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

[godihatework]

Mirror's Edge Catalyst isn't alpha and its already blows WAY past 3GB at 1080p (as noted before). Plus almost every Directx 12 shows the evidence of VRAM bloat. Directx 12 is the future, so that means the future is probably about needing more than 3GB of VRAM.



They are getting good results TODAY, but I expect the 3GB 280x to jump off the same VRAM cliff any 3GB card will jump off in 1-2 years.

My point was a 3GB 280X aged better than say a 2GB GTX 960 (aka a card that competed with it price wise), showing the wisdom in buying more VRAM than you need today. My point was not that I would buy a 280x today, for the same reason I wouldn't buy (or recommend) any 3GB card.



Where you are wrong is we HAVE seen the results. In most of the current Directx 12 games 3GB of VRAM isn't always enough even at 1080p (especially for Nvidia cards for some reason):

There is your proof. So unless you have evidence that the 1060 has some sort of magic VRAM compression other Nvidia cards don't have, or you assume for some crazy reason Directx 12 isn't the future, then there is no valid conclusion except 3GB of VRAM won't be enough for the top texture settings once most games are Directx 12. I am calling it a prediction to be fair, but it seems like a pretty solid prediction to me given that ALL the evidence we have so far points in that direction.



Good point, if it's like $130 who cares about lacking VRAM right? But if it's within $20 of any 4GB 480 it's a bad buy, for the reasons listed above. I will admit that is the one piece of info we lack today, maybe Nvidia will surprise us.

i call shenanigans.

1: post the links, not the images so we can actually see the context of these findings.

2: it certainly seems as if it is possible to run under 3GB VRAM even with your context free images.

3: it absolutely looks as if Nvidia cards simply use all their available framebuffer, not that they need to use all their available framebuffer.

 

[Jaskalas]

I'm rather disappointed that the 1060 appears to be selling in a range from $300-$429. Anyone care to guess if we'll see MSRP later this year?

 

[Newbian]

I'm rather disappointed that the 1060 appears to be selling in a range from $300-$429. Anyone care to guess if we'll see MSRP later this year?

Where are you buying them from as it's common to find them for msrp or just a bit above?

As it's been posted a few times they are at msrp in microcenters and sites like newegg have them for it also or a bit over and it's just a matter of getting them when in stock and while sure there are some odd examples of a much higher price they are a joke.

I am guessing you are going by the areas with big vat tax as over 400 like that sounds that's your case and it's nothing new or what you can complain about when it happens on both sides.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But again, the resolution of the game on the PC doesn't change how much VRAM the consoles can use. That has been locked in place since 2013, and soon Directx 12 make that 8GB fact part of life for every PC gamer.

I agree with you totally. If you consider yourself a "serious gamer", and are planning on playing AAA console ports, well, you had better have 8GB VRAM, and because of that, 16GB system RAM (or more!).

 

[Jaskalas]

Where are you buying them from as it's common to find them for msrp or just a bit above?

I'm in the United States, and I searched Amazon for the GTX 1060.

 

[poofyhairguy]

i call shenanigans.

What does that mean? I photoshopped those graphs or something? I am kinda insulted if that is what you are implying. I am a lifer here.

1: post the links, not the images so we can actually see the context of these findings.

http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/hitman-v-directx-12-test-gpu.html

http://gamegpu.com/racing-simulators-/-гонки/forza-motorsport-6-apex-test-gpu

http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/quantum-break-test-gpu

http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-v-rezhime-directx-12-test-gpu.html

http://gamegpu.com/rts-/-strategii/ashes-of-the-singularity-test-gpu.html

2: it certainly seems as if it is possible to run under 3GB VRAM even with your context free images.

For AMD cards sure, but every single one goes over 3GB on the Nvidia card.

3: it absolutely looks as if Nvidia cards simply use all their available framebuffer, not that they need to use all their available framebuffer.

Now it sounds like you are the one making predictions. Got any proof to back that up?

Actually before you try to provide proof I predict your prediction is wrong. And I can use the same links above to prove it.

Look at how under Directx 11 for Hitman the 2GB 690 competes with a 980:

But in Directx 12 mode? No 3GB GPU scores above any 4GB GPU that isn't a 960:

I know what you are about to say "but but that is an AMD game!" But the same thing happens (even worse actually) in the Nvidia-favoring Rise of the Tomb Raider. In Directx 11 mode the 3GB 780 ti SLI is at the top and a single 780 ti beats a 290x:

Meanwhile in Directx 12 mode the 780 ti (sli or not) is below every 4GB card including the 960!!!!!

That pretty much blows your prediction to pieces. It should be clear that Directx 12 wants more VRAM at this point.

The conclusion we should all reach given that evidence? 3GB cards are dead in the water in the Directx 12 era, just like I have been saying.

