Tuesday, August 16th 2022
Six Year Old GTX 1060 Beats Intel Arc A380, GeForce GTX 1630 and Radeon RX 6400, Wins TPU popularity contest
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB "Pascal" continues to be a popular choice among TechPowerUp readers as an entry-mainstream graphics card choice over rivals that are two generations ahead. The recent TechPowerUp Frontpage Poll asked our readers what graphics card they'd choose, assuming they're priced the same, with choices that include the GTX 1060 6 GB, GTX 1630 4 GB, GTX 1650 4 GB, RX 570 4 GB, RX 5500 XT 4 GB, RX 6400 4 GB, and the A380 6 GB. The poll received great response, with over 18,200 votes cast since it went live on June 30, 2022, closing on August 16.
The GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB dominated the poll, and nearly scored a simple majority, with 49 percent of the respondents, or 8,920 people, saying they'd choose the card over the others. A distant second was the RX 5500 XT 4 GB, with 15.1 percent, or 2,749 votes. The GTX 1650 and Arc A380 are nearly on par, with 11,9 percent, or around 2,170 votes. The remaining options, including the RX 6400, RX 570, and GTX 1630, are marginal, single-digit percentage choices.
The GTX 1060 6 GB is now over six years old, having launched in July 2016. It's based on the 16 nm "Pascal" graphics architecture, which has since been succeeded by two generations—the 12 nm "Turing" and the 8 nm "Ampere." With DirectX 12 feature-level 12_1 support, the card supports nearly all of the current online FPS, MOBA, and MMORPGs with reasonably good settings, at Full HD (1080p), which strikes at the core of the PC gaming market, or the very top of the bell-curve. Unfortunately, the GTX 1060 is retired from NVIDIA's product stack, although the latest GeForce Game Ready drivers continue to support it. You may still find the card in the second-hand market on eBay where it can be had for well under $200.
What's more interesting is that the GTX 1060 beats every AMD rival hollow, including the RX 5500 XT that's based on the 7 nm RDNA architecture, and the newer RX 6400, based on the 6 nm RDNA2. Although barely available in the West, the Intel Arc A380 appears to be riding on some novelty value, with people eager to check out the capabilities of Intel's latest 6 nm Xe-HPG "Alchemist" graphics architecture.
Catch the TechPowerUp Reviews of each card from this poll:
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB |GeForce GTX 1630 4 GB | GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB | Radeon RX 570 4 GB | Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB | Radeon RX 6400 4 GB | Arc A380 6 GB
The GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB dominated the poll, and nearly scored a simple majority, with 49 percent of the respondents, or 8,920 people, saying they'd choose the card over the others. A distant second was the RX 5500 XT 4 GB, with 15.1 percent, or 2,749 votes. The GTX 1650 and Arc A380 are nearly on par, with 11,9 percent, or around 2,170 votes. The remaining options, including the RX 6400, RX 570, and GTX 1630, are marginal, single-digit percentage choices.
What's more interesting is that the GTX 1060 beats every AMD rival hollow, including the RX 5500 XT that's based on the 7 nm RDNA architecture, and the newer RX 6400, based on the 6 nm RDNA2. Although barely available in the West, the Intel Arc A380 appears to be riding on some novelty value, with people eager to check out the capabilities of Intel's latest 6 nm Xe-HPG "Alchemist" graphics architecture.
Catch the TechPowerUp Reviews of each card from this poll:
GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB |GeForce GTX 1630 4 GB | GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB | Radeon RX 570 4 GB | Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB | Radeon RX 6400 4 GB | Arc A380 6 GB
41 Comments on Six Year Old GTX 1060 Beats Intel Arc A380, GeForce GTX 1630 and Radeon RX 6400, Wins TPU popularity contest
If it were me buying a new card right now I'd be grabbing a new RX 6600 8GB, you can find them in the UK for £250 and they're far and away the best performance/£ for anything new right now. They're not 25% faster than a 1080 on average though, so despite that - a £200 GTX 1080 is still a reasonable if you either don't have a £250 budget, or if you're comparing it to any Nvidia card (perhaps you want the drivers, the encoder, CUDA support - whatever...)
