NVIDIA has just shown us one of the most ingenious ways of creating new custom, competitive SKUs for the midrange market without spending any additional amounts of money on R&D, wiring, or memory controller work: just reuse the chips that already have that work done. This is the case for NVIDIA's new GTX 1060 GDDR5X graphics card, which the company has "designed" to further fill in the gaps on its midrange offerings against a revamped Radeon RX 590.

ASUS today introduced its GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB Phoenix graphics card, based on the same cost-effective design as the GTX 1060 3 GB Phoenix it launched last year. The card features a compact 18.3-inch long custom-design PCB, mated to a simple aluminium fan-heatsink, with spirally-projecting heatsink fins, ventilated by an 80 mm double ball-bearing fan. The card comes with NVIDIA-reference speeds of 1506 MHz core, 1708 MHz GPU Boost, and 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory.

Based on the 16 nm GP106 silicon, the GTX 1060 features 1,280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. Outputs include dual-link DVI, two HDMI 2.0b, and one DisplayPort 1.4 connector. In the wake of the crypto-plague, its price is constantly changing.

NVIDIA is expanding their GeForce GTX 1060 offerings with a new 5GB model. The GTX 1060 5GB will utilize the GP106-350-K3-A1 GPU and feature 1280 CUDA Cores. It's equipped with 5GB of GDDR5 memory connected by a 160-bit memory interface. Let's remember that the GTX 1060 already comes in three variants - 6GB (9 Gbps), 6GB, and 3GB. So, the question here is: why did NVIDIA suddenly decided to add a fourth member to the already big GTX 1060 family. Apparently, the main motivation behind the 5GB model's creation is to provide internet cafes with a cost-effective option to deliver a 60 FPS gaming experience at 1080p. According to Expreview, the GTX 1060 5GB is exclusive to the Chinese market, and it won't be available at retail. That means you won't find the GTX 1060 5GB on any shelves. If you really want to get your hands on one, online e-commerce websites like Taobao or Alibaba are your only options.

It looks like NVIDIA's next performance-segment graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, could be launched sooner than expected. A report by NordicHardware, pins its launch date at October 26, 2017; ahead of the "early-November" date which was doing rounds earlier. It's also entirely possible that the card will be launched on October 26, and reviews of the card being posted, but market-availability beginning in November.

Based on the 16 nm "GP106" silicon, the GTX 1070 Ti is being designed to be almost as fast as the GTX 1080. It features 2,432 CUDA cores, 152 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The card is expected to perform (and be priced) within 12 percent of the GTX 1080. Its main competitor from the AMD stable is the Radeon RX Vega 56.

GPU-accelerated crypto-currency mining poses a threat to the consumer graphics industry, yet the revenues it brings to GPU manufacturers are hard to turn away. The more graphics cards are bought up by crypto-currency miners, the fewer there are left for gamers and the actual target-audience of graphics cards. This is particularly bad for AMD, as fewer gamers have Radeon graphics cards as opposed to miners; which means game developers no longer see AMD GPU market-share as an amorphous trigger to allocate developer resources in optimizing their games to AMD architectures.

To combat this, both AMD and NVIDIA are innovating graphics cards designed specifically for crypto-currency mining. These cards are built to a cost, lack display outputs, and have electrical and cooling mechanisms designed for 24/7 operation, even if not living up to the durability standards of real enterprise-segment graphics cards, such as Radeon Pro series or Quadro. NVIDIA's "Pascal" GPU architecture is inherently weaker than AMD's "Polaris" and older Graphics CoreNext architectures at Ethereum mining, owing in part to Pascal's lack of industry-standard asynchronous compute. This didn't deter NVIDIA from innovating a lineup of crypto-mining SKUs based on its existing "Pascal" GPUs. These include the NVIDIA P104 series based on the "GP104" silicon (on which the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 are based); and P106 series based on the "GP106" silicon (GTX 1060 series is based on this chip). NVIDIA didn't tap into its larger "GP102" or smaller "GP107" chips, yet.

