RX 480 vs GTX 1060 (same price)

[tviceman]

The fastest GTX 1060 / 6700K combo in the world.
Yep, so much faster than those RX 480's. So much overclocking headroom.....

Timespy

Firestrike

Seriously? Why didn't you just say "hey guys I spent an extra $150 to water cool my $250 video card so I can say it's 3% faster than the air cooled $250 competition. It also consumes twice the power but global warming is just a made up conspiracy so who cares!"

At that would have been honest!

 

[YBS1]

You won't be getting 1450MHz+ RX 480 overclocks without watercooling. 2100MHz on a 1060 can be achieved with almost any custom version.

Of course, but watercooling the 1060 gets you virtually nothing over good air cooling. Wasn't a bunch of the arguments in this thread "better overclocking, cooler, quieter"? My 480 is all three, and guess what? My 480 and waterblock combined cost me less than what this GTX 1060 costs right now.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

The delta in power usage may be relatively large, but to say that it makes the slightest bit of difference to global warming is absurd. NV cards consume power too.

I agree with most of what you said, but that part is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[YBS1]

Seriously? Why didn't you just say "hey guys I spent an extra $150 to water cool my $250 video card so I can say it's 3% faster than the air cooled $250 competition. It also consumes twice the power but global warming is just a made up conspiracy so who cares!"

At that would have been honest!

Block cost $65, covered this in post above.

 

[zinfamous]

OH I get it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Its ok for the 1060 to be faster, quieter, use less power, overclock better and have better VR performance, but if Maddie says go AMD , we should go AMD.

When you guys who fall for this are done buying your cards ,I have some swamp land to sell you that in my opinion is not that wet and could become dryer in the future.

The OP actually asked about performance 3 years from now--he is explicitly asking us to make a guess about the future.

nVidia partisans are telling him to ignore the future completely to make his decision. So, when you have to tell him to change his perspective to make your case, you aren't really helping.

The only way to advise the OP towards what he actually wants is to "use that crystal ball"--and no one really needs that, because we do have history as a guide. We see time and time again that past history can and is the only guide to be used to predict future performance. It does not guarantee, obviously, it predicts. That is what the OP request.

Why not actually try to meet him there?

Obviously both Polaris and Pascal are not the same products as those previous gen cards--but we also know that we have within that same history, 2 successive generations of "not the same product" from each company that have provided us with remarkably similar history with which to make predictions on the aging of this tech from each company. Further, we know the general design strategy and history behind APIs wrg to the chip design in Pascal and Polaris.

This really isn't the guessing that a lot of you wish it was. It's really a case of "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me," with many of you guys trying to find reasons to not take the blame for being fooled twice.

We'll have to see how the 3rd round shakes up.

 

[Bacon1]

I like both companies, but this is a product that I would like to keep it for at least 3 years, so I want to buy what is really better in general.

For keeping it 3 years 480 8gb will be the best bet. You get more VRAM and DX12 / Vulkan tuned hardware which is where more games will be going in the future. By that time even indie games running off unity / unreal engine will be in DX12/Vulkan for the core engine.

Consoles are all GCN / AMD based so you'll have newer ports that are already more tuned for AMD hardware.

 

[Rifter]

In three years the AMD card will likely have aged better and be a faster card, so id get that. Generally over past 3-4 generations AMD has aged better through continued driver updades and Nvidia has flatlined after 1.5 years due to Nvidia stopping driver updates for older hardware.

So if you plan to upgrade again within 2 years flip a coin, if you are in it for the long haul go AMD. My opinion.

 

[thestbar]

I thought about it very much and I keen on RX 480.. Also, the Gigabyte G1 RX 480 now costs 30 less Euro than Gbyte G1 GTX 1060.
Is it a good AIB card ? I could buy the Strix for 30 more euro, which is my cash limit. Anyway, which is the best AIB ? I can't find a place where they compare them.

