KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X

[W1zzard]

We bring you the world's first GeForce GTX 1060 GDDR5X review. NVIDIA has recently released a new GTX 1060 variant that uses faster GDDR5X chips instead of GDDR5. While out of the box speeds are identical, we found it to house the potential for a massive 44% memory overclock, which lifts the card to new performance levels.

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[Vayra86]

@W1zzard A question. You say the card is lifted to new performance levels due to VRAM OC, but have you also tested this in a non-synthetic situation? Heaven's not really a good thing to go on in that regard.

Still impressive to see they didn't use totally gimped GDDR5X on these cards.

 

[Emanulele]

72000M transitors?

 

[HD64G]

Hey @W1zzard congrats on the 1st review globally! I wonder though why RX590 isn't included in the performace summary graphs?

 

[newtekie1]

This card makes no sense other than to be getting rid of old stock.

But, like W1z said in the conclusion, I still don't know why nVidia didn't make this a GTX 1060Ti with a few more shaders and faster memory. If they had released a GTX 1060Ti with 1,536 Shaders(or even 1,408) and clocked the memory closer to the stock speeds instead of such a massive overclock, the extra cost to them would have been a whole $0, and the card would have been an awesome value.

What we got instead was just another GTX1060 with nothing really worth talking about other than a really good memory overclocking potential, but out of the box it performs exactly the same as any other GTX1060 6GB...really disappointing.

 

[W1zzard]

Hey @W1zzard congrats on the 1st review globally! I wonder though why RX590 isn't included in the performace summary graphs?

Ah, the charts engine doesn't include cards that are not marked as "reference". Fixed and uploaded new charts

72000M transitors?

Fixed

 

[trog100]

This card makes no sense other than to be getting rid of old stock.

But, like W1z said in the conclusion, I still don't know why nVidia didn't make this a GTX 1060Ti with a few more shaders and faster memory. If they had released a GTX 1060Ti with 1,536 Shaders(or even 1,408) and clocked the memory closer to the stock speeds instead of such a massive overclock, the extra cost to them would have been a whole $0, and the card would have been an awesome value.

What we got instead was just another GTX1060 with nothing really worth talking about other than a really good memory overclocking potential, but out of the box it performs exactly the same as any other GTX1060 6GB...really disappointing.

not just old stock but old defective stock which makes it kind of free so to speak..

trog

 

[Imsochobo]

Power consumption also missing RX590.

My conclusion to purchasing a GPU.
Amd's RX590 brings more performance, good price, Freesync monitor capability and you give up a "bit" of efficiency( power consumption)

 

[LightningJR]

The same performance as a 1060 6gb gddr5 at the same price? Seems pointless for most consumers but as an overclocker its awesome. I'll take a more overclockable 1060 for the same price lol

 

[The King]

There is space for extra RAM on the board. I would have liked to have seen 8GB and 256bit bus, they could have called it the 1060 Ti then.

Any chance of unlocking the GPU on this?

 

[PanicLake]

Consume a few more watts
Performance are the same
Brilliant!

 

[W1zzard]

A question. You say the card is lifted to new performance levels due to VRAM OC, but have you also tested this in a non-synthetic situation? Heaven's not really a good thing to go on in that regard.

I'm benching only a subset of Unigine to avoid that, but tested Witcher 3 for you: stock 44.3, OC'd 50.1 -> 13% improvement

 

[Casecutter]

Yawn... I'll look for some in the states for just $250, USD but not holding my breath!

It's a hard to get any decent "upper curst" dual fan for $250. The bottom quarter of what is even in listed in the channel is between $220-250, while the remaining 75% of SKU's are higher than that, while I'd say the mean is ~$270.

 

[W1zzard]

Yawn... I'll look for some in the states for just $250, USD but not holding my breath!

Not a lot of models listed yet, I'm sure more will appear in stores soon.

 

[Vayra86]

I'm benching only a subset of Unigine to avoid that, but tested Witcher 3 for you: stock 44.3, OC'd 50.1 -> 13% improvement

Awesome. Nice to see there is so much left in the tank then. Thanks.

I had really not expected that.

 

[Hardware Geek]

It would be nice to see a vendor include a better cooling solution and an additional power input to really push this card and see what it is capable of. They obviously left room for impressive gains even limited to 150 watts. I should be in the market for a graphics card in the next couple of months so I'll be keeping an eye on these.

 

[Assimilator]

This means that when overclocked, the GTX 1060 GDDR5X beats the Radeon RX 590, which has very little additional overclocking potential on its own...

I totally called this a month ago.

