Fight nice guys. Fact is, both are very good cards, but I would not consider either a slam dunk because they each have weaknesses. (efficiency for the 480 and DX12 performance for the 1060.) As for performance, you can make whatever case you want by cherry picking benchmarks. So to me it is a toss up depending on what games one wants to play and how much they value efficiency, as well of course of price and availability in the particular region where you live.
Exactly. Looking at Guru3D's results and charting them:
Looks very close, they trade blows, the NV GPUs win big in Anno and RotTR. Doom they should have been reversed due to Vulkan which they tested, but for some reason went with OpenGL for the 1060's review...
If the 1060 is cheaper in your country, go for it.
But the comparison of the 1060 vs 480 is very similar to the comparison of 1060 vs custom OC 970/980 (faster than 1060 in DX11!!). If you can get these Maxwell cards for around the same price as the 1060, would you get it?
No, it's a poor recommendation because you know two things are certain with that buy, 1) less vram and 2) less future proofing.
The exact same thing applies to the 1060 vs RX 480 comparison, 480 has more vram and more future proofing via DX12/Vulkan giving it extra oomph.