480 could very well be a better GPU by next year. But then it will already be too late. AMD seems unable to learn this lesson.

Also, while Vega still has to come out, have you forgotten about GP102/GP100 Pascal?

 

[Head1985]

If RX 480 was Nano/Fury with 20% OC, it wouldn't be $199/$239.

Come on man. It's a cheap mainstream GPU that's actually sold at a low price.

You bought a 1070 because you wanted it now, and don't want to wait for AMD's mid-range & high-end Vegas. Let's not pretend that AMD doesn't have these more powerful GPUs coming.

It will be still 380/380x succesor even if its 80% faster than 380.Problem is rx480 sucks under dx11 with only GTX970 performance.
rx480 have so many improvements + 2304SP at 1266Mhz=390x TF performance.It should be like 15% faster than 390x(with improvements)

NV beating it under dx11 with 200mm2SKU with 1280SP and 192bit bus by 10%.Polaris is way worse than Pitcairn was.
EDIT:
Remember GTX680 was only 29% faster than 7870

GTX1080 is 70% faster than rx480

 

[SPBHM]

NV beating it under dx11 with 200mm2SKU with 1280SP and 192bit bus by 10%.Polaris is way worse than Pitcairn was.

is that really a big deal? clock is way higher, and 48ROPs... it's 2x the theoretical pixel fillrate of the 480 I think.
not to mention pascal memory compression is superior, pascal 192bit is probably doing fine against Polaris 256bits

 

[Bacon1]

AMD fans just dont get it...Every time a AMD card arrives, you have to wait for something...Drivers, CF profile, Mantle, Vulkan or DX12.....same story, I don't see the point of buying a card for games that come out a year from now?
I wish some other manufacturer would hurry up and buy RTG so they can get some decent headway...before it gets completely run to the ground.

Yep always AMD waiting, just like its AMD fans waiting for async drivers for Maxwell cards, and AMD fans waiting for async drivers for Pascal now as well...

Oh wait.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yep always AMD waiting, just like its AMD fans waiting for async drivers for Maxwell cards, and AMD fans waiting for async drivers for Pascal now as well...

Oh wait.

Waiting for the promised 2.8x improved performance per watt. Still waiting.

 

[beginner99]

Dang, those prices... I know it's EU and they get smashed due to taxes but this is freaken ridiculous for a mainstream GPU

Yeah, it's a joke. Any MSRP doesn't mean jack shit for electronics. Always have to wait till you can actually buy it here. Same with smartphones. Was exited about the Xiaomi Mi5. Now it's actually available here an instead of several $100 cheaper only like $50 cheaper than an S7.

RX 480 8 GB is $299 here. GTX 1060 not yet listed but going by your link probably around $350.

The difference in conclusions from the various review sites is really interesting.

Just look at the game selection. Explains this completely. Techpowerup is the biggest sinner in that regard using only old games and 0!!! dx12 games (not counting ROTR here...)

[H] actually using an AMD biased selection of games.

Conclusion is, choose based on which games you play or your budget.

 

[sandorski]

Waiting for the promised 2.8x improved performance per watt. Still waiting.

470

 

[sweetusernames]

It will be still 380/380x succesor even if its 80% faster than 380.Problem is rx480 sucks under dx11 with only GTX970 performance.
rx480 have so many improvements + 2304SP at 1266Mhz=390x TF performance.It should be like 15% faster than 390x(with improvements)

NV beating it under dx11 with 200mm2SKU with 1280SP and 192bit bus by 10%.Polaris is way worse than Pitcairn was.
EDIT:
Remember GTX680 was only 29% faster than 7870

GTX1080 is 70% faster than rx480

Pitcairn also had a release price of $350. Pitcairn was also the 2nd performance tier from the top after Tahiti. Polaris would be the third performance tier from the top from Vega 10 and Vega 11.

If the GTX 1080 was only 29% faster than the RX 480, then the GTX 1070 is completely invalidated, that is just super wishful thinking, expecting AMD with a smaller die and worse process to beat Nvidia's bigger die with a better performance process, all the while being more than 70% cheaper.

You have a super distorted view of performance tiers. The way AMD SKUs line up with Nvidia SKUs in 2013 =/= the way they line up today. RussianSensation has talked about this a lot, the way Nvidia are constantly pushing up the GPU prices of the whole stack.

The x80 today would be the equivalent of the x70 back then. The x80Ti would be the x80 back then. The same thing with AMD. Remember when the 290x was meant to compete with 780Ti? But the 390x only competes with the 980? Yeah, it's the Fury X that competes with the 980 Ti/Titan X.

The launch Pitcairn equivalent today would be Vega 10. And I expect Vega 10 to have full Pitcairn treatment too, to be re-branded as the 580x, 670x, etc.

The 480 also has half the ROPs, 2/3 the memory bandwith of the 390x, and lower theoretical peak TFLOPS (even lower if you count throttling).

 

[railven]

Picked up the GA-1060 Windforce for $250 today at Microcenter. Good performance @ 1080 for my nephews. Time to retire my aging HD 5870 2GB they've been enjoying.

With the current Humble Bundle deal, snagging them a few games too. Going to be a fun weekend.

 

[BSim500]

Beyond that, Techpowerup's benchmark suite is pretty decidedly outdated, they don't test any of the modern APIs. How could they possibly leave out Doom?

It's actually a good thing that different sites test different games. I don't see the point of 25-30x tech sites all copy pasting each other's same 6 "game of the month" / 3DMark results over & over.

