FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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GIGABYTE RX 480 G1 GAMING vs MSI GTX 1060 GAMING X - We take GIGABYTE’s Radeon RX 480 G1 GAMING video card and pit it against a MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X video card in today’s evaluation. We will overclock both video cards as high as possible and compare performance and find out what both video cards have to offer in the upper $200 price range for gaming.
 
Very nice to hear that 1440p is viable for the 1060 and 480.

+1, I was able to score an open box ASUS Turbo GTX 1060 6GB for cheap via MicroCenter (was practically brand-new); it'll be a nice backup for my custom GTX 980 Ti if that goes belly-up.
 
Looks like these will do well for my 2560x1080 ultra wide monitor. Now if only Canadian prices can drop a bit.......
 
I'd take it a step further and say that if VR is in your future, neither one is a great choice.
I guess you have not been reading our VR reviews? My suggestion is GTX 1070 is the lowest end card you want to buy for a Premium VR Experience. ;) However, if you don't have the budget for that, the GTX 1060 is certainly the choice over the RX 480.
 
I haven't understood something:
the review scores of the RX480 is after the manually-raising its power limit to +50, or these numbers come from the card's default settings? :confused:
(* I suppose that the results could be totally in favour of 1060GTX if RX480's power limit wasn't manually altered. )
 
Kyle, you should ask XFX for a GTR sample.
i was interested to see this as well. so far i can't find official review for XFX RX480 GTR. though i see many people believe the card can reach 1470mhz easily like jay did.
 
That Gigafail G1 is the worst custom card example of the 480 line up.

Does anyone have a GTR or Nitro they can test the clock speeds at default to see if either XFX or Sapphire have this issue? And yeah the GTR does seem to have the best rep at the mo.
 
I haven't understood something:
the review scores of the RX480 is after the manually-raising its power limit to +50, or these numbers come from the card's default settings? :confused:
(* I suppose that the results could be totally in favour of 1060GTX if RX480's power limit wasn't manually altered. )

Both cards are tested (as we do in all reviews) at out of box default configuration. We do not do manual tweaking before the collection of data. The only thing that was done for the GIGABYTE card was to upgrade it to the F7 BIOS, and all the results are under the new BIOS.

We did not raise the power limit for any default card testing on either card. Think of it like this, if we raised the Power Limit on the GIGABYTE card, we would then also have to raise the Power Limit on the MSI card, to be fair. The MSI card would also have a higher GPU clock speed while gaming with the Power Limit raised. That puts the cards outside of their out-of-box experience though. We evaluate cards based on the out-of-box-experience, always have, always will, we never change anything that would give one card an advantage. We rely on the experience GIGABYTE and MSI want us to have with the video card out-of-the-box.

Now, on the overclocking graph, it's different. Naturally we have the Power Limits increased to maximum on the overclocking graphs so we can achieve the highest overclock and compare them.

This is not the first and only card to exhibit clock variances like this, many cards have in the past. We never artificially raised power limit on those cards either. It's just the natural behavior of the card, and is exactly what the end user, gamer, would experience, so we must relate that SAME experience.

It's the only fair way to do it, just take the card out of the box, and evaluate as is.

You can't show favoritism toward either card if you don't change any properties about them when you collect your data and just pull em out of the box and run game testing. What you propose, is in fact showing favoritism to one card by tweaking something on it that isn't the default configuration.
 
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.............. What you propose, is in fact showing favoritism to one card by tweaking something on it that isn't the default configuration.

Thanks for the answer Brent, just one clarification: I didn't propose anything, i just said that i haven't understood if the review measurements were made prior or after the +50 power limit increase.
You said that you tweeked RX480's power limit, so i just wanted to clear this up in order for me to avoid confusion!
Great review by the way!! :)
 
Sorry if I missed it in the article, but is there any advantage having 2GB extra vram? All things being equal, why buy a 6GB gpu over an 8GB?
 
Sorry if I missed it in the article, but is there any advantage having 2GB extra vram? All things being equal, why buy a 6GB gpu over an 8GB?

Theoretically, it could offer you a little better longevity in the future, when games will start demanding more than 6GB VRAM. (*but when we reach that point i don't know if the RX480's overall horsepower, -besides the VRAM - will be enough)
 
Sorry if I missed it in the article, but is there any advantage having 2GB extra vram? All things being equal, why buy a 6GB gpu over an 8GB?

Quite frankly, you can't run high enough settings at 1440p that it affects gameplay. I noticed no difference or impact to my gameplay on 6GB vs. 8GB at the settings shown. It's a non-issue.
 
