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zamardii12
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2014
- Messages
- 3,414
Source: https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2604-gtx-1060-3gb-vs-6gb-benchmark-review?showall=1
"The GTX 1060 3GB ($200) card's existence is curious. The card was initially rumored to exist prior to the 1060 6GB's official announcement, and was quickly debunked as mythological. Exactly one month later, nVidia did announce a 3GB GTX 1060 variant – but with one fewer SM, reducing the core count by 10%. That drops the GTX 1060 from 1280 CUDA cores to 1152 CUDA cores (128 cores per SM), alongside 8 fewer TMUs. Of course, there's also the memory reduction from 6GB to 3GB.
The rest of the specs, however, remain the same. The clock-rate has the same baseline 1708MHz boost target, the memory speed remains 8Gbps effective, and the GPU itself is still a declared GP106-400 chip (rev A1, for our sample). That makes this most the way toward a GTX 1060 as initially announced, aside from the disabled SM and halved VRAM. Still, nVidia's marketing language declared a 5% performance loss from the 6GB card (despite a 10% reduction in cores), and so we decided to put those claims to the test.
As for the naming, that's another matter. This isn't a lower VRAM GTX 1060 – it's a different card. An entire SM is disabled, including one tenth of the card's processors, and it's half the VRAM. The GTX 1060 3GB should absolutely not be called a GTX 1060. For consumers who are already faced with seemingly endless variants of AIB partner cards – Xs and Zs and Gamings and SCs or SSCs or FTWs or Strix, and on, and on – this only further obfuscates the GTX 1060 pool. It's just not a GTX 1060 – it's a different product. NVidia's choice to name the card as such will confuse buyers into thinking it's just a 1060 with half the VRAM, which is plainly false."
So, not only is the 3GB version of the 1060 a 10% reduction in CUDA cores, but also 8 fewer TMUs, and half the VRAM. Everything else appears to be the same. At the end of the day it doesn't appear to be much of a difference in terms of the , but I feel as though there would be games in the future or even nowadays that would benefit from more VRAM. Also, it seems like Gamer's Nexus's main concern with this game is that the 3GB 1060 causes consumer confusion because most would think that the 3GB variant is the same card just with half the VRAM, which is absolutely not the case. My 1080ti has 12GB of VRAM and thinking of using a 3GB card just worries me.
What games will I be playing? Witcher 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and possibly more but those are my main games at this time. So I want to get the most bang for my buck and these will be in laptop form. I am trying to decide what makes the most sense to me.
Any thoughts?
"The GTX 1060 3GB ($200) card's existence is curious. The card was initially rumored to exist prior to the 1060 6GB's official announcement, and was quickly debunked as mythological. Exactly one month later, nVidia did announce a 3GB GTX 1060 variant – but with one fewer SM, reducing the core count by 10%. That drops the GTX 1060 from 1280 CUDA cores to 1152 CUDA cores (128 cores per SM), alongside 8 fewer TMUs. Of course, there's also the memory reduction from 6GB to 3GB.
The rest of the specs, however, remain the same. The clock-rate has the same baseline 1708MHz boost target, the memory speed remains 8Gbps effective, and the GPU itself is still a declared GP106-400 chip (rev A1, for our sample). That makes this most the way toward a GTX 1060 as initially announced, aside from the disabled SM and halved VRAM. Still, nVidia's marketing language declared a 5% performance loss from the 6GB card (despite a 10% reduction in cores), and so we decided to put those claims to the test.
As for the naming, that's another matter. This isn't a lower VRAM GTX 1060 – it's a different card. An entire SM is disabled, including one tenth of the card's processors, and it's half the VRAM. The GTX 1060 3GB should absolutely not be called a GTX 1060. For consumers who are already faced with seemingly endless variants of AIB partner cards – Xs and Zs and Gamings and SCs or SSCs or FTWs or Strix, and on, and on – this only further obfuscates the GTX 1060 pool. It's just not a GTX 1060 – it's a different product. NVidia's choice to name the card as such will confuse buyers into thinking it's just a 1060 with half the VRAM, which is plainly false."
So, not only is the 3GB version of the 1060 a 10% reduction in CUDA cores, but also 8 fewer TMUs, and half the VRAM. Everything else appears to be the same. At the end of the day it doesn't appear to be much of a difference in terms of the , but I feel as though there would be games in the future or even nowadays that would benefit from more VRAM. Also, it seems like Gamer's Nexus's main concern with this game is that the 3GB 1060 causes consumer confusion because most would think that the 3GB variant is the same card just with half the VRAM, which is absolutely not the case. My 1080ti has 12GB of VRAM and thinking of using a 3GB card just worries me.
What games will I be playing? Witcher 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Ghost Recon Wildlands, and possibly more but those are my main games at this time. So I want to get the most bang for my buck and these will be in laptop form. I am trying to decide what makes the most sense to me.
Any thoughts?