 

[zinfamous]

I thought about it very much and I keen on RX 480.. Also, the Gigabyte G1 RX 480 now costs 30 less Euro than Gbyte G1 GTX 1060.
Is it a good AIB card ? I could buy the Strix for 30 more euro, which is my cash limit. Anyway, which is the best AIB ? I can't find a place where they compare them.

For 480, I think the Powercolor Red Devil is generally the best reviewed, best-performing card. The Sapphire Nitro is pretty good, too, but a bit louder than the Powercolor. The XFX black has the best warranty at 3 years for the card, plus an extra 2 years for the fans. I don't know much about the Gigabyte, but the Strixx is the poorest-reviewed, and also most expensive, iirc.

 

[Ansau]

Let's put some things clear:
- Does the 1060 consume less power? Yes, but differences are rather small, 50-70W average with some peaks of 100W if the 480 user goes nasty with voltage.

- Is the 1060 a cooler and more silent gpu? That depends on the model you choose, but generally yes, although Gaming X, GTR and Strix don't have anything to envy from the 1060, they are silent and decently cool. NITRO and G1 can also be silent, but they suffer more from high temps.

- Does the 1060 overclock better? Well, that depends on how you see it. With absolute numbers yes, the 1060 overclocks better because it can be put at +250MHz. But absolute numbers aren't a reliable source when comparing. Relative numbers are what should be taken. And here things are much neck to neck, he 1060 tends to overclock around 7% and the 480 around 6%.

- Does the 1060 perform better? Again, it depends on what you are looking at:
Reference vs Founder when launched? Here the 1060 wins by a decent margin, around 10-12%: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/26.html
Reference vs Founder now? A little bit less.
Custom vs custom? Differences get smaller, and the 480 is around 5-7% behind: https://www.computerbase.de/2016-08...hnitt_benchmarks_in_1920__1080_und_2560__1440
Oced vs oced? Well, the 480 is able to match the 1060 in average, with the 1060 being better at older games and the 480 at the newest (not only dx12): http://www.babeltechreviews.com/gigabyte-rx-480-8gb-g1-gaming-edition-meets-red-devil-gtx-1060/5/

- Is the 480 better at DX12/Vulkan? Yes, no matter what people is saying. The AMD card has an architecture designed around low level APIs and async compute. Meanwhile, the 1060 is just a boosted Maxwell with some tweaks to make performance at async compute less pathetic, but it's still far from what the AMD has been achieving since Tahiti.

- Will the 480 age better than the 1060? Well, it already has. With the driver AMD has been releasing since Polaris launch, the 480 has only become better and better (see previous comparisons). And if we look at the future, the 480 has everything to become the best solution in the long term: Better dx12/vulkan performance, more VRAM, better at resolution scaling, Crossfire vs no SLI and uncapped performance now that with +16.9.1 drivers bios mod is supported.
Also, if Nvidia releases Volta with hardware support of async compute, say goodbye to Maxwell/Pascal performance like it happened with Kepler compared to Maxwell/Pascal.

 

[PhonakV30]

I choose RX480 8GB for +4 years , like my legendary HD5770 which is still serving !

 

[krumme]

Both good cards but imo pretty sure its the most safe bet for that long run because of ps4 neo. It might be different. But devs will have to look at consoles foremost and it lessens the risk. A monster upgrade btw. You are a lucky man

 

[SPBHM]

I choose RX480 8GB for +4 years , like my legendary HD5770 which is still serving !

the funny thing is that I also have 3 old VLIW5 Radeons, and it's remarkable that they still work, the hardware endures, BUT since last year or so it became a pain to run some new games due to lack of support from AMD more than lack of GPU power in many cases, for example recently I tried to play the Fifa 17 demo, the game doesn't work (it should it's DX11), in searching about the problem I found a thread with like 10 pages with people with the same problem, all 6970s and lower fail to run the game due to lack of support, while Fermi cards, like the GTX 460 (older than the 6970) runs the game perfectly fine at medium settings, and people pretend AMD moving products to "legacy support" sooner is irrelevant, it's not, and this is nothing new, legacy support also happened earlier for AMD on previous gens.

