The ASUS GTX 1060 STRIX OC is the highest-clocked GTX 1060 graphics card we have tested so far. Out of the box, it boosts up to 2025 MHz, which gives it a 6% performance advantage over the GTX 1060 6 GB reference design. Compared to the AMD RX 480, the difference is 11%, and the GTX 980 is 3% behind. The more expensive GTX 1070 has a 30% lead. It's good to see that ASUS has overclocked the memory chips too, something that's missing from most other custom-design cards.

ASUS is using the same thermal solution on this GTX 1060 as on their GTX 1080 STRIX, which means the cooler has tons of cooling potential for a card that emits much less heat. Temperatures are excellent with only 64°C during heavy gaming. Noise levels are OK with 32 dBA; other cards, like the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming, do much better here. Given the low temperatures, it would have been better of ASUS to reduce fan speed a bit more for 30 dBA, which would have increased temperatures only marginally since the card would have definitely still stayed below 70°C. Idle fan noise is excellent since the card turns off its fans in idle and light gaming.

Like other recent ASUS cards, the GTX 1060 STRIX includes RGB lighting, even though it lacks the backlit ASUS STRIX logo found on the backplate of the ASUS RX 480 STRIX; the inclusion of a backplate is always nice, though. Just like on the GTX 1080 STRIX, ASUS has also replaced one of the three DP outputs of the reference design with an HDMI port. This brings the number of HDMI outputs to two, which, according to ASUS, was done to let people connect a VR headset and a TV at the same time, or two VR headsets. Another feature we first saw on the GTX 1080 STRIX are the two fan headers, which can be used to run two case fans at the same speed as the graphics card's fans. They include the idle-fan-off feature too, which makes this a simple way to reduce your system's noise output - case fans stopped while not gaming and overall heat output is low. Once you start gaming and the graphics card starts putting out heat, the case fans will start turning as well to ensure hot air is pushed out of your case; I like it.

Just like on all Pascal cards, power efficiency is amazing, with huge improvements over the Maxwell architecture that is already highly efficient in the first place. ASUS's card only uses slightly more power than the reference design, which is mostly offset by higher performance out of the box, resulting in a 5% decrease in performance per watt. ASUS chose to replace the 6-pin power input of the reference design with an 8-pin, something you will never make use of because the board's power limit is set to around 125 W only, so to me, the 8-pin is mostly for show to reassure potential buyers that this card will be fine for everything you throw at it, including overclocking. A higher board power limit could have helped increase out-of-the-box performance by allowing NVIDIA Boost to boost higher for longer because there is more power headroom to do so.

With a price of $330, the ASUS GTX 1060 STRIX OC 6 GB is way too expensive. The GTX 1060 6 GB starts at $250 with cards from ZOTAC and Gigabyte, for example, which include overclocks and decent coolers also. I see no reason with which ASUS could justify this enormous price increase of $80, or 30%. If you are in the market for a GTX 1060, it's probably because you don't have a lot of money to burn, so an affordable card is a must. Should you have well above $300 to spend, save up a bit more to afford a GTX 1070, which comes with much higher performance, more memory, and SLI support. However, ASUS's card could definitely become a viable option if ASUS manages to reduce its price to $280, which would bring it in line with such offers as the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X.