What I didn't call was the PCB; I was expecting a GTX 1080 without a lot of components, but this is very definitely a new design - there are no GTX 1080s/1070s from KFA2 with only 3 display outputs and a 6-pin PCIe power connector, and a GTX 1060 PCB wouldn't have space for 8 memory chips. Hmmm.

This card makes no sense other than to be getting rid of old stock.

But, like W1z said in the conclusion, I still don't know why nVidia didn't make this a GTX 1060Ti with a few more shaders and faster memory. If they had released a GTX 1060Ti with 1,536 Shaders(or even 1,408) and clocked the memory closer to the stock speeds instead of such a massive overclock, the extra cost to them would have been a whole $0, and the card would have been an awesome value.

What we got instead was just another GTX1060 with nothing really worth talking about other than a really good memory overclocking potential, but out of the box it performs exactly the same as any other GTX1060 6GB...really disappointing.

The reason is Turing. NVIDIA designed a new, big, expensive GPU and they need to sell it to recoup the money they spent on its R&D (and the money it costs to fab a die that big). But Pascal is preventing Turing from being the success that NVIDIA wants it to be, simply because Pascal is still so damn good.

Add to that the fact that NVIDIA is still sitting on a lot of Pascal GPUs, after the crypto craze petered out; and that AMD has pretty much surrendered the high-end, so people with high-end Pascal GPUs have no incentive to upgrade; and you have a "perfect storm" of Pascal's being so successful it's hurting its parent company. A wonderful problem to have, even if NVIDIA's stock price doesn't agree.

 

[ShurikN]

Amd's RX590 brings more performance, good price, Freesync monitor capability and you give up a "bit" of efficiency( power consumption)

And 3 high profile games (at around $150) that are going to release in Jan and Mar.

 

[newtekie1]

I totally called this a month ago.

What I didn't call was the PCB; I was expecting a GTX 1080 without a lot of components, but this is very definitely a new design - there are no GTX 1080s/1070s from KFA2 with only 3 display outputs and a 6-pin PCIe power connector, and a GTX 1060 PCB wouldn't have space for 8 memory chips. Hmmm.

The GTX1060 PCBs did have space for 8 memory chips. But you can tell this card is using a GTX1060 specific PCB because there are no SLI connectors on it.

The reason is Turing. NVIDIA designed a new, big, expensive GPU and they need to sell it to recoup the money they spent on its R&D (and the money it costs to fab a die that big). But Pascal is preventing Turing from being the success that NVIDIA wants it to be, simply because Pascal is still so damn good.

Add to that the fact that NVIDIA is still sitting on a lot of Pascal GPUs, after the crypto craze petered out; and that AMD has pretty much surrendered the high-end, so people with high-end Pascal GPUs have no incentive to upgrade; and you have a "perfect storm" of Pascal's being so successful it's hurting its parent company. A wonderful problem to have, even if NVIDIA's stock price doesn't agree.

That doesn't really explain why they wouldn't make this card a little better. It still wouldn't compete with anything from the Turing line, at least not anything currently out. And I would hope the GTX2060 would at least be better than a theoretical GTX1060Ti.

 

[B-Real]

Waiting for the guys who laughed at the RX590 performance. What a joke, the AIB model brings same performance as a reference 1060 6GB. It's not even April Nvidia.

 

[dj-electric]

OC makes up for this one. I can see why many people will take it over the RX 590

 

[jmcosta]

Amd's RX590 brings more performance, good price, Freesync monitor capability and you give up a "bit" of efficiency( power consumption)

well, that is true but also costs more.
you can get a decent premium gtx 1060 50€ cheaper or pay 50€ more over the rx590 and get an 1070 which performs much better.
It comes down to the customer needs and budget.

 

[luciferxy]

what a pointless gpu
the only saving grace for this gpu is, if it can be flashed with 1080 bios to unlock the disable shaders, that is if it can work in the first place.

 

[kanecvr]

OC makes up for this one. I can see why many people will take it over the RX 590

I don't. While the memory OC is impressive, most people buying a video card would not overclock it. As an enthusiast, I wouldn't buy it or the RX 590, but if I had to - for whatever reason get a card in that price range, I'd buy a fancy RX580 like the XFX Black Edition that comes stock with a 1405Mhz core / 1425 boost, close to the RX 590, and the sample I played with could do 1525Mhz without a fuss.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

having a GDDR5X memory doesn't make it any faster... heck, in certain games it lags behind the reference 1060 by a few fps difference. Same price tag as "launch day" 1060. I doubt flashing with another GPU BIOS would do justice. Saving up for a Turing GPU would be better. Pascal is just "too old" to compete.