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

[Limit]

I was thinking of buying the 480 but man the 1060 is looking great!
wonder what the max overclock would be? have to be over 2ghz for sure I rekon

 

[4K_shmoorK]

I was thinking of buying the 480 but man the 1060 is looking great!
wonder what the max overclock would be? have to be over 2ghz for sure I rekon

About the same as the other pascal cards. ~2100MHz core. Per the guru3d review of the G1 Gaming 1060, mem OC to about ~9400MHz. The Zotac is still available on newegg.

Their review of the Powercolor Devil RX 480 is also up. OC performance is pretty bad for an AIB card. I'd have a hard time recommending an RX 480 over a GTX 1060

 

[Jaskalas]

...though the "safety" TDP issue you claim with...

No, my point was OEM PSU and:
120w 1060
150w 480

Is actually a factor for me as I've had PSU issues before. I'd like to play it safe and go with the lower power draw.

 

[tential]

The availability of the rx 480 aib models is painfully poor. Yet the 1060 is within 5% in dx12 games on average right?.
Unless people are expecting this to change drastically to 20%+ I see no point in not getting a 1060 if that's what you want.

There were tons of people who said to get the rx 480 over anything else when it was only reference models who in the same breath said to not get Nvidia reference models or Nvidia cards even. Now the differences between the 480 and 1060 are miniscule, but the 1060 has aib availability and lower power usage.

If people recommended the 480 reference cards when they were the best option available why can't the 1060 be the best available option now?

I haven't seen any hard numbers showing the 1060 to be a poor choice, just guess work.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Well, that's a far more informative response than the one provided by the previous posters. :hmm:

One thing I learned in gradeschool: "zin, if they don't have an answer or have nothing to tell you, then they will distract you with empty words."

A better response would be to explain how and why people are wrong that DX12 has been long designed with AMD optimizations, and that nVidia actually has been working on async compute and other DX12 features, regardless of what we are actually getting from them.

I don't think DX12 can possibly be that bad for nVidia as it is made out to be, but I haven't yet heard a real argument countering those pointing towards what the actual data and history shows in favor of AMD. Vulkan seems a bit different story, but I think it is far more speculative to assume that will be very significant in the near future, much less further out. The DX12 stuff is really difficult to ignore--and of course both designs do show real gains here.

Exactly. When you look at the DX12 feature set, no one GPU has the full feature set. Alot of people think async compute is a big feature of DX12 let alone being what DX12 is about (infact its not really a feature per se but a result of the API being lower level than DX11) but there are so many features that developers are yet to fully utilize.

E.g. ROVs and CR which AMDs GCN architecture does not support. Future games could and most likely start using this along with many others. So its all down to the devs and we'll see plenty of AMD/nVIDIA sponsored titles so I think its abit premature to say which GPU will age better.

Then there is a possibility that Volta could be a G71 -> G80 type transition which might make all the GPUs out on the market redundant ;D

 

[Sonikku]

There's a widely held belief that the 480 will age better the the extra 2gb of vram might do the 1060 some favors in the games to come at least.

 

[Arachnotronic]

There's a widely held belief that the 480 will age better the the extra 2gb of vram might do the 1060 some favors in the games to come at least.

By the time that 6GB of VRAM isn't enough, RX 480/GTX 1060 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The availability of the rx 480 aib models is painfully poor. Yet the 1060 is within 5% in dx12 games on average right?.
Unless people are expecting this to change drastically to 20%+ I see no point in not getting a 1060 if that's what you want.

There were tons of people who said to get the rx 480 over anything else when it was only reference models who in the same breath said to not get Nvidia reference models or Nvidia cards even. Now the differences between the 480 and 1060 are miniscule, but the 1060 has aib availability and lower power usage.

If people recommended the 480 reference cards when they were the best option available why can't the 1060 be the best available option now?

I haven't seen any hard numbers showing the 1060 to be a poor choice, just guess work.

Great post, tential. Sober, rational analysis right here. :thumbsup:

 

[tential]

There's a widely held belief that the 480 will age better the the extra 2gb of vram might do the 1060 some favors in the games to come at least.