Other than that, both Ampere and RDNA 2 products are on the same list, and at this kind of price point, there are things that I personally value more than raw power. But you do you fellas, that's the beauty of the PC, end of the day, what makes it special is that you can tailor it to your own needs.
We know there are uncorrectable errors in the silicon itself (Intel admitted as much) and I believe that their second attempt next generation will be the one to seriously consider. They're still new at dGPUs and this first gen is full of mistakes and things that qualify as "trial and error" lessons.
We just have to hope that intel persist with this loss-leader and make it to a second generation. The fear is that it won't turn an immediate profit and so the stupid board of directors will just bow to shortsighted shareholder pressure to can the whole GPU lineup. Intel's expertise and in-house fab could mean that Intel become the #1 player in time, but it could easily take a decade for that to happen, if it happens at all. They have the money and they have the supply chain. All they need is commitment and persistence.
RDNA 2 is by all means a polished and well maintained architecture, so I'd nudge people who want a more carefree experience towards it.
Those who seek raw performance will weigh their choices and take any path they deem best (such as buying older, less efficient but powerful hardware, even if they're behind in features or are approaching their end of life), and then there are those like me. I'm excited by new technology, and this matters more to me, and that's why I like to keep things fresh :)
I can't wait for RDNA 3, for example. I'm gonna have a field day with it.
GPU's are just now are seeing price reductions so repeating vnidia PR line "just buy it" for an rtx cards is insane.
I won't be buying a new gpu until I have a real need for one so 980ti/ 1080ti/ titanXp will still do their thing until they can't anymore and I sure would waste any time or money with a 3050 or 3060 lol that's just crazy talk, unless of course if they came on a laptop but for a desktop that's just funny :laugh:
My argument is by no means the same as Avram Piltch's infamous just buy it pitch, since we're talking about budget hardware. I fully realize that I'm playing devil's advocate.
There are win-7 drivers for 20 & 30 series so not sure what your point is
My point is your statement is just wrong think maybe the devil made you do it stands to reason :laugh:
I use 7 - 10 and 11.
You being blissfully oblivious to what I speak of doesn't make me wrong, but I'll tell you this, just having multiplane overlay support makes the upgrade worth it in my eyes. MPOs are unfortunately not supported in Pascal, though AMD does support this in Vega.
If they aren't able to produce stable drivers now, it's not likely they will any time soon.
If we look at nvidia with their GeForce256 and up - they already had very stable drivers even with Riva TNT2, much more so with GF1 (256), it is not that GF256 was anything new, just continuation and upgrade of their architecture and all higher chips too (quite an achievement really, the key is probably discipline which Intel lacks).
"Our software release on our discrete graphics was clearly underperforming," said Gelsinger. "We thought that we would be able to leverage the integrated graphics software stack, and it was wholly inadequate for the performance levels, gaming compatibility, etc. that we needed. So we are not hitting our four million unit goal in the discrete graphics space, even as we are now catching up and getting better software releases."
Riva was done at a different time, everything was much simpler. And both Nvidia and especially AMD even with decades of experience with high performance drivers still make same spectacularly shitty drivers. You can easilly search AMD releasing updated graphics for a single game giving 30% more performance (and i remenber cases of 40% and more in my time with AMD)
"you have an AMD GPU with a product name starting ‘Radeon RX 6…’ the driver should deliver the following performance improvements in these games:
- World of Warcraft: Shadowlands – up to 30%
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – up to 28%"
www.ccleaner.com/knowledge/amd-driver-update-improve-performanceThe argument is the igpu's never recieved optimized drivers, so wtf why didn't they tried that first before jumping head first into making new gpu's with drivers they didn't get to optimise on the existing igpu's. There's an insane amount of bad workmanship and leadership at Intel.
I'm also fairly sure and inclined to believe that they were warned by the engineers but executives haven't the faintest clue, and probably saw that their integrated graphics ran CSGO and Dota and refused to allow development of an all new stack, which is a millionaire investment. Except that this time they can't just call in the Linux wiz kids they hire to maintain their open source iGPU drivers, so it all fell completely on top of the hardware itself.
At least Gelsinger is personally owning up to that mistake, and I strongly feel that he's done Intel very well in his tenure as CEO thus far.
This company has a massive problem inside.