Quite frankly, you can't run high enough settings at 1440p that it affects gameplay. I noticed no difference or impact to my gameplay on 6GB vs. 8GB at the settings shown. It's a non-issue.

How about games which love VRAM like Skyrim with texture mods?
 
Funny you mention that, I have the XFX RX 480 GTR 8GB RX-480P8DFA6 on my desk right next to me ready to review :)

I think in this particularly case, it would be better to test a retail sample than a review sample. Considering that most people who got a retail GTR are not getting the same results, it makes the results suspect.
 
I think in this particularly case, it would be better to test a retail sample than a review sample. Considering that most people who got a retail GTR are not getting the same results, it makes the results suspect.

It's silicon lottery. As long as you get a high enough asic, you are golden. There are higher clocking cards than the one Jay got and I believe jay added voltage, at least in the firestrike run with AB reporting 1.16v and at the last screen you can clearly see AB showing double digits in the vcore section. It looked like +95mv to me.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rx-480-470-460-owners-club.224352/page-6#post-3540033
 
I say the 1060 wins out for the SFF crowd, that 50w difference if you have a card blowing inside the case can make a rather big difference plus the 1060 can be cooled effectively with only one fan (the EVGA GTX 1060 SC 6gb with a single fan in a Fractal Design Node 202 case is super quiet even when gaming). In other cases I would say go for the best deal, which that 480 sell was the way to go.
 
Yay competition! Slobber knockers are always fun reads.

That aside, I am glad the comparison was made. Now if people come to me about which video card to buy in the $200 range I can point to this article for data. So far I have convinced two friends to just buy whatever is on sale at the time and not worry about performance. I was in the general inclination that the case was equal performance. I am glad the article confirmed that.

Thanks Brent, for putting in the legwork.
 


This guy can be hilarious sometimes, like how he dwells on Gigafails terrible choices.


Thanks for linking that video. I had a RX 480 G1 en route from NewEgg (got it at that $235 price) but I am going to refuse delivery. Bought it based on this review, but I see for a few bucks more I can get a card with a much more robust PCB ($5 more after dealing with the MIR crap) - went with this XFX GTR RX 480.
 
Thanks for linking that video. I had a RX 480 G1 en route from NewEgg (got it at that $235 price) but I am going to refuse delivery. Bought it based on this review, but I see for a few bucks more I can get a card with a much more robust PCB ($5 more after dealing with the MIR crap) - went with this XFX GTR RX 480.

Good for you. You're not missing anything by jumping ship.

 
I'd take it a step further and say that if VR is in your future, neither one is a great choice.

I still have my fingers crossed on Asynchronous SpaceWarp and Simultaneous MultiProjection
 
How about a XFX GTR RX 480 vs the best AIB 1060 available?

This is what I was going to ask as well. From my understanding, the XFX GTR version is the best of the RX 480's out there. However, what you were provided is what you were provided, than that is that.
 
How about a XFX GTR RX 480 vs the best AIB 1060 available?
IDK about best.....better yet 2 cards close to the same price point (of course that could be the same thing:))...but i suspect the review results would be close to what we just read, aside from the gtr drawing a bit more power.
 
How about a XFX GTR RX 480 vs the best AIB 1060 available?

Depends on how one defines best.
Just making that point because a couple of the IHV do have custom BIOS for their Pascal, so one may deem that as the best as it increases the voltage over the 1.09V cap, but then the card will sound like crap as it needs to run like a turbine to cool it :)
I notice the voltage mod BIOS has only been done/available for some of the most expensive models with regards to Pascal (probably because these cards are designed for extreme/competition OCers), such as the Asus 1080 Strix OC model or Galax 1080 HoF, and these BIOS do nothing for other models.
But then you still only get to around 2250MHz to 2300MHz on air on either of those cards, if you know where to get the BIOS.

So for the 1060 the test is stuck with volt limit and most decent AIB cards would equal out on performance due to hitting very similar performance envelope that cannot be pushed to its ceiling; I would say there is no point using the most expensive 1060 models as they are all handicapped.
But I think what one defines as best would be personal choice, some want OC no matter about loudness, some still want a quiet card for as best performance possible, some want a budget price card but punches above that price tier.
Whatever the results, it would create pages of argument on what factor is the most crucial :)
Cheers
 
Thanks Kyle and gang. Built my newest computer based on your test bed for these cards. Picked the 1060. Been enjoying the hell out of a lot of games.
 
A small technical note. 232mm2 vs 200mm2. 5.7 billion transistors vs 4.4 billion. 256bit vs 192bit. And a 50W delta as well. That's quite the difference outside the results.

Nice review!
 
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