You must've heard the news of increasingly tighter supply on AMD's video cards. This is kind of a "hello darkness my old friend" kind of moment, since we've seen this happening before. However, these days, the problem looks to be exacerbated with the increase in digital currencies - it's not just Bitcoin now. Ethereum and Zcash have come in to fill customer's desire for a lower entry, ASIC-resistant mineable cryptocurrency. And with the currencies' exploding pricing, people are once again looking to enter the mining craze - to ride the crypto wave, so to speak. All higher-performance graphics cards since the R200 series are flying off the shelves and second hand markets, and as we speak, virtually all RX 580 models are out of stock on Newegg. And while AMD graphics cards have historically been leagues better than their NVIDIA counterparts in mining environments, recently some specialized miners have surfaced, tailored for the Pascal architecture (more oriented to Zcash, though.)

Due to the usual metrics and happenstances with foundry yields and wafer production, some chips contained in the production wafers are defective, with inoperative sections. This is always taken into account by companies, such as NVIDIA, while designing their product stacks (with the GTX 1070/1080 sharing the same silicon, and GTX 1070 samples being, mostly, defective versions of the fully-enabled Pascal GP104-140 chip). Other times, when supply of defective chips that can guarantee sufficient numbers of lower-tiered products, such as the GTX 1070, is insufficient to guarantee market demands (basically, things go better than expected at production), some sections of fully-operational chips are deactivated, so that it has the same working resources as the (otherwise defective) chips. Sometimes, like it happened with the Radeon HD 6950, these chips' resources can even be unlocked by simple BIOS flashing. According to recent reports, NVIDIA is bound to do something akin to that, by reusing GP104-140 chips on their GTX 1060 3 GB variants.

MSI introduced its compact, cost-effective GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB OCV1 graphics card. Pictured below, the card features a compact design that makes it fit for SFF builds, and has the muscle for maxed out 1080p gaming. The card features a custom-design PCB that draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, to support factory-overclocked speeds of 1544 MHz core, 1759 MHz GPU Boost, and an untouched 8.00 GHz GDDR5-effective memory, against reference clocks of 1506/1709 MHz.

The custom-design cooling solution is a simple copper-core aluminium heatsink with radially-projecting fins, cooled by a single 80 mm fan. The card is 18.8 cm long. Based on the 16 nm GP106 silicon, the MSI GTX 1060 3 GB OCV1 features 1,152 CUDA cores, 72 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 192-bit wide memory interface. MSI didn't reveal pricing, but we expect this card to be priced close to the $199 baseline NVIDIA set for this SKU.

NVIDIA rolled out the GeForce GTX 1060, a new mid-range graphics card starting at US $199 (MSRP), with custom-design cards ranging between $199-229. Based on the 16 nm "GP106" silicon, this card has not just half the memory as the original GTX 1060, but also fewer CUDA cores. The card features 3 GB of memory across its 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface. It features 1,152 of the 1,280 CUDA cores present on the silicon. Other specs include 72 TMUs, and 48 ROPs. Its core is clocked at 1506 MHz, with 1708 MHz GPU Boost, and 8 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. The card is targeted at gamers still on 1080p.

NVIDIA today announced the GeForce GTX 10-series for notebooks. The lineup includes three SKUs - the GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, the GTX 1070 Mobile, and the GTX 1060 Mobile. Thanks to huge energy-efficiency gains with the "Pascal" architecture and the new 16 nm silicon fab process, this round of NVIDIA's mobile GPUs aren't "gimped out" in comparison its desktop discrete GPU lineup, in that they SKUs don't feature fewer CUDA cores to their corresponding desktop counterparts.

