NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition Review @ [H]

[Hazard]

If Vulkan truly does favor AMD cards, then I'm afraid we won't see much of it. With only 20% of the GPU market running AMD cards, an API favoring such a small minority is unlikely to be widely adopted. It grew out of Mantle and will suffer that same fate of irrelevance if it has an unequal benefit for the vast majority of gamers.

Don't forget 100% of the gaming console market uses AMD.

 

[FrameBuffer]

Ouch,.. checked Amazon (Prime Member) and upwards of a $100 luxury tax on the AIBs ( MSRP of $249)

so much for those $250 cards on launch day..
New Egg isn't much better

 

[jbltecnicspro]

OUCH @ DX12. I am eating my own words...

We need more people like you on these forums. Seriously, you are one of a few in the video card parts that actually contributes something.

 

[NKD]

Ouch,.. checked Amazon (Prime Member) and upwards of a $100 luxury tax on the AIBs ( MSRP of $249)

so much for those $250 cards on launch day..
New Egg isn't much better

can get one here for 249 with nice cooler as well. lol

GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

 

[Fleat]

Ouch,.. checked Amazon (Prime Member) and upwards of a $100 luxury tax on the AIBs ( MSRP of $249)

so much for those $250 cards on launch day..
New Egg isn't much better

Cheaper cards were available earlier in the day. You can buy the PNY 1060 right now for MSRP:
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

Edit: Looks like NKD and I had the same idea and he beat me to it!

 

[Ieldra]

Everything is totally fine here in Italy, only 380 euros for a high end Aib, it's the deal of the century

Jesus christ some stores here have just gone mad lol

I've seen the 'reference' Aib models (cheaper coolers but still better than blower, reference clocks) for 280 and OC version for 300

 

[Lorien]

Ouch,.. checked Amazon (Prime Member) and upwards of a $100 luxury tax on the AIBs ( MSRP of $249)

so much for those $250 cards on launch day..
New Egg isn't much better

I'm going to kindly ask you to get the fuck out of here with your real world evidence of prices. Don't you realize that an imaginary MSRP of $249 means reviewers and mindless fanboys can claim Nvidia wins agains a stock clocked RX 480. LOL
WAIT NO! YOU DON'T GET IT!. You can buy a bottom of the barrel brand like PNY with a 1 year warranty!! YAY now give Nvidia your money rofl

 

[Ieldra]

 

[NKD]

I'm going to kindly ask you to get the fuck out of here with your real world evidence of prices. Don't you realize that an imaginary MSRP of $249 means reviewers and mindless fanboys can claim Nvidia wins agains a stock clocked RX 480. LOL
WAIT NO! YOU DON'T GET IT!. You can buy a bottom of the barrel brand like PNY with a 1 year warranty!! YAY now give Nvidia your money rofl

its not 1 year warranty. Its lifetime with registration. Its the same reference shit with a nicer cooler. PNY is not bottom of the barrel just because they are not in mainstream anymore. Seriously the card looks just as good as any aftermarket card. Its not like they are not a brand name.

 

[Ocellaris]

Ouch,.. checked Amazon (Prime Member) and upwards of a $100 luxury tax on the AIBs ( MSRP of $249)

so much for those $250 cards on launch day..
New Egg isn't much better

You are just cherry picking cards not sold by Amazon directly and an ASUS card that has the highest price on Newegg. Good sleuthing and completely avoiding reality there. Must be tough spreading FUD even though $249 AIB cards are being posted and in stock throughout the day less than two posts from yours

 

[Ieldra]

Roughly comparing rx480 at 1300 with 1060 at 2ghz

Compute 17.5% advantage to rx480
Bandwidth 33% advantage to rx 480 (not accounting for compression, yet)
Pixel throughput 131% advantage to gtx 1060
Texture throughput 17% advantage to rx 480
Poly throughout we need to see benches but I expect 50% advantage to 1060 at least

 

[Trimlock]

lol there's some butt hurt people in here. Fact is this launch is WAY better than AMDs and their prices are doing much better than the 1070/1080 launch.

