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

[DamZe]

Even more then that card, the 8800GT 256MB should be a warning sign. Similar scenario:

Older, slower cards have more VRAM (8800GTS 320MB... GTX 970 3.5GB+0.5MB)
Slower, contemporary competition has more VRAM (3870 512MB... RX 470 4GB).

Developers tailor around what the market has. A lot of the market already has slower cards with more than 3GB. For years these have existed at 4GB minimum, essentially since the 290 4GB nearly 3 years ago. The 970 3.5GB+0.5GB may be the most used gaming card still today. Even cards as slow as the 380X are 4GB only, and the much slower 960 has 4GB options.

Developers know these cards are plentiful. These cards have 4GB+. These cards are slower than the 1060 Core 1152 3GB. It's written plain as day that this will require compromise.

The only question is, for $200 max Joe, who refuses to move an inch on his budget, what will you recommend? It just seems like a shame for the consumer to have to make a compromise cause there is good speed here.

The 1060 3GB gimp edition is a true nVIDIA card (take that as you will), it's the perfect illusion. It's most likely their batch of flawed GP106 boards unable to salvage more than 3gb due to SM cluster constraint (who knows might be simialiar to the 970 debacle), now ready to be sold to those who are desperate. This card is an insult to the weary consumer. But nVIDIA doesn't care, they have the market, they know it will sell on brand alone. As for the regular 1060, now that card did everything right compared to the 960.

 

[Ranulf]

$229 at NE for the gigabyte version of 1060 3gb:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125902&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-Veeralava LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=6202798&SID=


I now completely hate this generation of video cards. A pox on all of them. I mean this barely beats a 970 that has .5-1gb more ram (lol) and those are still around for $230-250. Wake me up in 6-9 months when Nvidia and AMD are offering free games again.

The only question is, for $200 max Joe, who refuses to move an inch on his budget, what will you recommend? It just seems like a shame for the consumer to have to make a compromise cause there is good speed here.

Same old story. 960/760 all over again.
/

 

[sze5003]

$229 for a 3gb card right now is pointless. Might as well go for a 6gb 1060 or 8gb 480 in that case.

 

[Phynaz]

I can't get comfortable with 3GB. At 1200p I don't play anything that would exceed it, but I can't see myself going less than 4GB.

Don't know if I would reccommend the card to budget contsrained friends. I might, since it's proably all they would need. Power consumption would probably be the tie breaker for me.

 

[Sonikku]

If only it had a single extra gig of vram for that $200. It'd be the 480 that never was.

 

[tviceman]

Would have been better off going with 6gb of slightly less expensive and slightly slower 7ghz vram and raising the MSRP price $10. With a cluster of cores disabled, this version didn't need the full 8ghz vram speed.

If only the 1070 was actually hitting MSRP with custom AIB cards. Oh well. I hope I find a good GTX 980 used to tide me over; the OC'd 980 cleans the RX 480's clock and beats the 1060.

 

[redzo]

Imagine if someone releases a 1060 3GB with 6GBs! xD

Even more useless than the 8GB RX470.
Hell, let's grab 32GB of RAM for our i3s and call it a day.

EDIT:
Just to be clear: The 3GB 1060 is not the same 6GB 1060

 

[fuccboi]

If 3 is pointless than 4 isn't? It isn't that big of a leap, and devs most certaintly aren't going to kill off support for that many cards and consumers with less than 4GB vram anytime soon, not when they are still the majority of the market. Sure they make you feel the need of more Vram when you can't 'max out' the latest most hyped and of course sponsored AAA titles with their uncompressed/uneffective texture formats, but that can really only bother that common Joe.
I don't really focus on textures when i game and you can still comfortably play the latest titles even with a 1gb cards. Although I'm more of a gameplay guy, videogame graphics doesn't give me a stiffy anymore but low fps can ruin the gameplay.
Not like you can see that much of a detail on 1080p panels anyway. Devs must also be able to capitalize on the hi-res textures with specifically crafted close up scenes like in a Witcher 3 for example to even make someone go 'wew lad' over textures nowadays.

All in all AMD just has to try harder and not less, to be competetive with the budget or enthusiast crowd, seems like they've completely dropped the ball on who they are selling their products to. Enthusiasts know their hardware and can pull out the most out of their cards while budget oriented consumers go for the best price/perf, and AMD currently offers nothing compeling to either of those but some edgesters who just need to differ or miners of course.
Majority of consumers will hear on that 80% market share brand name, while even the enthusiasts can't really be enticed by AMD's offering.