 

[godihatework]

What does that mean? I photoshopped those graphs or something? I am kinda insulted if that is what you are implying. I am a lifer here.



http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/hitman-v-directx-12-test-gpu.html

http://gamegpu.com/racing-simulators-/-гонки/forza-motorsport-6-apex-test-gpu

http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/quantum-break-test-gpu

http://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-v-rezhime-directx-12-test-gpu.html

http://gamegpu.com/rts-/-strategii/ashes-of-the-singularity-test-gpu.html



For AMD cards sure, but every single one goes over 3GB on the Nvidia card.



Now it sounds like you are the one making predictions. Got any proof to back that up?

Actually before you try to provide proof I predict your prediction is wrong. And I can use the same links above to prove it.

Look at how under Directx 11 for Hitman the 2GB 690 competes with a 980:

But in Directx 12 mode? No 3GB GPU scores above any 4GB GPU that isn't a 960:

I know what you are about to say "but but that is an AMD game!" But the same thing happens (even worse actually) in the Nvidia-favoring Rise of the Tomb Raider. In Directx 11 mode the 3GB 780 ti SLI is at the top and a single 780 ti beats a 290x:

Meanwhile in Directx 12 mode the 780 ti (sli or not) is below every 4GB card including the 960!!!!!

That pretty much blows your prediction to pieces. It should be clear that Directx 12 wants more VRAM at this point.

The conclusion we should all reach given that evidence? 3GB cards are dead in the water in the Directx 12 era, just like I have been saying.

all these predictions based on old cards?

where is the writeup on the new uarch(s) from each company?

i'll simply wait for the card to come out. then we can actually see results, rather than argue over your speculation.

edit:

I agree with you totally. If you consider yourself a "serious gamer", and are planning on playing AAA console ports, well, you had better have 8GB VRAM, and because of that, 16GB system RAM (or more!).

this is great Poe's Law. Can't tell if escalating to prove a point or actually agreeing!

 

[bystander36]

Wow. Really? I bet grass is green too.

They could offer a $5 1070 and it would destroy anything. Its absolutely, 100% NOT about how easy it is to win. It's 100% about WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS. Nobody cares if you *could* win it.

This concerted effort across this forum to try and downplay price/perf is absolutely pathetic. It's shameful.

In every category of consumer good EVER there are 2 primary concerns. Absolute quality/performance. Quality/performance per dollar spent. These are the most important concerns. Acting like it isn't is irrational and intentionally misleading.

Just stop. Stop downplaying price/perf. If your goal is to make people believe /show people the 1060 is a better buy then say something that actually makes any sense, like "It's faster, overclocks better, and it's widely available for only $10-20 more than an 8GB 480"

I get where both of you are coming from, and it isn't the same place.

He is saying that Performance/Price is easy to win, because all you have to do is lower the price point of any product and presto, Performance/Price is in their favor.

I also understand where you are coming from, because we all purchase the best product for the price.

 

[poofyhairguy]

all these predictions based on old cards?

No, the predictions are based on the trend we have seen from Directx 12 games on all cards. It's just all the Directx 12 reviews we have are a few months old (except the Battlefield result you threw out because it's an Alpha).

where is the writeup on the new uarch(s) from each company?

Here is the Pascal writeup:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/8

We can clearly see that even though Pascal has better memory compression (aka basically more bandwidth) there is no evidence Nvidia has any special sauce to reduce VRAM usage.

In fact in the Battlefield result (again the only new one) the 1080 is using WAY WAY more VRAM than the 480 is.

i'll simply wait for the card to come out. then we can actually see results, rather than argue over your speculation.

I will be happy to return to the discussion later. I think the reviews that actually test Directx 12 games will show the 3GB model does worse than the 6GB model and will have lower minimums. But we shall see as they say. I am happy to make a bookmark and either eat my crow or have a "I told you so" party.

 

[Newbian]

I'm in the United States, and I searched Amazon for the GTX 1060.

That's your problem.

Buy them from actual retailers like normal vendors and not individuals or on actual sites like newegg and such.

The prices you are seeing are from individual selling trying to scam people and is nothing different then the insane prices some people try on ebay.

Or buy a 1070 on amazon as they are going for much closer to msrp there.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I agree with you totally. If you consider yourself a "serious gamer", and are planning on playing AAA console ports, well, you had better have 8GB VRAM, and because of that, 16GB system RAM (or more!).

I don't know about 16GB of RAM. If Termie's graphs are correct (I trust him) the 8GB card actually needs less regular RAM than a 4GB card. But 16GB can't hurt.

