Introduction

When NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX 1060, the company allowed its add-in card (AIC) partners to launch their custom-design cards right away. The company set the MSRP of this SKU at US$249 and is selling its reference-design "Founders Edition" SKU at $299, a $50 premium. This allows its partners to position their custom-design cards at either around the $249 baseline price or the $299 Founders Edition one.

The GeForce GTX 1060 is NVIDIA's response to the Radeon RX 480, which offers performance rivaling that of $350 products from the previous generation at an attractive $229 price point. It is based on the newer 16 nm GP106 silicon, which is the third ASIC built on the "Pascal" architecture. This chip features half the SIMD machinery of the GP104 silicon on which the GTX 1080 is based, but has 75% of the raster operation machinery and memory configuration.



Today, we have with us for review the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Armor OC, which is a cost-effective custom design variant of the GTX 1060 with the same PCB and power-design as the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X. Out of the box, the card is overclocked to a base clock of 1544 MHz. Memory runs at NVIDIA stock of 2002 MHz. Pricing of the card is $260.

Packaging

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD
• Documentation
• MSI stickers

The Card

MSI's card comes with two large fans that sit inside a relatively simple black cooler with light highlights. A backplate is not available. Dimensions of the card are 28.0 cm x 14.0 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include a DVI port, one HDMI port, and three DisplayPorts. Unlike previous NVIDIA cards, the DVI port no longer includes an analog signal, so you'll have to use an active adapter. NVIDIA also updated DisplayPort to be 1.2 certified and 1.3/1.4 ready, which enables support for 4K @ 120 Hz and 5K @ 60 Hz or 8K @ 60 Hz with two cables.

The GPU also comes with an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 2.0b compatible, which supports HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies. The GPU video encoding unit has been updated to support HEVC at 10-bit and 12-bit.


The GeForce GTX 1060 does not support SLI.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back).

A Closer Look

MSI's thermal solution uses two heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU's surface.


Once the main heatsink is removed, you can see a thermal pad on a row of memory chips, which is cooled by the main heatsink. The other memory chips are cooled by a secondary heatsink that also cools the VRM circuitry.


MSI upgraded the power input of their GTX 1060 to an 8-pin. This input configuration is specified for up to 225 watts of power draw.


The uP 9511 voltage controller is a new model for recent NVIDIA cards. It does not support voltage control via I2C.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G80325FB-HC25. They are specified to run at 2000 MHz (8000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's GP106 graphics processor is the second consumer chip using the Pascal architecture. It is produced on a 16 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, and has a transistor count of 4.4 billion and a die size of 200 mm².