 

[mohit9206]

GTX1060 is better in every way than RX480.Its faster,its more efficient and its cheaper.Yes its actually much cheaper than RX480 in my country.$343 for Zotac 1060 vs $402 for RX480 8gb.AMD really fucked up the prices of RX480 outside of USA.In many countries 1060 is much cheaper than RX480.So its a very easy decision which card is worth buying.AMD with a big fail outside US.AMD wanted to capture a big slice of mainstream GPU market but with things how they currently are,AMD is probabaly going to lose market share even more.
So much for that Total Addressable Market(TAM) and VR for the masses bullshit lol.Its really a shame for AMD.

 

[Borealis7]

It's actually a good thing that different sites test different games. I don't see the point of 25-30x tech sites all copy pasting each other's same 6 "game of the month" / 3DMark results over & over.

agreed, TPU tests various ENGINES. Unreal, Frostbyte, CryEngine, whatever the Witcher 3 uses...you get the point.

 

[3DVagabond]

So, advertising AMD cards over Twitter makes a developer not biased.
The Pascal launch was 2 months earlier. Enough time to sabotage gaming for nVidia customer for advertising AMD.

Feel free to proof that the Vulkan path is optimized for nVidia cards and id has done something. Otherwise let it just go.

OMG Who's the conspiracy theorist now? After they were invited on stage with nVidia to promote their game they decided to stab nVidia in the back. Is that what you believe?

And this "optimized path" is really Still waiting for nVidia to offer async drivers. We've been waiting how long now? 1st is was Fermi DX12 drivers, then it was async Maxwell drivers (which of course was also the dev being allied with AMD), now it's Pascal async drivers (and again it's the dev, but this time actively sabotaging nVidia).

Both of these Devs have publicly claimed to be working directly with nVidia. nVidia has never disputed this. You come on here though and claim differently. Not very credible.

 

[3DVagabond]

AMD fans just dont get it...Every time a AMD card arrives, you have to wait for something...Drivers, CF profile, Mantle, Vulkan or DX12.....same story, I don't see the point of buying a card for games that come out a year from now?
I wish some other manufacturer would hurry up and buy RTG so they can get some decent headway...before it gets completely run to the ground.

No waiting for Vulcan and DX12. It's here now. Now, nVidia drivers for these games? Well, we keep hearing.... You guessed it, wait.

 

[3DVagabond]

As someone who currently has a GTX760 in my main rig, this is a very real concern of mine, and the main reason why despite it's positives, I am not really considering the GTX1060. It has it's advantages, but there are too many indications that it might age like the 760 and down the road I may seriously regret the decision.

With the RX480, it may not be THE BEST, especially in power consumption, but there is pretty much zero risk that it will age like my current card has, and this has me overlooking the downsides of the RX480.

You would have been far better off if you bought a 7970/50. Same with the 780/ti vs. 290/X. I don't blame you for your thinking. I've been saying this since the 980/970 released. I told people that Hawaii was going to surpass them and was selling for hundreds less. Mark my words, in a few months the 480 is going to walk all over the 1060 in new AAA games.

Older games, if they matter, will be just fine on both. It should be apparent by now that nVidia has no hope of fixing something their hardware doesn't support with a magic driver. If it was possible they would have released it by now for AotS. The "fine grained preemption" is just a tourniquet to slow the bleeding.

 

[3DVagabond]

Everyone Knows this.Problem is NV have almost Monopoly and they can charge what they want.
I also buy 450USD GTX1070 because there is no other card from AMD.I want buy rx 480, but its just slow and oc like crap.From my GTX 970 1500/8000 it will be downgrade.
Lets face it Nv have monopoly and if you want buy GPU you need buy NV.(if you want better card than GTX970)

Btw rx480 should be way faster than 390x.It should be around NANO/FURY performance, but something hold it back.
If rx480 was at nano/Fury performance at stock with good 20% OC i will buy rx480 and not GTX1070.But its not.

Please tell me why it should be faster? You are obviously more of an expert than AMD's engineers.

 

[Silverforce11]

Please tell me why it should be faster? You are obviously more of an expert than AMD's engineers.

I was a bit let down by their new memory compression tech though, did not expect 256 bus with 8Gbps GDDR5 to be a bottleneck but it is for me. OC memory, nice perf gains.

Polaris needs GDDR5X to shine, but that would not have made it affordable, so it's understandable.

 

[3DVagabond]

It's actually a good thing that different sites test different games. I don't see the point of 25-30x tech sites all copy pasting each other's same 6 "game of the month" / 3DMark results over & over.

The point of TPU is it's supposed to be a large cross section of games to give a better overall average of performance. By using mostly older games and none of the latest API games they fail.

Just like they used to always have games that crossfire was broken in but not SLI. Now, since SLI support has gotten so poor, they have started giving 2 overall performance figures for multi GPU. Including and excluding games without support.

Remember when they used to test in surround/Eyefinity? They used to drop the games from nVidia's average that wouldn't run on nVidia surround. Then they just dropped it all together because nVidia's support sucked at the time.

As long as I've read TPU they've always had their benchmark suite end up with about a 10% advantage for nVidia. When AMD closes the gap in the games in their suite they simply make a couple of strategic changes. It's too bad because they are the only site that tests such a large number of games who's review technique is static enough to have a good performance/time scale so you can see the differing performance over time of cards. Now though they change like the wind too.

 

[3DVagabond]

I was a bit let down by their new memory compression tech though, did not expect 256 bus with 8Gbps GDDR5 to be a bottleneck but it is for me. OC memory, nice perf gains.

Polaris needs GDDR5X to shine, but that would not have made it affordable, so it's understandable.

But it still has less overall bandwidth than Hawaii. I haven't seen compression totally offset pure bandwidth. At lower res it does fine. But as resolution increases the bigger buses just pull away.