 

[sm625]

I predict the 3GB 1060 will outsell the 480. Probably the 470 too. This one SKU might outsell all RX400 series cards.

The fact that they are calling it a 1060 and not a 1050 ti is low beyond measure. But it wont stop it from selling.

 

[USER8000]

The 1060 3GB gimp edition is a true nVIDIA card (take that as you will), it's the perfect illusion. It's most likely their batch of flawed GP106 boards unable to salvage more than 3gb due to SM cluster constraint (who knows might be simialiar to the 970 debacle), now ready to be sold to those who are desperate. This card is an insult to the weary consumer. But nVIDIA doesn't care, they have the market, they know it will sell on brand alone. As for the regular 1060, now that card did everything right compared to the 960.

Funny how some enthusiasts are justifying a £200 3GB card here yet would never probably buy one themselves - sounds very disgenuous indeed,as in a years time when the 3GB cards are struggling more and more they will be strangely quiet,just like all the 8800GT 256MB and 8800GTS 320MB purchases some people recommended all those years ago.

Why are they so happy to recommend a £200 card to run games at reduced quality settings??

That is not far off a GTX1060 6GB or RX480 8GB in price.

You might as well buy an aftermarket RX480 4GB or a GTX970 4GB for the same price.

If you don't care that much for settings,you can get a cheap R9 380X 4GB or GTX960 4GB??

I have one of the latter,even at 1920x1080 games do go past 3GB of VRAM.

For some of us who have been enthusiasts for a while,this is history repeating itself and some on purpose are ignoring on purpose for some really weird reason. I suppose next year they would have moved onto the GTX2060 vs RX580 battle by then!

 

[Sweepr]

EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING 3GB

In stock right now @ Newegg for $199 (MSRP):

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487263&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-KB

 

[raghu78]

Funny how some enthusiasts are justifying a £200 3GB card here yet would never probably buy one themselves - sounds very disgenuous indeed,as in a years time when the 3GB cards are struggling more and more they will be strangely quiet,just like all the 8800GT 256MB and 8800GTS 320MB purchases some people recommended all those years ago.

Why are they so happy to recommend a £200 card to run games at reduced quality settings??

That is not far off a GTX1060 6GB or RX480 8GB in price.

You might as well buy an aftermarket RX480 4GB or a GTX970 4GB for the same price.

If you don't care that much for settings,you can get a cheap R9 380X 4GB or GTX960 4GB??

I have one of the latter,even at 1920x1080 games do go past 3GB of VRAM.

For some of us who have been enthusiasts for a while,this is history repeating itself and some on purpose are ignoring on purpose for some really weird reason. I suppose next year they would have moved onto the GTX2060 vs RX580 battle by then!

well said. I have seen fast GPUs become limited by VRAM before they run out of GPU horsepower. It has happened so many times from the days of 8800 GT 256 MB and HD 4870 512 MB. People who still think 3GB is enough in 2016-2018 timeframe (even at 1080p) are basically in denial.

 

[poofyhairguy]

If 3 is pointless than 4 isn't? It isn't that big of a leap, and devs most certaintly aren't going to kill off support for that many cards and consumers with less than 4GB vram anytime soon, not when they are still the majority of the market.

Where do you get that sub 4GB cards are the "majority of the market?" I would love a source on that.

In actuality the gap between 3GB and 4GB is a generational one. There wasn't a single 3GB card last generation, but there was a pile of 4GB cards (960, 970, 980). We have to go back to Kepler or AMD 2xx cards to find 3GB models. It makes sense that developers would target more than 3GB seeing that the most popular card on Steam (the 970) technically has 4GB. Plus we have seen Directx 12 loves VRAM so you can't get enough almost. Personally I can't wait to see some good reviews of the 3GB 1060 with minimum FPS on the graphes, I expect those results to look much different than the averages on Directx 12 games.


In a way I see this as the ultimate RussianSensation card for that reason. He always says it's better to buy a midrange card every two years at a rock bottom price than a high end card and hold it for 4-5 years. So here is a midrange card that saves you $50 today (compared to full 1060) and basically FORCES you to replace it in two years.

 

[DamZe]

Where do you get that sub 4GB cards are the "majority of the market?" I would love a source on that.