The lineup begins with the GTX 1080 Mobile. Based on the GP104 silicon, this chip features all 2,560 CUDA cores, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs physically present on the chip. The chip is endowed with 8 GB of 256-bit GDDR5X memory ticking at 10 Gbps. The core clock speeds remain unknown. The GTX 1070 Mobile is an interesting SKU in that it is better endowed than its desktop counterpart. It features 2,048 CUDA cores (the desktop GTX 1070 features 1,920), 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 8 GB of 256-bit GDDR5 memory running at 8 Gbps. This chip features 1443 MHz core, and 1645 MHz GPU Boost. At the bottom of the pile is the GTX 1060 Mobile. Based on the GP106 silicon, this chip features 1,280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and 6 GB of 192-bit GDDR5 memory running at 8 Gbps; with clock speeds of 1405 MHz core, with 1569 MHz GPU Boost.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today introduced 4 models for its GeForce GTX 1060 lineup powered by the latest Pascal GP106 GPU. With the GTX 1060 G1 GAMING (GV-N1060G1GAMING-6GD) leading the charge, GIGABYTE also offers the GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC edition (GV-N1060WF2OC-6GD) and the single-fan GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC edition (GV-N1060IXOC-6GD) at launch, as well as the GTX 1060 D5 edition (GV-N1060D5-6GD) aimed for value-seeking gamers, to provide maximized performance at each respective budget ranges and for each PC build requirements.

The GTX 1060 G1 GAMING raises the game with Super Overclocked GPU, the signature WINDFORCE technology, and RGB Illumination for gamers who crave superior cooling and overclocking performances for next-gen gaming with style. Through GIGABYTE's GPU Gauntlet Sorting technology, the top-notch GPU cores built in G1 GAMING cards push overclocking capability to the limit without compromising the system reliability. The highest-grade components augmented with 6+1 phase design make the MOSFET working at a lower temperature to provide more stable voltage output for superior overclocking.

NVIDIA announced availability of the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. Targeted at the Radeon RX 480, the GTX 1060 is priced at USD $249, however, its own Founders Edition (reference) card is priced at $299, and available exclusively from the company website. The GTX 1060 is based on the new 16 nm GP106 silicon, featuring 1,280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory.

The core on the GTX 1060 is clocked at 1506 MHz, with a maximum GPU Boost frequency of 1709 MHz, and 8 Gbps memory, which puts out 192 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, as the chip's TDP is rated at just 120W. You get most of the features NVIDIA introduced with the "Pascal" architecture, but the biggest change is lack of NVIDIA SLI support. Even custom-design cards will lack SLI support. NVIDIA's add-in card (AIC) partners will launch their offerings today, alongside the Founders Edition SKUs.

NVIDIA today announced its third desktop consumer graphics card based on the "Pascal" architecture, the GeForce GTX 1060. NVIDIA aims to strike a price-performance sweetspot, by pricing this card aggressively at US $249 (MSRP), with its reference "Founders Edition" variant priced at $299. To make sure two of these cards at $500 don't cannibalize the $599-699 GTX 1080, NVIDIA didn't even give this card 2-way SLI support. Retail availability of the cards will commence from 19th July, 2016. NVIDIA claims that the GTX 1060 performs on-par with the GeForce GTX 980 from the previous generation.

The GeForce GTX 1060 is based on the new 16 nm "GP106" silicon, the company's third ASIC based on this architecture after GP100 and GP104. It features 1,280 CUDA cores spread across ten streaming multiprocessors, 80 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 6 GB of memory. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, as the GPU's TDP is rated at just 120W. The core is clocked up to 1.70 GHz, and the memory at 8 Gbps, at which it belts out 192 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Display outputs include three DisplayPorts 1.4, one HDMI 2.0b, and a DVI.

NVIDIA is expected to launch the first consumer graphics cards based on the GP106 silicon some time in Autumn 2016 (late Q3-early Q4). Based on the company's next-generation "Pascal" architecture, the GP106 will drive several key mid-range and performance-segment (price/performance sweetspot) SKUs, including the cards that succeed the current GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 950. Based on the way NVIDIA's big GP100 silicon is structured, assuming the GP106 features two graphics processing clusters (GPCs), the way the current GM206 silicon does; one can expect a CUDA core count in the neighborhood of 1,280. NVIDIA could use this chip to capture several key sub-$250 price points.