To me is just seems obvious more VRAM use is where we are heading. Look at the facts:

A. the consoles have 8GB of combined RAM.

B. without a full OS they need less system RAM which means more of the shared ram can be used for VRAM

C. texture upgrades (that need more VRAM) are an easy way to make late in the generation console games look better than early ones without a FPS hit

D. console ports are mostly terrible due to small teams that lack resources (it's like everyone forgot about the Batman trash from last year or all the Ubi games)

E. Directx 12 is being sold to developers on the fact that it's more like the console development environment


A + B + C = F: many current console games probably use more than 3Gb (and maybe even 4GB) of VRAM

E + D = G: Developers will try to port over the console work to Directx 12 with as little modification as possible when they can get away with it

F+ G = Your GPU better have more than 3GB of VRAM if you want to play future Directx 12 games

 

[zinfamous]

Wow. Really? I bet grass is green too.

They could offer a $5 1070 and it would destroy anything. Its absolutely, 100% NOT about how easy it is to win. It's 100% about WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS. Nobody cares if you *could* win it.

This concerted effort across this forum to try and downplay price/perf is absolutely pathetic. It's shameful.

In every category of consumer good EVER there are 2 primary concerns. Absolute quality/performance. Quality/performance per dollar spent. These are the most important concerns. Acting like it isn't is irrational and intentionally misleading.

Just stop. Stop downplaying price/perf. If your goal is to make people believe /show people the 1060 is a better buy then say something that actually makes any sense, like "It's faster, overclocks better, and it's widely available for only $10-20 more than an 8GB 480"

Arachnotronic pays top dollar for top performance every time, so the metric is meaningless to him. He is wrong, because it is the most important metric for consumers--I'm just saying that he probably doesn't ever consider it because he only looks at raw performance and then opens his wallet.

 

[bystander36]

Arachnotronic pays top dollar for top performance every time, so the metric is meaningless to him. He is wrong, because it is the most important metric for consumers--I'm just saying that he probably doesn't ever consider it because he only looks at raw performance and then opens his wallet.

I don't think he meant it in that way anyway. He's likely saying that it's easy to win the Performance/Price war, because all you have to do is lower the price of your MSRP. To get the top performance crown requires engineering. Same goes for Performance/Watt.

 

[zinfamous]

I don't think he meant it in that way anyway. He's likely saying that it's easy to win the Performance/Price war, because all you have to do is lower the price of your MSRP. To get the top performance crown requires engineering. Same goes for Performance/Watt.

that's a fair point, but there's only so much you can do about lowering the MSRP, which is also a factor of engineering. Efficiency in design, parts, materials, etc--you can only lower the MSRP to a level constrained by the overall costs of building your design.

 

[mooncancook]

I'm in the United States, and I searched Amazon for the GTX 1060.

BHPhotovideo has 1060 for 288.50 and 299.99. 480 is nowhere to be found except for Amazon or ebay gouging.

 

[Sweepr]

$249 Zotac Mini in stock right now at Amazon US (6 left in stock):

www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01IA9FEOO/?ie=UTF8&condition=all&tag=nisa-20&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

[Sonikku]

Performance has been incredible in Battlefront/SWTOR and everything but WoW. I let Nvidia Experience "Optimize" my settings based on my hardware configuration and it seems to get me 30-45fps in my garrison which is less than I had on the 7770.

 

[Arachnotronic]

$249 Zotac Mini in stock right now at Amazon US (6 left in stock):

www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01IA9FEOO/?ie=UTF8&condition=all&tag=nisa-20&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Thanks. Doing a build for a friend and managed to grab one before it went OOS. At $250, 1060 is a solid value -- I can't recommend 1060s for much higher than that to people looking to get the best bang for the buck.

 

[Sweepr]

AnandTech's The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review

Whereas you’d expect half of a GP104 to ship with 4 ROP/L2/MC partitions – for a total of 32 ROPs and a 128-bit memory bus – instead we get a 6 partition setup, only 2 partitions shy of GP104.

The significance of this is threefold. First, it means that GP106 isn’t strictly half of a GP104. Second, it means that it has a higher ratio of ROP throughput, L2 cache capacity, and memory bandwidth per CUDA core than parts such as GTX 1080. Third, it’s only the second time in recent history where NVIDIA has used a larger backend configuration on a mainstream part – GK106 being the first – which after NVIDIA’s performance gains and overall success with Maxwell, comes as a bit of a surprise.

Looking at generational comparisons then, of all of the Pascal cards launched so far, GTX 1060 offers the best performance gains for a single generation. Relative to GTX 960 it offers an 85% performance improvement at 1080p, and even excluding the outliers this is still an 80% gain. This isn’t quite a 2x performance gain in a single generation, but it is close, and closer than either GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 got. So for current GTX 960 owners, the GTX 1060 offers a tantalizing performance upgrade right off the bat, and for the older GTX 760 and GTX 660 cards the differences are even greater, never mind the newer features NVIDIA has introduced since Kepler.

