Sunday, October 28th 2018
NVIDIA's GDDR5X-varnished GTX 1060 Only Ticks at 8.8 Gbps Over 192-bit
NVIDIA is rushing in a new variant of its GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card to counter AMD's Radeon RX 590, in a bid to reinforce the $250 price-point ahead of the crucial Holiday season. According to specifications of the GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X put out by Palit, the GDDR5X version is a little more than a marketing stunt, with something in there for overclockers. The GTX 1060 GamingPro OC+ from Palit is by no means a "baseline" product. It features 6 GB of GDDR5X memory, which ticks at 8800 MHz (GDDR5X effective), and continues to have a 192-bit wide memory interface. At this speed, the GPU ends up with 211.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Of course, this story is incomplete without context. Back in 2017, NVIDIA refreshed the GTX 1060 6 GB with 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory (216 GB/s). That variant, although available in some places, isn't the predominant GTX 1060 6 GB variant, as NVIDIA did not retire the original 8 Gbps GTX 1060 6 GB with its launch. This new GDDR5X variant comes with even lower memory clock and bandwidth than that 9 Gbps refresh. The card still only has 1,280 CUDA cores, and the GPU is factory-overclocked by Palit at 1531 MHz core, and 1746 MHz GPU Boost. At best, GDDR5X could vastly improve overclocking headroom, since NVIDIA's partners could be using 10 Gbps-rated GDDR5X chips, which are known to overclock well beyond 11 Gbps.
Of course, this story is incomplete without context. Back in 2017, NVIDIA refreshed the GTX 1060 6 GB with 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory (216 GB/s). That variant, although available in some places, isn't the predominant GTX 1060 6 GB variant, as NVIDIA did not retire the original 8 Gbps GTX 1060 6 GB with its launch. This new GDDR5X variant comes with even lower memory clock and bandwidth than that 9 Gbps refresh. The card still only has 1,280 CUDA cores, and the GPU is factory-overclocked by Palit at 1531 MHz core, and 1746 MHz GPU Boost. At best, GDDR5X could vastly improve overclocking headroom, since NVIDIA's partners could be using 10 Gbps-rated GDDR5X chips, which are known to overclock well beyond 11 Gbps.
43 Comments on NVIDIA's GDDR5X-varnished GTX 1060 Only Ticks at 8.8 Gbps Over 192-bit
The irony is they're using this to counter an AMD rebrand of a rebrand of a rebrand.
Sadness all over, zero progress, no price cut, worse quality.Who cares, you stand to gain a whole percent at best.
1 percent, 4 percent, its all irrelevant really. The bottom line is: none of these 'versions' are noticeably faster in any use case.
your looking at 50% better perofrmance on a 2080 ti vs 1080 ti. at 4k in a lot of games, once the 2080 ti is boosting to 2050 core
My guess (and ti's just a guess) is Nvidia hasn't figured out how to cut Turing into a mid-range card just yet. If they axe RTX they get cheaper silicone and more earthly prices, but then the base to build RTX on doesn't expand beyond high-end hardware. If they keep RTX but they cut it down accordingly, they get a larger installed base for RTX, but then owner would have to start sacrificing IQ even at FHD to enable RTX.
Personally, I don't really care which way they go (wasn't planning on upgrading this generation anyway), but I do think it's possible they haven't decided on the above just yet.
Good for those that have an old card and are looking for mid-end upgrade
why people are being so negative about it geez
Sure, it's weird to have the (slightly cut down) GTX 1060 3GB, GTX 1060 6GB and now this GTX 1060 GDDR5X edition all thrown under the same model number, but since they all perform about the same, it's doubtful anyone outside of forums nitpickers really cares.