Rx 480 8gb is the competitor to the 1060 6gb

Rx 480 4gb is competitor to the 1060 3gb

 

[redvapor]

By the time that 6GB of VRAM isn't enough, RX 480/GTX 1060 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

By the time 2 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 7970 and gtx 680 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

By the time 3 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 290x and 780 ti will be woefully under-powered....

Oh wait!

 

[Sweepr]

Gigabyte launching a 'Mini ITX OC' model to compete with the popular $249 Zotac Mini.

Boost: 1771MHz/ Base: 1556 MHz in OC Mode
Boost: 1746 MHz/ Base: 1531 MHz in Gaming Mode

www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5986#kf

 

[tential]

By the time 2 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 7970 and gtx 680 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

By the time 3 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 290x and 780 ti will be woefully under-powered....

Oh wait!

So are you making a case against the $200 4gb rx480 that amd pushed so hard?

Love to hear your thoughts on that card

Edit: didn't people recently say fury x was OK still with 4gb of VRAM? I guess if a mid range card isn't safe with 6gb of VRAM then fury x is screwed and should be sold ASAP?

 

[redvapor]

So are you making a case against the $200 4gb rx480 that amd pushed so hard?

Love to hear your thoughts on that card

Where exactly i proposed the 4 GB 480? Compared to a 3 GB 1060 at the same price point it would be the better buy in my view. But i would invest the 30$ to get the double VRAM. Thats my opinion.
You guys are touting 3GB cards vs 4GB and 6 GB vs 8 GB. Not me.

 

[moonbogg]

By the time 2 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 7970 and gtx 680 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

By the time 3 GB of VRAM isn't enough, 290x and 780 ti will be woefully under-powered....

Oh wait!

My main limiting factor with GPU's since my GTX 570's has been a lack of Vram. GTX 570's lacked just enough to make BF3 stutter and hitch. GTX 670's lacked just enough to make BF4 stutter and hitch. I expect my 980ti's to lack just enough to make BF1 stutter and hitch.
New games come out and they use just enough Vram to push current cards over the edge, just enough to cause annoyances and hitching.
This is mainly an issue for dual GPU users because the GPU power is there while there isn't enough Vram to allow the GPU's to last as long as they otherwise would.
This can also effect single GPU users who are OK with playing with less FPS while maintaining higher details. They run out of Vram. Nvidia is excellent at making sure their customers never have enough Vram at the end of a product cycle. AMD is excellent at making sure their customers always have enough Vram for multiple GPU cycles, with the exception of the Fury X. They were innovating by being first with HBM, so they get a pass on that one. NVidia has no excuse.
Nvidia knows that their Titan brand has enough Vram to last multiple GPU cycles, but they charge you double the price for that card. That way, they get two generations worth of money out of you from that one purchase, just incase you decide to keep the card for a while. They protect their profits by screwing everyone else.

 

[zinfamous]

Rx 480 8gb is the competitor to the 1060 6gb

Rx 480 4gb is competitor to the 1060 3gb

Yes, but that 3gb 1060 is in a different category together. It doesn't really compete with anything because 3gb is already widely considered inadequate for current demanding games at 1080 with high settings. Yes, you can bump textures down to 2k or less in certain games (if allowed), but why do that when you can save $10-20 on a 480 and get better IQ, or spend $20-50 more on a 6gb 1060 (or 8gb 480) and get better overall performance?

I don't think you will find even the staunchest nVidia partisan supporting the 3gb 1060 as an argument for this tier of cards. Though I could be wrong on the price, because maybe that has not been released yet? It would have to be in the $150 range to make any kind of sense....but then the RX 470 will be a better choice there. (that is to say, if you already have a 3gb card that you have been using for x years, it is likely more than adequate for your uses because you are already lowering some settings in the latest games--like me--but when it comes to purchasing new, there isn't a real argument to made to advise someone to go lower than 4gb, considering the actual cost of VRAM on these cards now. The cost/performance difference with this generation when it comes to stepping up in VRAM barely exists now, compared to 2 years ago.)