In actuality the gap between 3GB and 4GB is a generational one. There wasn't a single 3GB card last generation, but there was a pile of 4GB cards (960, 970, 980). We have to go back to Kepler or AMD 2xx cards to find 3GB models. It makes sense that developers would target more than 3GB seeing that the most popular card on Steam (the 970) technically has 4GB. Plus we have seen Directx 12 loves VRAM so you can't get enough almost. Personally I can't wait to see some good reviews of the 3GB 1060 with minimum FPS on the graphes, I expect those results to look much different than the averages on Directx 12 games.


In a way I see this as the ultimate RussianSensation card for that reason. He always says it's better to buy a midrange card every two years at a rock bottom price than a high end card and hold it for 4-5 years. So here is a midrange card that saves you $50 today (compared to full 1060) and basically FORCES you to replace it in two years.

I wouldn't even wager that it could last 2 years with how modern day titles eat up vRAM like it was nothing, it's basically DOA

 

[Ranulf]

Its a great $200 moba card though!

 

[Aikouka]

So, I'm selling one of my unused PCs to a coworker. It's not a bad machine with its i5-6600k (I built it for distributed encoding), but I just don't really need it anymore. The thing is... it doesn't have a dedicated GPU, and the person would like one. I mentioned that I'd recommend the GTX 1060 out of the newer cards, and I decided to search them up on Amazon for kicks.

"Oh, hey... they must be out of shortage problems, because I see a few in stock! Maybe I'll finally get my Step-Up from EVGA!"

I was looking at one of the smaller 1060s from EVGA, and all of a sudden, I noticed that there were only 6 left! Panic! Rush! Impending disaster! Even barring the tin-can-powered Internet, I managed to get one in -- albeit, I believe it's delayed by a few days. Although, my coworker ended up being more interested in my old GTX 960... especially given it's only worth about $120 now and handles 1080p fine. So... looks like I'll be tossing the 1060 in my Gaming HTPC and removing its 960! ...and still waiting on my 1080 from EVGA.

 

[VirtualLarry]

$229 for a 3gb card right now is pointless. Might as well go for a 6gb 1060 or 8gb 480 in that case.

Heck, I paid $130 NEW for each of my HIS 7950 3GB cards. Yup, 3GB for $130. $229 for a 3GB card is highway robbery. (Ok, the 1060 3GB should be slightly faster, but modern games that want more than 3GB VRAM are going to tank hard on both cards.)

 

[godihatework]

Where do you get that sub 4GB cards are the "majority of the market?" I would love a source on that.

In actuality the gap between 3GB and 4GB is a generational one. There wasn't a single 3GB card last generation, but there was a pile of 4GB cards (960, 970, 980). We have to go back to Kepler or AMD 2xx cards to find 3GB models. It makes sense that developers would target more than 3GB seeing that the most popular card on Steam (the 970) technically has 4GB. Plus we have seen Directx 12 loves VRAM so you can't get enough almost. Personally I can't wait to see some good reviews of the 3GB 1060 with minimum FPS on the graphes, I expect those results to look much different than the averages on Directx 12 games.


In a way I see this as the ultimate RussianSensation card for that reason. He always says it's better to buy a midrange card every two years at a rock bottom price than a high end card and hold it for 4-5 years. So here is a midrange card that saves you $50 today (compared to full 1060) and basically FORCES you to replace it in two years.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

VRAM

256 MB
2.17%
-0.02%

384 MB
0.71%
-0.01%

512 MB
7.99%
-0.09%

768 MB
2.10%
-0.01%

1023 MB
0.65%
-0.02%

1024 MB
34.10%
-0.12%

1536 MB
0.58%
-0.05%

2047 MB
23.65%
-0.06%

2048 MB
2.22%
+0.04%

3071 MB
1.40%
-0.08%

4095 MB
7.16%
-0.11%

4096 MB
4.24%
+0.13%

6143 MB
0.72%
+0.03%

6144 MB
0.62%
+0.02%

8191 MB
0.55%
+0.55%

Other
11.15%
-0.18%

show me better data to support that it isn't.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GeForce...5-HDCP-Read-/381733865539?hash=item58e11c8843

What's with this card? 6GB GDDR5, but only 192-bit memory? Yet, it has 1280 shaders? (That EVGA 3GB card mentioned earlier only had 1152 shaders.)

I thought that the 6GB 1060 cards had 256-bit memory? No? (Is that why they are 3GB/6GB, rather than 4GB/8GB?)

 

[SolMiester]

The 1060 3GB gimp edition is a true nVIDIA card (take that as you will), it's the perfect illusion. It's most likely their batch of flawed GP106 boards unable to salvage more than 3gb due to SM cluster constraint (who knows might be simialiar to the 970 debacle), now ready to be sold to those who are desperate. This card is an insult to the weary consumer. But nVIDIA doesn't care, they have the market, they know it will sell on brand alone. As for the regular 1060, now that card did everything right compared to the 960.