5770 is over 6 years old, if I was going to keep my card for 6 years I would pick the 1060, but realistically very few people do that, so it's not a huge deal.

 

[MajinCry]

Sounds like driver buggery, to be honest. Ol' Boris Vorontsov, fer example, used to use a 650 ti. When using the latest "Game-Ready" drivers for Fallout 4, the game crashed on start up. Used older drivers, and it worked fine.

Did ya try different drivers at all? Might be a similar case o' devilry.

 

[Thinker_145]

Yea, you conveniently ignored the other fact, that AMD cards have a history of being a better value. So let's fact check this at 1080p/1200p. Note, this does not mean Polaris will do the same, but indicates that it is

GTX 770 review (March 2013), the GTX 770 (Kepler) is 32% faster than a Radeon 7950. Also note the GTX 780 is 20% faster than the Radeon 7970 GHz edition.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_770/27.html

GTX 1060 review (July 2016). The R9 285 (a rebadged R7950 with less VRAM) is now 2% faster than the GTX 770. The R9 280x (rebadged R7970) is now just 10% behind the GTX 780.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/26.html

So no, its not just AMD fanbois talking random crap about your magic 8 ball. It is precedent.

PS, I (and many others on this forum) will take all these worthless cards off your hands in 3 years.

This is not the right way to present your proof. We need to see performance of the older card vs older card not the "newer" rebadged card vs older card. We know newer cards are favoured in drivers so you can NEVER use a newer card to substitute the performance of an older card for the argument of longevity.

Now first of all let's get some of your facts straight.

The 285 is 15% faster than 7950 not a "rebadge". It is still impressive that the 285 gains over the 770 but not anyway near the sort of titanic number you were trying to portray. However let's not forget the 770 was released 15 months before the 285 so this does not actually prove that AMD cards last longer. We need to compare cards released in the same timeline like the 480 and 1060 are. The GTX 960 2GB was released a few months after the 285 and the difference between the 2 cards remains exactly the same.

So there goes your entire GTX 770/285 argument.

Now your 280X vs 7970 comparison seems more valid but again not released anyway near the same timeline so can't be used as substitutes. The 280X and 780 released around the same time so here we can definitely compare the 2. The performance difference at launch is 18% to be precise as we should be.

The performance difference now is 11% to be precise(see how much being precise changes things?)

So 7% performance change?

Seems to me you don't have an argument at all. Your first comparison was totally illogical and second comparison says nothing about AMD superior longevity as the number is very small to form any sort of conclusion.

 

[nurturedhate]

This is not the right way to present your proof. We need to see performance of the older card vs older card not the "newer" rebadged card vs older card. We know newer cards are favoured in drivers so you can NEVER use a newer card to substitute the performance of an older card for the argument of longevity.

Now first of all let's get some of your facts straight.

The 285 is 15% faster than 7950 not a "rebadge". It is still impressive that the 285 gains over the 770 but not anyway near the sort of titanic number you were trying to portray. However let's not forget the 770 was released 15 months before the 285 so this does not actually prove that AMD cards last longer. We need to compare cards released in the same timeline like the 480 and 1060 are. The GTX 960 2GB was released a few months after the 285 and the difference between the 2 cards remains exactly the same.

So there goes your entire GTX 770/285 argument.

Now your 280X vs 7970 comparison seems more valid but again not released anyway near the same timeline so can't be used as substitutes. The 280X and 780 released around the same time so here we can definitely compare the 2. The performance difference at launch is 18% to be precise as we should be.

The performance difference now is 11% to be precise(see how much being precise changes things?)

So 7% performance change?

Seems to me you don't have an argument at all. Your first comparison was totally illogical and second comparison says nothing about AMD superior longevity as the number is very small to form any sort of conclusion.

The performance gained by the 280x relative to the 780 is greater on average than the difference between a 1060 and a 480. By your own provided data one could easily conclude that the 480 will end up decently faster than the 1060. Again, using solely the data provided. Thanks for playing and proving the 480 people right while trying really really really hard not to. Fantastic post!