Also, who the hell thought the Asus STRIX, a high end AIB custom card would be cheap? It was always going to be this price. Lol clearly Nvidia is losing with having 1060's at MSRP and AIB custom cards on release day.

 

[doz]

Everyone complains about the NV prices yet dumbasses keep purchasing them at higher than MSRP.

Dont blame NV, blame the dumb fuckin consumers who continue to pay over MSRP. Vote with your wallet. Oh wait, this is [H] where e-peen > wallet.

 

[NKD]

lol there's some butt hurt people in here. Fact is this launch is WAY better than AMDs and their prices are doing much better than the 1070/1080 launch.

Also, who the hell thought the Asus STRIX, a high end AIB custom card would be cheap? It was always going to be this price. Lol clearly Nvidia is losing with having 1060's at MSRP and AIB custom cards on release day.

Lets be fair here. There was like only one on for like msrp lol. Rest were like 280ish. I got in on one.

 

[Nenu]

Everyone complains about the NV prices yet dumbasses keep purchasing them at higher than MSRP.

Dont blame NV, blame the dumb fuckin consumers who continue to pay over MSRP. Vote with your wallet. Oh wait, this is [H] where e-peen > wallet.

Difference is, each time I've bought an AMD card I've had a hard time.
I end up buying an NVidia card earlier than intended and am back to enjoying PCs again.
Breath of fresh air.

 

[Terpfen]

It definitely would be if you compare it to your 780 and that Dell U2413 monitor. I certainly can't fault you for wanting more performance though!

Looking at the absolute numbers, the 1060 doesn't hit a consistent 60 FPS in newer games. It comes close, but it hovers closer to 50. This means next year, it'll be in the 40+ range. I don't see a good ROE on this thing as an upgrade path. It's lacking more oomph at this price point.

 

[Trimlock]

Lets be fair here. There was like only one on for like msrp lol. Rest were like 280ish. I got in on one.

Lol, fair enough.

 

[doz]

Difference is, each time I've bought an AMD card I've had a hard time.
I end up buying an NVidia card earlier than intended and am back to enjoying PCs again.
Breath of fresh air.

Except this time around you are paying above MSRP.

I bet you will buy guns in 6 months above MSRP too.

 

[Nenu]

Except this time around you are paying above MSRP.

I bet you will buy guns in 6 months above MSRP too.

Except I'm not, I have a 980ti which has stood the test of time remarkably, even with the 1080 being a powerhouse.
I havent complained about NVidia prices.
I have only complained at the pita experiences I have had at the hands of AMD.
I'd rather enjoy owning a PC than be pissed off all the time, thanks.

Wtf is this stretch to guns?
Off topic much.

 

[tybert7]

Same repeat. Launch day benchmarks favor nvidia, and that won't be fixed for amd until they release a much faster card or the mix of dx12/vulkan titles is the majority.

 

[NKD]

Except I'm not, I have a 980ti which has stood the test of time remarkably, even with the 1080 being a powerhouse.
I havent complained about NVidia prices.
I have only complained at the pita experiences I have had at the hands of AMD.
I'd rather enjoy owning a PC than be pissed off all the time, thanks.

Wtf is this stretch to guns?
Off topic much.

I dont know I haven't really had this experiences with amd. They have been largely stable for me, although they used to be behind in game support but that has been fixed since RTG took over. They have really stepped up on drivers and delivery on time game support. Seems fine to me. I have a 7870 in one of the machines that I am throwing the gtx 1060 in has been nothing but stable and my nephew plays on it every weekend and all summer for hours and hours.

 

[null]

My main box these days is a Linux box ... I think I am probably going 1060 since under Linux it's beating the 480 by a significant amount.

That benchmark used Nvidia's proprietary driver for the 1060 vs. the Mesa open source driver for the RX 480. Horribly unfair, and questionable. The reviewer was certainly motivated to make that comparison.

My experience has been that Linux open source drivers have always performed much worse vs. each vendor's proprietary driver. And you can prove that yourself. Choose a couple benchmarks and compare them against Nvidia's proprietary driver vs. the open source Nouvea driver. The differences aren't trivial, and will make you question why any performance-minded user would use an open source driver vs. proprietary.