Cool story bro!

 

[poofyhairguy]

show me better data to support that it isn't.

The problem with that Steam data point is it invalidates the greater point- that developers will avoid needing 4GB VRAM because of the user base! Why?

According to that data point developers should target 1GB of VRAM, but we know that isn't the case. My 7850 1GB card gets blown out of the water by my 2GB 370 even on low, which is basically the same card with more RAM. 1GB is worthless today, which means that datapoint isn't useful (or developers don't care). Also a similar datapoint would tell us developers should target dual core machines, which is 100% not the case because my OCed G3258 dual core HTPC is trash with even some 2014 AAA games. Overall percentages are bad data points, there are a lot of crappy laptops and old desktops and such on steam that can't play AAA on minimum settings. You have to look for data points that matter.

To me the data point that matters in the steam survey is the fact that the most popular card (by far) is the 4GB 970. That means for settings that target cards with 970 or greater levels of power (of which the 1060 is one), developers will expect 4GB of RAM. Basically ultra textures on 1080p will target 4GB (or more exactly 3.5) of RAM because that is the current baseline at that level.

The 1060 is the most powerful 3GB card period ever. Even the DOA 2GB GTX 960 couldn't make such a scary claim. People say "you could always just drop the texture settings," but frankly you can always drop all the settings period. That kind of thinking makes it so the only justifiable card is a 750 ti because that is what you need for 1080p 60hz on low. You buy a 1060/480 to do 1080p High/Ultra which I predict this 3GB model won't do solid on a few Directx 12 AAA titles within a year. I could be wrong, we will see. I really can't wait for reviews with Directx 12 games and minimum frame rates on the graph to find out.

 

[happy medium]

EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING 3GB

In stock right now @ Newegg for $199 (MSRP):

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487263&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-KB

I thought it was 229$? Looks like 199$ to me.
will this card be faster than a rx470 @ 1080p?

 

[Ranulf]

Rather hard to find the 3gb versions via the NE search. The EVGA one there is 199, the Gigabyte model is still $229.

 

[godihatework]

The problem with that Steam data point is it invalidates the greater point- that developers will avoid needing 4GB VRAM because of the user base! Why?

According to that data point developers should target 1GB of VRAM, but we know that isn't the case. My 7850 1GB card gets blown out of the water by my 2GB 370 even on low, which is basically the same card with more RAM. 1GB is worthless today, which means that datapoint isn't useful (or developers don't care). Also a similar datapoint would tell us developers should target dual core machines, which is 100% not the case because my OCed G3258 dual core HTPC is trash with even some 2014 AAA games. Overall percentages are bad data points, there are a lot of crappy laptops and old desktops and such on steam that can't play AAA on minimum settings. You have to look for data points that matter.

To me the data point that matters in the steam survey is the fact that the most popular card (by far) is the 4GB 970. That means for settings that target cards with 970 or greater levels of power (of which the 1060 is one), developers will expect 4GB of RAM. Basically ultra textures on 1080p will target 4GB (or more exactly 3.5) of RAM because that is the current baseline at that level.

The 1060 is the most powerful 3GB card period ever. Even the DOA 2GB GTX 960 couldn't make such a scary claim. People say "you could always just drop the texture settings," but frankly you can always drop all the settings period. That kind of thinking makes it so the only justifiable card is a 750 ti because that is what you need for 1080p 60hz on low. You buy a 1060/480 to do 1080p High/Ultra which I predict this 3GB model won't do solid on a few Directx 12 AAA titles within a year. I could be wrong, we will see. I really can't wait for reviews with Directx 12 games and minimum frame rates on the graph to find out.

shifting goalposts is fine (but, no, not really)

but we are right back to where we were two weeks ago. You say 3GB isn't enough. but it isn't based on any data, just your gut. you appear to just be a politer version of the other guys on this thread calling this card "gimp edition" or "basically DOA". Again, with no data.

i mean seriously. wait for the benchmarks even before you start dunking on the card?

edit

and the limited benchmarks there are show it dunking on the 470 and possibly the 480? so we're just spinning vram limitations then. got it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

but we are right back to where we were two weeks ago.

Fair enough, back to waiting as I think the reviews will show either way. I do expect it will be a killer Directx 11 card regardless and that is fine for a lot of people.