But as to your earlier comment--yes, they are both excellent cards and will, in the end, make the majority of owners happy for their intended use. No one outside of nVidia really knows if their supposed DX12 issues are hardware-based and/or can be mitigated by driver updates but even so, the noticeable performance difference isn't going to be massive--both AMD and nVidia see real gains going from DX11 to DX12, it is just that the performance delta benefits AMD more simply because their architecture has long been designed to take advantage of DX12 features. nVidia is still far more power efficient, OC better, and do not seem to be as bandwidth limited on memory as current Polaris iterations. Vulkan seems entirely different, but I imagine that is more likely to have as much influence on nextgen games as Mantle once did, so Doom is a legitimate, mind-boggling outlier until proven otherwise.

general consumer purchasing advice remains similar to what it has long been, imo:

go with nVidia if you prefer to upgrade frequently, say every 1 to 2 years (or heck, every 3 months like some people, considering the new normal from nVidia ).

go with AMD if you prefer longer cycles of 2+ years.

 

[R0H1T]

So are you making a case against the $200 4gb rx480 that amd pushed so hard?

Love to hear your thoughts on that card

Edit: didn't people recently say fury x was OK still with 4gb of VRAM? I guess if a mid range card isn't safe with 6gb of VRAM then fury x is screwed and should be sold ASAP?

Yes it is as can be seen in numerous reviews where it excels at higher resolution, though I wouldn't recommend it for 4K but it's still good enough for 1440p. The HBM in Fury is a whole different beast but I'm sure you knew that, just like you know how the GTX 780/TI are getting hammered in games where 3GB is simply not enough.

As for 8GB RX480 it can be useful in fringe cases where it's needed, also in case of CF but funnily enough the 1060 doesn't do SLI. The reason is pretty well known & why we never had 8GB 980's for SLI, but hey when Nvidia can (almost) get away with murder, or blatantly lying in case of 970, they keep on doing what they've always done & people keep rewarding them for that :whiste:

 

[crisium]

Never underestimate creeping VRAM usage. Especially with higher textures having a very minor penalty to performance, it could mean you miss out on that setting. I used a mobile Fermi 580m 2GB, which is the approximate equivalent performance to a 460 desktop. I had no problem utilizing more than 1GB of VRAM in 2013+. Yet few recommoneded the 2GB 460 because "it was not fast enough to use higher settings". I didn't max out everything - just textures. Free IQ for 2GB Fermi, it just took til 2013 or so.

The VRAM of this price bracket is interesting. The 8GB on the 480 may not manifest any advantage over the 1060 for quite some while but it is a distant thought and one consideration.

But the 4GB 480 draws attention due to being cheaper than either of the above, but it could mean you have to use a lower texture setting pretty soon. It guarentees it as time goes on.

Then you have an odd setup where the 470 8GB is cheaper than the 480 4GB. The 480 will get higher framerates and/or have a slightly higher non-texture setting than the 470, but that 470 8GB will eventually be able to sneak in a higher texture option to at least partially compensate for its general slowness.

Of course, we then have a 4GB 470 for even less with much of the same to consider!

And where will the 1060 3GB come into play? That already guarantees a lower texture setting in games already available. Even if its slightly cut in performance (1152 cores?), I still expect it to beat the 470 anyway. Now we could have another scenario where the 1060 3GB gets higher fps and/or non-texture settings but has to run a lower texture. The definition of a compromise.

If you can't afford 1060 6GB, would you pay equal or more money for 3GB 1060 over 4-8gb 470, or 4GB 480? And if you say "heck no", then which Radeon do you get? See dilemma above!

Compromise and dilemmas at every price point. The $150-$250 shopper has much to consider (and I'm just talking VRAM, glhf with debating DX12/Vulkan/Nvidia abandons old arc debate).

 

[tential]

To think just a couple of months ago people were explaining how fury x 4gb vram was enough.

Just wow....

 

[zinfamous]

By the time that 6GB of VRAM isn't enough, RX 480/GTX 1060 class cards will be woefully under-powered.

:thumbsup: Also a solid point. 6GB really should be more than enough for high IQ/settings 1080p for as long as 1080p remains mainstream, imo--which is what these cards are designed to target.

(OK, well, you know...unless devs start releasing 8k texture packs...)