 

[Nenu]

I dont know I haven't really had this experiences with amd. They have been largely stable for me, although they used to be behind in game support but that has been fixed since RTG took over. They have really stepped up on drivers and delivery on time game support. Seems fine to me. I have a 7870 in one of the machines that I am throwing the gtx 1060 in has been nothing but stable and my nephew plays on it every weekend and all summer for hours and hours.

Why are you replying to my post?

 

[NKD]

Why are you replying to my post?

Just cuz I like kyle! "I Know when to shut up" and I have decided to use the ignore button!

 

[Nenu]

WTF? why are in these forums if you don't want to be communicated. LOL. That was a frickin my experience. IF you are going to talk about your experience actually talk about it. You offended I responded to you? Shit like this makes me mad, what are you here for again? I saw your post I had a response and I quoted you. I was wondering again why you you are here again if you are so damn special that i can't actually give you a proper response. My be I should have been more insulting. GTFOH. Now you are ignored.

That has nothing to do with my experience, why would I care about yours.
You dont even know what my experience was.
I suggest you like reading your own words.
I didnt reply to you.

Go get mad, your problem.

 

[Ocellaris]

That benchmark used Nvidia's proprietary driver for the 1060 vs. the Mesa open source driver for the RX 480. Horribly unfair, and questionable. The reviewer was certainly motivated to make that comparison. My experience has been that Linux open source drivers have always performed much worse vs. each vendor's proprietary driver.

AMD's closed source drivers for Linux suck too, no worries.

 

[FrameBuffer]

You are just cherry picking cards not sold by Amazon directly and an ASUS card that has the highest price on Newegg. Good sleuthing and completely avoiding reality there. Must be tough spreading FUD even though $249 AIB cards are being posted and in stock throughout the day less than two posts from yours

Try again buttercup
I primarily shop with Amazon given the 30 doys no questions asked return policy and fact I have a Prime Membership.. I simply went to Amazon and searched for "GTX 1060". no cherry picking needed..
As far as Newegg is concerned. Well I go there simply to compare pricing, Amazon will often match any pricing. I went to Newegg, Video Cards and Graphic Adapters, set filter to GTX 1060... again NO cherry picking..remind me again, where ALL these $250 AIB 1060s are in stock and available ?

Of those listed In Stock (See Site)
Newegg MSI GTX 1060 X 6G - $299 Out of Stock

Zotac ZT-P10600B - $289 - Out of Stock

The ONLY available (In Stock) 1060 can buy right now is the $300 FE from NVidia..again, NOT the supposed "widely available @ launch for less than 250 US!"

 

[Ocellaris]

Try again buttercup
I primarily shop with Amazon given the 30 doys no questions asked return policy and fact I have a Prime Membership.. I simply went to Amazon and searched for "GTX 1060". no cherry picking needed..
As far as Newegg is concerned. Well I go there simply to compare pricing, Amazon will often match any pricing. I went to Newegg, Video Cards and Graphic Adapters, set filter to GTX 1060... again NO cherry picking..remind me again, where ALL these $250 1060s are in stock and available ?

Of those listed In Stock (See Site)
Newegg MSI GTX 1060 X 6G - $299 Out of Stock

Zotac ZT-P10600B - $289 - Out of Stock

The ONLY available (In Stock) 1060 can buy right now is the $300 FE from NVidia..again, NOT the supposed "widely available @ launch for less than 250 US!"

That site only tracks sites they get referral money from (currently NE, Amazon, and B&H). Believe it or not, more than three sites exist to buy GPUs from. For example PNY has had cards in stock all day.

 

[Bowman15]

None that were designed around DX12. Only DX11 games with random DX12 features tacked on as afterthought and then called "DX12" in the marketing. It'll be years before we see DX12-only games, least from any non-Microsoft studios.

Wow, some of those tacked on DX12 features seem to help quite a bit. Denial doesn't make it any less relevant. "Years", come on man! As I said before can't we just be happy we have parity at the mid range performance segment?

 

[NKD]

That has nothing to do with my experience, why would I care about yours.
You dont even know what my experience was.
I suggest you like reading your own words.
I didnt reply to you.

Go get mad, your problem.

