NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition Review - NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 video card is launched today in the $249 and $299 price point for the Founders Edition. We will find out how it performs in comparison to AMD Radeon RX 480 in DOOM with the Vulkan API as well as DX12 and DX11 games. We'll also see how a GeForce GTX 980 compares in real world gaming.

AIB cards up for sale this morning.

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 DirectX 12 GTX 1060 GAMING X 6G 6GB 192-Bit GDDR5 HDCP Ready ATX Video Card - Newegg.com

GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE GV-N1060D5-6GD-Newegg.com

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1060 AMP!, ZT-P10600B-10M, 6GB GDDR5 Super Compact Dual-Fan IceStorm Cooling FREEZE Fan Stop-Newegg.com

ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB ROG STRIX VR Ready HDMI 2.0 DP 1.4 Auto-extreme Graphics Card-Newegg.com
 
Awesome work, it is quite the solid performer for the bracket and honestly like i said in a different thread, if the price is right, go for it IMHO, all the cards around that performance range look to be quite the decent performers.++

Cheers to the consumers!

edit to add:

++Just noticed that i said something stupid lol, meant price range are decent performers :p
 
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Seems like the Founders Edition is ludicrously overpriced. If you can get one at $249 it seems more reasonable.
 
Man, I swear nVidia was probably crying when they had to set the MSRP of AIB cards to $249. At least its AIB's taking the hit and not them.
 
not bad but over priced

at 200 to 250 it would murder 480 sales
 
Just can't figure out why they dropped even 2-way SLI on this board, and that gives the RX 480 yet another advantage. Also discourages those of us Team Green faithful that actually like SLI (either from the get-go, or as a great mid-cycle upgrade) from ever considering the 1060.
 
EDIT: Nevermind, Nevermind, I was reading COMPLETELY the wrong graph.

Even at $249 AIB, I honestly do not think it is a good value over RX 480, especially given how much edge Rx 480 has over 1060 in Vulkan or DX12.

I'd in fact, pick 1070 over 1060 sli, regardless of whether or not it is cheaper for the second card later on. Unless if I am only playing on a 1080p 60hz.
 
I love AMD but let's be honest that multi cards are the exception above the rule, and with Vulkan/DX12 making the developer do the leg work for multi card setups, well, it's iffy... I feel that Nvidia bet that it was already a niche option and that it was gonna be even less reliable on the big picture enough to consider it inconsequential... of course that now Microsoft said that they will add ways to make it painless for the developers in dx12, but Vk is still unsure of how they want to implement it tho...
 
I just noticed, [H]'s result differ GREATLY from TPU's results.

TPU has 1060 squarely beating 480 to death, but [H]'s results show that 1060 is barely matching RX 480's results, and being handily beaten by RX 480 in some of them...

Do they even show settings? I don't see a page where they explain what settings they use.

Honestly pretty underwhelming considering Nvidia's claims.
 
I just noticed, [H]'s result differ GREATLY from TPU's results.

TPU has 1060 squarely beating 480 to death, but [H]'s results show that 1060 is barely matching RX 480's results, and being handily beaten by RX 480 in some of them...

The [H] actually plays the games at the highest settings that still results in a good experience; TPU just runs benchmarks. I don't play benchmarks.

While the 480 is a bit of a power pig...it right now shows to be the superior choice in this price segment.
 
For the sirs that quoted my post, I was reading from COMPLETELY the wrong graph. I was reading Performance to Wattage summary LOL, not Performance summary...

Total fail on my part :oops:
 
Do they even show settings? I don't see a page where they explain what settings they use.

Honestly pretty underwhelming considering Nvidia's claims.

On the test settings page it says:
  • All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
  • AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.
 
About TPU benchmarks:


Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.
  • All video card results are obtained on this exact system with exactly the same configuration.
  • All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
  • AA and AF are applied via in-game settings, not via the driver's control panel.
Each game is tested at these screen resolutions:
  • 1600x900: Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens and laptops today (17" - 19").
  • 1920x1080: Most common widescreen resolution for larger displays (22" - 26").
  • 2560x1440: Highest possible 16:9 resolution for commonly available displays (27"-32").
  • 3840x2160: 4K Ultra HD resolution, available on the latest high-end monitors.
 
Just can't figure out why they dropped even 2-way SLI on this board, and that gives the RX 480 yet another advantage. Also discourages those of us Team Green faithful that actually like SLI (either from the get-go, or as a great mid-cycle upgrade) from ever considering the 1060.
To me it's a sign that nV has even less faith in SLI. Or maybe it's a move motivated by bottom line cost.
 
Oh snap! Falls short of expectations but I'm glad it trades blows with the Rx 480, we have a competition on our hands! At last!!!
 
I wonder how close the $249 AIB cards will be (if/when actually available at that price) to the FE versions performance. The exceptionally high clocks in the review sample may not be guaranteed.
 
I use [H]'s benchmarks as a primary metric for accurate real world fps expectations.