 

[richaron]

Exactly. When you look at the DX12 feature set, no one GPU has the full feature set. Alot of people think async compute is a big feature of DX12 let alone being what DX12 is about (infact its not really a feature per se but a result of the API being lower level than DX11) but there are so many features that developers are yet to fully utilize.

E.g. ROVs and CR which AMDs GCN architecture does not support. Future games could and most likely start using this along with many others. So its all down to the devs and we'll see plenty of AMD/nVIDIA sponsored titles so I think its abit premature to say which GPU will age better.

Then there is a possibility that Volta could be a G71 -> G80 type transition which might make all the GPUs out on the market redundant ;D

Heh. Seems like a sketchy way to rationalize the idea that nV isn't behind AMD in next gen API support. Your argument is: "even though they've got more fundamental support, they don't have all the support. Maybe one day nV will blow them away lol".

So I assume the answer is to ignore what we're seeing in current gen cards? And ignore how all AMD GCN cards from the past few years are performing better than comparable nV cards, especially in DX12/Vulcan.

...Because considering four and a half years worth of data would be a bit "premature" ;D

 

[zinfamous]

To think just a couple of months ago people were explaining how fury x 4gb vram was enough.

Just wow....

well, it is a different 4gb than the 4gb VRAM on all other cards--you get what, 8x the bandwidth or whatever it is?

I'm an idiot when it comes to what all of this means, but this makes me think huge texture packs can constantly be dumped and refreshed as your moving around, to make better use of that 4gb "limit" rather than keep that allocation constantly populated? I dunno exactly, but the bandwidth advantage is a huge performance difference.

 

[crisium]

Fury cards have the same compromises.

If a game uses more than 4GB on the highest setting then I can't use it... Or the driver will work around it with system memory WITHOUT stutter. See the impossible Hyper settings of Mirror's Edge for case 1, and I believe case 2 applies to ROTTR because IIRC it uses much more system memory on Fiji than GM200.

HBM doesn't really have any secret sauce, and it doesn't even have double the bandwidth of cards like 980 Ti or 1080, so I'm not sure what your 8x means?

As for Mr. Passive Aggressive, I hope you weren't referring to me with that drive by post, because that would not be accurate at all.

 

[Silverforce11]

The availability of the rx 480 aib models is painfully poor. Yet the 1060 is within 5% in dx12 games on average right?.
Unless people are expecting this to change drastically to 20%+ I see no point in not getting a 1060 if that's what you want.

With the latest driver, AMD's weak performance in Rise of the Tomb Raider is gone. They've reached parity.

https://youtu.be/ECTGKqWpszk?t=2m25s

^ Some sites find close performance, this guy is a pretty big youtuber, he found the RX 480 was actually faster than the 1060 in Rise now.

Ashes is a tie. Warhammer is about 5-10% lead. AMD leads big (15-20%) in Forza 6, Hitman, Quantum Break and biggest in Doom (~25%). The AVG lead overall is ~15% already.

We'll see how the next wave of big DX12 games turn out, then we can say with a high level of certainty.

But I find it odd NV isn't sponsoring more DX12 games, make more like Rise of the Tomb Raider where AMD runs it gimped. What's going on?

 

[Sweepr]

The AVG lead overall is ~15% already.

In your dreams maybe. Overall from 7 DX12 games + Doom Vulkan: 3% faster

 

[Silverforce11]

In your dreams maybe.

Nah, I leave it to the professionals:

http://www.golem.de/news/geforce-gt...ingen-direct3d-12-und-vulkan-1607-122214.html

Even the NV biased youtubers are saying the 480 has a big lead in DX12/Vulkan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECTGKqWpszk&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s

ps. You were the one who was spreading Doom Vulkan benches around that didn't even run with Async Compute enabled and using that as if it's valid. Nice try.

As for the site you link, I can tell you right now they don't know what they are doing, look at this result:

http://www.comptoir-hardware.com/ar...ues/32008-test-geforce-gtx-1060.html?start=11

Quantum Break, a GTX 780 is out performing a 970. A 980 is close to a 390X. 980Ti matching Fury. Good luck with that being real.

This is video, side by side, of a 970 @ 1550mhz, no way near 480/390X level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRkhA5V1qXU <- the guy even runs with vsync on, so the 480 is capped at 60/61, it's actually faster!