 

[Thinker_145]

The performance gained by the 280x relative to the 780 is greater on average than the difference between a 1060 and a 480. By your own provided data one could easily conclude that the 480 will end up decently faster than the 1060. Again, using solely the data provided. Thanks for playing and proving the 480 people right while trying really really really hard not to. Fantastic post!

Wtf are you talking about? The 280X merely gains 7% over the 780. The 1060 is more than 7% faster as of right now. Did you have a brain fart or something?

Sent from my HTC One M9

 

[master_shake_]

some odd results happening on TPUs reviews.

both reviews are using 365.10 on nvidia's older cards and 16.4.2 on amd cards older cards but the numbers are different...

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/7.html

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/7.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/7.html

3 percent different (280x and 780) on may 17th

7 percent difference july 19th

weird.

 

[Shmee]

Guys again, this has gone way off topic. I am going to ask the bickering users to stop posting here, unless the OP asks a new question you can answer.

OP, I hope you have gotten enough information to a make an informed decision, as I am close to closing this thread as it has gone way off topic. Feel free to let me know how you wish to proceed.

 

[Thinker_145]

some odd results happening on TPUs reviews.

both reviews are using 365.10 on nvidia's older cards and 16.4.2 on amd cards older cards but the numbers are different...

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/7.html

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080/7.html

3 percent different (280x and 780) on may 17th

7 percent difference july 19th

weird.

While you are right that there is an odd discrepancy but your maths is wrong. The 780 is 7% faster in 1080 review and 11% faster in 1060 review.

It's also worth noting that the further down you go in the chart the less precise the percentages get. For example if let's say card A sits at exactly 20%. Card B sits at exactly 22.5 and card C at 23.4.

Card B is 13% faster than card A whereas card C is 17% faster than card A. But both card B and C will be shown to have exactly the same performance due to rounding off.

Sent from my HTC One M9

Warning issued for off topic, right after my warning...

 

[Sushisamurai]

OP: I'm personally biased against pascal, as I feel that it's not a significant architectural change from maxwell, and that the pascal cards are really just benefitting from higher clocks due to the manufacturing process (node shrink).

Disclaimer: I am slightly pro-AMD, as my experience with 280X's has been phenomenal for a chip that's 4 years old.

With that said, I would still buy the Nvidia 1060. It is a better card over all. In regards to the other posters, and what they've mentioned, older Nvidia cards don't scale well to asynch vs their AMD counterparts. That probably won't change. However, Vulkan and DX12 are pretty much set in stone. You're not going to see a similar DX11 to 12 performance boost in those 3 years (my opinion, as I don't think DX13 is coming out in these 3 years, any longer and you'd probably upgrade anyways). The DX12/Vulkan argument is essentially free performance via driver/game updates over time. The brute force for performance still exists and doesn't change.

Though, I personally wouldn't buy the Nvidia but that's my personal bias due to the small architectural changes - I'm currently waiting on the AMD top end and Nvidia next gen to see what's up

 

[tracerit]

I wanted to get the RX480, but for whatever reason when I put the MSI one into my PC, it could no longer wake up from standby. I had bought a used one from Microcenter, looked brand new but I took it back and replaced it with a new one -- same problem. Unfortunately it was a deal breaker so I went with a 1060 instead, which works fine.
.

were you connected via DIsplayport to your monitors? I also have an MSI, but a 470, and have had issues with one of my monitors not waking up. If I connect through DVI it would work fine. I recently played around with my motherboard's BIOS settings to disable energy savings but I also updated to the newest 16.9.2 driver and made other changes I've since forgotten at the same time so I'm not sure which one fixed the issues.

 

[brandonmatic]

I think the 1060 is slightly faster right now but I would personally go with the RX480 because of AMD's track record with DX12/Vulkan and console optimized games. The RX480 seems likely to stand up better over the long run. But they're pretty close in all respects and both seem like reasonably-priced cards.