Just cuz I like kyle! "I Know when to shut up" and I have decided to use the ignore button!

 

[/dev/null]

That benchmark used Nvidia's proprietary driver for the 1060 vs. the Mesa open source driver for the RX 480. Horribly unfair, and questionable. The reviewer was certainly motivated to make that comparison.

My experience has been that Linux open source drivers have always performed much worse vs. each vendor's proprietary driver. And you can prove that yourself. Choose a couple benchmarks and compare them against Nvidia's proprietary driver vs. the open source Nouvea driver. The differences aren't trivial, and will make you question why any performance-minded user would use an open source driver vs. proprietary.

I don't think there is any fglrx available on newer distros for 480x, is there? If so where do you see one?...AMD is OSS only these days for modern Linux distros. LIkewise nouveau has no support for 10xx.

There is one driver for each manufacturer for newest hardware & IIRC that was what was used.

Edit: I'm wrong. I wonder how the AMDGPU-PRO does...
Edit 2: Looks like the AMDGPU-Pro is an "Ubuntu 16.04" driver not a "Linux" driver....

 

[Nenu]

you are the only one thats mad here. I was asking about your damn experience I never called you out lol. When you quote someone and say why you are responding to me when you are a fucking public forum? WTF? what was it that I said that you got so offended that you felt you were too cool to be responded to in a public forum. I can ask Kyle and Steve to open up a section for yourself you can talk to yourself and respond to yourself.

lol the irony.

I was mad while I had an AMD card, now I have a peaceful life with my PC.
And I dont have to deal with people like you when I have a gfx card problem. AMD could never do anything wrong

And again, I didnt reply to you, you interjected after my post to someone else.

edit re PM
Sorry I annoyed you Kyle its not intentional.
When I get a reply that is only a damage limitation exercise, surely I have a right to question why they are replying?
As you can see, the answer didnt explain that and was fuil of expletives.
I remained calm and pointed out why I should be able to make my point without being targeted.

Sorry.

 

[heatlesssun]

So about what I'd expected. One of these would look to be a decent pairing for my old x58 system with a 1080P 3D monitor. Not that I would use it for 3D gaming much but 3D BD. I guess we'll see how well Pascal fares against Polaris with DX 12/Vulkan, that would seem to be the big trouble spot for Polaris at the moment. The Founder's Edition for this card seems to be pointless which is why I guess only nVidia is selling it. The lack on the SLI bridge doesn't mean that SLI still can't be done in some fashion just across PCIe but I don't see that as a major issue at this price point.

 

[psyclist]

Glad to see the neck and neck competition @ the midrange, Dumb move on Nvidia's part not to allow SLI, after all its still pushing 980 speeds, Can you imagine if they had released the 980 without SLI support? They are forcing you to buy a 1070 or RX480 if multi GPU is the way you upgrade...

 

[chenw]

We need more people like you on these forums. Seriously, you are one of a few in the video card parts that actually contributes something.

Thanks, but I am not that good

 

[BroHamBone]

How that 1060 is running, im already wanting to see 2nd gen!

 

[FrgMstr]

Glad to see the neck and neck competition @ the midrange, Dumb move on Nvidia's part not to allow SLI, after all its still pushing 980 speeds, Can you imagine if they had released the 980 without SLI support? They are forcing you to buy a 1070 or RX480 if multi GPU is the way you upgrade...

Well looking forward these cards should support Explicit Multi Adapter in DX12, if the game supports it.

 

[chenw]

Glad to see the neck and neck competition @ the midrange, Dumb move on Nvidia's part not to allow SLI, after all its still pushing 980 speeds, Can you imagine if they had released the 980 without SLI support? They are forcing you to buy a 1070 or RX480 if multi GPU is the way you upgrade...

On the outlook, yes.

But if one digs deeper, one would see that 1070 and 1060 have rather similar perf/$, meaning that 1060 SLI would inevitably drag that ratio down.

Even if you COULD buy second 1060 and SLI that at half the price of the original, you'd still only match perf/$ to 1070, so there is little reason to SLI 1060 now over just getting 1070 from the start.

The same thing happened with 960 as well, except it was even more crippling due to the fact that 960 only started out having 2GB VRAM.