As for where the previously mentioned competitive landscape fits in, a lot of it is going to depend on what potential buyers are looking to spend. At the GTX 1060’s MSRP of $249, the card is countered by AMD’s Radeon RX 480 8GB for $239. The RX 480 is a very capable card, but the launch of the GTX 1060 puts an end to AMD’s short-lived exclusive to that market. And to NVIDIA’s credit (and AMD’s chagrin), the GTX 1060 is 12% faster while consuming less power at the same time, more than justifying the $10 price difference and giving NVIDIA a legitimate claim as the superior GPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10540/the-geforce-gtx-1060-founders-edition-asus-strix-review

 

[Sweepr]

AnandTech's The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review

Whereas you’d expect half of a GP104 to ship with 4 ROP/L2/MC partitions – for a total of 32 ROPs and a 128-bit memory bus – instead we get a 6 partition setup, only 2 partitions shy of GP104.

The significance of this is threefold. First, it means that GP106 isn’t strictly half of a GP104. Second, it means that it has a higher ratio of ROP throughput, L2 cache capacity, and memory bandwidth per CUDA core than parts such as GTX 1080. Third, it’s only the second time in recent history where NVIDIA has used a larger backend configuration on a mainstream part – GK106 being the first – which after NVIDIA’s performance gains and overall success with Maxwell, comes as a bit of a surprise.

Looking at generational comparisons then, of all of the Pascal cards launched so far, GTX 1060 offers the best performance gains for a single generation. Relative to GTX 960 it offers an 85% performance improvement at 1080p, and even excluding the outliers this is still an 80% gain. This isn’t quite a 2x performance gain in a single generation, but it is close, and closer than either GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 got. So for current GTX 960 owners, the GTX 1060 offers a tantalizing performance upgrade right off the bat, and for the older GTX 760 and GTX 660 cards the differences are even greater, never mind the newer features NVIDIA has introduced since Kepler.

As for where the previously mentioned competitive landscape fits in, a lot of it is going to depend on what potential buyers are looking to spend. At the GTX 1060’s MSRP of $249, the card is countered by AMD’s Radeon RX 480 8GB for $239. The RX 480 is a very capable card, but the launch of the GTX 1060 puts an end to AMD’s short-lived exclusive to that market. And to NVIDIA’s credit (and AMD’s chagrin), the GTX 1060 is 12% faster while consuming less power at the same time, more than justifying the $10 price difference and giving NVIDIA a legitimate claim as the superior GPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10540/the-geforce-gtx-1060-founders-edition-asus-strix-review

 

[frozentundra123456]

P

AnandTech's The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review







http://www.anandtech.com/show/10540/the-geforce-gtx-1060-founders-edition-asus-strix-review

Nice review. Not sure which would be my choice, 480 or 1060. Very competitive card though. Too bad so much FUD is being thrown about in these forums about it.

 

[USER8000]

I think most of the fud being thrown about is by people who never owned previous Nvidia midrange cards - I was a GTX660TI user and have a GTX960 now. The HD7950 and R9 380 seem to have pushed ahead of both of my cards. Its happened to the last few Nvidia midrange cards and same are scared to acknowledge that and they tend to be people who never owned them either,and the people making the most vocal defence that nobody should consider whether these cards will do better over a longer period are people who only buy high end cards and upgrade quickly or those who have not experienced the newer cards and their lack of lasting power.

They will say the card is fine,right until the Volta replacement is released ,just like the GTX960 can do DX12 and Vulkan fine until the GTX1060 was released. Then they forgot about the GTX960.

What annoys me is that we need to be highlighting this more and more so Nvidia can go and fix performance - if people don't,Nvidia won't care.

They are here to sell cards,not to be your best mate. They hold alot of the market so why should they care?? They will only care if people hold their issues to them.

People are more worried about brand E-PEEN and we see the same with Apple too with their iPhone which had signal issues,etc,.

If people had not taken Nvidia to task over the GTX970 specs not being advertised properly,Nvidia would not have compensated people for the mistake on their part.

Look at even the R9 290 series with their subpar coolers - look how AMD rejigged the whole series with better coolers and they started selling better. Look at even things like the primitive discard jobby in the later AMD cards,so they can run Gameworks effects better,after people criticised them for poor tessellation.

These companies will make changes if people are vocal enough - hiding in fear won't do anything.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am kind of disappointed that anandtech left out the new doom in the gtx1060 review.
Also, for battlefield 4, the GTX 970 results are missing from the graph.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10540/the-geforce-gtx-1060-founders-edition-asus-strix-review/8

 

[Unreal123]

This benchmark shows that why Nvidia is ahead of AMD. You do not require a $350 CPU to run a $200 GPU.

 

[Sweepr]

This benchmark shows that why Nvidia is ahead of AMD. You do not require a $350 CPU to run a $200 GPU.

This is what reviews using overclocked i7s don't show:

1060 is still faster than 480 @ Doom Vulkan if you use a cheaper FX-8350.