I use TPU's summaries because it's easier to compare a lot of cards together, even though they may not be entirely accurate, I use them for relative performance comparison.
 
Looks like in the <$250 price point, it's a good competitor. The whole bang for your buck thing. Didn't meet expectations, but not a bad card at the non-FE price point.
 
Rofl at MSI pricing the Gaming X cards at FE pricing - again! For the higher-end cards, it makes sense, but for a mainstream segment, the $50 premium (on a $249 card) is just absurd. This really applies to all the premium cards honestly. *Unless* you are getting superior overclocking (doubtful), then why are you spending the extra coin here :p

eVGA listing their single fan cards at $249/$259 is nice to see though - and is probably what I'd be recommending to most people.
 
I wonder how close the $249 AIB cards will be (if/when actually available at that price) to the FE versions performance. The exceptionally high clocks in the review sample may not be guaranteed.
I would suggest that the FE version of the this card would be representative of all non-OC cards that you will find on the market.
 
Looks like a repeat of last gen where if you're building a system from scratch in this price range AMD is the way to go, but if you're upgrading an old system, particularly an old pre-built system with dubious power supply, go nvidia, even more especially if you're suggesting it to a less than computer savvy friend and you don't want to be walking them through a PSU upgrade.
 
Though this could really hurt AMD in the OEM market since it's much less power for similar performance and price so cheaper PSU and no concern of warranty issues from GPU burning out cheap ass MB due to excessive PCIe draw (yeah supposedly fixed in drivers, you know, overspeccing the 6 pin port, but if you're trying to get by on razor thin margins do you even want to take the risk?)
 
They're priced this high due to stock issues more than likely. These cards weren't supposed to be released until September more likely and it was smart of Nvidia to release them now, versus when AIB RX 480's are common.

They overclock a lot though, the boosting to 1911Mhz is evident of that.
 
$ 300 for that thing with no SLI and only available thru NVidia? Sounds kinda strange. O well. AMD 480 wins this one.
 
Not the 480 killer everyone boasted it would be, not to mention no SLI. With that price, you really have to be a green team only, and even then, why not save up for the 1070? Not sure where this fits in.
 
Not the 480 killer everyone boasted it would be, not to mention no SLI. With that price, you really have to be a green team only, and even then, why not save up for the 1070? Not sure where this fits in.

Maybe people who can spend $250 but not $400?

I'm not interested in the RX 480 or any AMD card at this point because of their completely fucking useless CCC or w/e they call it now.
 
Maybe people who can spend $250 but not $400?

I'm not interested in the RX 480 or any AMD card at this point because of their completely fucking useless CCC or w/e they call it now.

Hence the term "save" and its called GCN, and its been around since 2012, and GCN 1.0 has vulkan and DX12 support.
 
$300 WOW fuck Nvidia for this FE nonsense... MSI and ASUS are now floating their custom models for the same price as the FE.
 
Damn, now the question is do I stick my kids with an APU or upgrade my 770 and pass that down.
 
Hence the term "save" and its called GCN, and its been around since 2012, and GCN 1.0 has vulkan and DX12 support.

GCN is the architecture. I might have misunderstood what you were referring to though.
 
Not bad at all, and since FE will only be on sale from NV themselves that means it's gonna be AIBs all the way, from what I've seen 2100mhz is fairly common, as some of us expected this thing clocks better than the bigger Pascal parts.

Nice review. Nice card frankly, and silent to boot.
 
Great review. I think if I was going to update my windows box, I'd be looking hard at the 480x. At the current time my windows box is 1680x1050 with an R9-290, so no real reason to upgrade (at least none that I can see...)

My main box these days is a Linux box with GTX 670 @ 1440p. I recently tried to play metro 2033 redux with the settings up....and while it worked, it was slow. My 670 is only 2GB as well. I think in this case I am probably going 1060 since under Linux it's beating the 480 by a significant amount.

In any case, it's great to have competition again. This is a close one depending on what you want to play! Ultimately there are no bad options.
 
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Why do people legitimately give a fuck a bout SLI with the 1060? Is there any NON-TRIVIAL segment of the people (e.g. even near 1%) who buy this card that would buy 2x 1060's right off the bat instead of 1070/1080? Don't get me wrong...I can understand SLI on the highest end card where there is no single faster card and you want more horsepower. However, running SLI when a single card will perform better and most likely be cheaper just seems like a WTF moment to me.

*Goes back to looking for SLI/crossfile reviews....read some articles...yep...they all say it performs poorly in the mid range and has no real point.
 
GCN is the architecture. I might have misunderstood what you were referring to though.

Oh, i thought you were referring to the tech, not the drivers. They call it Crimson now, and i have had zero issues for a long time now.
I do think "saving" for the 1070 would be better than getting a 1060, no SLI and clearly not a 480 killer.. makes sense to me if you're green team only.
 
You can't even debate in your head on whether to get a card or not with these vultures :(. I saw $249 one on Newegg and was thinking of getting it but it sold out so quick.
 
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