Generations before Maxwell, X60 usually had very good perf/$ ratios, nearly double that of x80 in the case of 760 vs 780, so back then, it did make more sense to SLI midranged instead of going high (SLI scaling would still put it at better perf//$).

This post assumes average of 50% scaling, so opinions about this would definitely change, depending on the games that would benefit from SLI (SLI supporting, and actual benefit of enabling SLI). I use this 50% as a cutoff point for "worth it" when comparing solutions of similar prices.

DX12 mGPU could change it, but, as I have always said, we haven't seen anything yet, and we don't know how widely it's going to be implemented or how well. Basing purchases based on unknowns and guesstimates may or may not pay off.

Given what we know, at this moment, if SLI 1060 was ever on your radar, I'd strongly recommend them to look at either 1070 instead, or go RX 480, and this would not change if 1060 did indeed support SLI.

What I do believe is, however, is that AMD has a strong lead in DX12 and Vulkan, and nVidia is currently winning at least partly by raw power in the 1070 and 1080, so in that regard, I think mGPU would be supported better by AMD, especially considering that it might be similar to how Crossfire runs.

 

[NKD]

If Vulkan truly does favor AMD cards, then I'm afraid we won't see much of it. With only 20% of the GPU market running AMD cards, an API favoring such a small minority is unlikely to be widely adopted. It grew out of Mantle and will suffer that same fate of irrelevance if it has an unequal benefit for the vast majority of gamers.

think about it this way. No developers will go out of their way to add support for new API if it didn't benefit the experience to their customer at the very least. Vulkan is replacement of OPEN GL, or you can call it the new version of it. It is here to stay. To implement it so quick I think it must be a much better API and they see the benefit from it otherwise you wouldn't have vulkan support that quick after launch of doom. Believe it or not if they are seeing major benefits from this api and better game play experience there will be developers using it. There is no reason to leave it behind or they wouldn't bother adding vulkan support at all.

DOTA is going to support it too, I believe its already in beta.

 

[chameleoneel]

On the outlook, yes.

But if one digs deeper, one would see that 1070 and 1060 have rather similar perf/$, meaning that 1060 SLI would inevitably drag that ratio down.

Even if you COULD buy second 1060 and SLI that at half the price of the original, you'd still only match perf/$ to 1070, so there is little reason to SLI 1060 now over just getting 1070 from the start.

The same thing happened with 960 as well, except it was even more crippling due to the fact that 960 only started out having 2GB VRAM.

Generations before Maxwell, X60 usually had very good perf/$ ratios, nearly double that of x80 in the case of 760 vs 780, so back then, it did make more sense to SLI midranged instead of going high (SLI scaling would still put it at better perf//$).

This post assumes average of 50% scaling, so opinions about this would definitely change, depending on the games that would benefit from SLI (SLI supporting, and actual benefit of enabling SLI). I use this 50% as a cutoff point for "worth it" when comparing solutions of similar prices.

DX12 mGPU could change it, but, as I have always said, we haven't seen anything yet, and we don't know how widely it's going to be implemented or how well. Basing purchases based on unknowns and guesstimates may or may not pay off.

Given what we know, at this moment, if SLI 1060 was ever on your radar, I'd strongly recommend them to look at either 1070 instead, or go RX 480, and this would not change if 1060 did indeed support SLI.

What I do believe is, however, is that AMD has a strong lead in DX12 and Vulkan, and nVidia is currently winning at least partly by raw power in the 1070 and 1080, so in that regard, I think mGPU would be supported better by AMD, especially considering that it might be similar to how Crossfire runs.

Something which was trumpeted early on, but then later has been systematically neutered by Nvidia: is the potential flexibility of multi-gpu setups. A person might buy a 1060 right now. Because its perfect for them. or because its what they can afford. or whatever. But a year from now, they might find a good deal on another and wouldn't it be great if they could do that. At that point, who cares about performance scaling or games compatibility or well you shoulda just bought the $400 card a year ago... ...forget all of that. It used to be an option. I did it, once. Bought a couple of dell system pull 6800 PCI-E, to side-grade from my single 6800 AGP.