 

[daxzy]

This is not the right way to present your proof. We need to see performance of the older card vs older card not the "newer" rebadged card vs older card. We know newer cards are favoured in drivers so you can NEVER use a newer card to substitute the performance of an older card for the argument of longevity.

Now first of all let's get some of your facts straight.

The 285 is 15% faster than 7950 not a "rebadge". It is still impressive that the 285 gains over the 770 but not anyway near the sort of titanic number you were trying to portray. However let's not forget the 770 was released 15 months before the 285 so this does not actually prove that AMD cards last longer. We need to compare cards released in the same timeline like the 480 and 1060 are. The GTX 960 2GB was released a few months after the 285 and the difference between the 2 cards remains exactly the same.

So there goes your entire GTX 770/285 argument.

Nice try there, you cherry picked an AIB R9 285 with stock O/C and boost against a Reference Radeon 7950. If you pick a fight against a stock overclocked R7950, like the Sapphire Flex (which is actually a slightly lower tier than the Dual-X), your 15% lead of the R9 285 is now down to 9%.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7950_Flex/28.html

So now again, in your last picture @ 1080p:
R9 285 @ 56%
GTX 770 @ 54%
Hypothetical Radeon 7950 AIB @ 56 * .91 = 51%

So again, the GTX 770 goes from being 19% faster to about 5% faster than a Radeon 7950 in 3 years.

Now your 280X vs 7970 comparison seems more valid but again not released anyway near the same timeline so can't be used as substitutes. The 280X and 780 released around the same time so here we can definitely compare the 2. The performance difference at launch is 18% to be precise as we should be.

The performance difference now is 11% to be precise(see how much being precise changes things?)

So 7% performance change?

Seems to me you don't have an argument at all. Your first comparison was totally illogical and second comparison says nothing about AMD superior longevity as the number is very small to form any sort of conclusion.

You realize the R9 280X is a rebadged Tahiti with slightly improved clock speeds and boost (that would have been attainable anyways if you bought an AIB Radeon 7970)?

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2398/radeon-r9-280x
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/296/radeon-hd-7970

So you're saying closing 7% is not that great? In that last chart, that is less than the difference between a GTX 980 Ti and a GTX Titan X.

I know its not your fault for cherry picking stock OC'ed AIB against reference cards, but the difference is there. It's not unsurprising that the delta between an AIB and reference can be 10% alone.

 

[Thinker_145]

Nice try there, you cherry picked an AIB R9 285 with stock O/C and boost against a Reference Radeon 7950. If you pick a fight against a stock overclocked R7950, like the Sapphire Flex (which is actually a slightly lower tier than the Dual-X), your 15% lead of the R9 285 is now down to 9%.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7950_Flex/28.html

So now again, in your last picture @ 1080p:
R9 285 @ 56%
GTX 770 @ 54%
Hypothetical Radeon 7950 AIB @ 56 * .91 = 51%

So again, the GTX 770 goes from being 19% faster to about 5% faster than a Radeon 7950 in 3 years.



You realize the R9 280X is a rebadged Tahiti with slightly improved clock speeds and boost (that would have been attainable anyways if you bought an AIB Radeon 7970)?

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2398/radeon-r9-280x
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/296/radeon-hd-7970

So you're saying closing 7% is not that great? In that last chart, that is less than the difference between a GTX 980 Ti and a GTX Titan X.

I know its not your fault for cherry picking stock OC'ed AIB against reference cards, but the difference is there. It's not unsurprising that the delta between an AIB and reference can be 10% alone.

The 15% number is actually stock 285 vs stock 7950 if you actually bothered to look at what I posted. And sorry there can be no hypothetical 7950 but the card itself.

Again I don't care. Show me actual 7970 performance and we can talk about it's longevity.

Yes 7% is a small difference given the hype you and others have given to the whole AMD lasts longer train. Yes a difference between 980 Ti and Titan X is immaterial in non VRAM limited scenarios. Don't know where anyone said otherwise.