The GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition & ASUS Strix GTX 1060 Review
by Ryan Smith on August 5, 2016 2:00 PM ESTAshes of the Singularity
Sorely missing from our benchmark suite for quite some time have been RTSes, which don’t enjoy quite the popularity they once did. As a result Ashes holds a special place in our hearts, and that’s before we talk about the technical aspects. Based on developer Oxide Games’ Nitrous Engine, Ashes has been designed from the ground up for low-level APIs like DirectX 12. As a result of all of the games in our benchmark suite, this is the game making the best use of DirectX 12’s various features, from asynchronous compute to multi-threaded work submission and high batch counts. What we see can’t be extrapolated to all DirectX 12 games, but it gives us a very interesting look at what we might expect in the future.
Ashes is a game that in our GTX 1080 review we found AMD does rather well in, with their last generation cards still challenging GTX 1070 at times. So I was surprised to see GTX 1060 and RX 480 so close here. At 1440p GTX 1060 trails by just a couple of percent, and at 1080p it’s a dead heat. Given that of all of the games in our current benchmark suite this is the game that AMD seems to do the best on, it’s notable that GTX 1060 can keep up with AMD’s card even when it’s on the backfoot. Given that NVIDIA is charging a slight price premium for the GTX 1060, it’s helpful for NVIDIA that the card never falters against its slightly cheaper competitor. That said there is also the spoiler effect of the cheaper 4GB RX 480, but that’s a slightly more complex matter for the conclusion of this article.
Meanwhile on a generational basis, GTX 1060 continues to deliver GTX 980-like performance. Or against the GTX 960, we’re looking at a considerable 74% performance improvement. GTX 1060 is even fast enough to do better than 30fps at 1440p with the Extreme settings, which for an RTS is perfectly playable. However GTX 1070 still has a significant lead over the GTX 1060 here.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
189 Comments
View All Comments
DominionSeraph - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Aw, look at the fanboy complain that it isn't "fair" because they didn't only present AMD's strengths and Nvidia's weaknesses, but instead used tests representative of the gaming landscape.beck2050 - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Nvidia has driver teams as well. Plus 22% with the latest Dx12 Hitman. 1060 will compete very well. Cooler faster less energy, and priced accordingly.eddman - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
So much misinformation still going around. Gameworks effects are either CPU only, which have ZERO effect on the GPU, no matter the brand, like waveworks in just casue 3, or are GPU based, which can be DISABLED, like witcher 3's hairworks or HBAO+, or RotTR's HBAO+ and VXAO.Ryan Smith - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
The benchmark suite was finalized back in May, when the DX12 version of Tomb Raider was rubbish. I talk a bit more about this in another comment, but basically we only periodically update the benchmark suite due to the amount of work involved and the need to maintain a consistent dataset for Bench. The plan is to do another update in September.Colin1497 - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
I understood that situation. Last thing you needed was to change the games when you were running behind. Just commenting on the change in the landscape over 2 months. Doom and Vulcan is obviously another thing. Looking forward to what you do next.Simplex - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
It's "Vulkan", not "Vulcan".MarkieGcolor - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Please include 4k, and crossfire/sli setups in your benchmarks. Otherwise I do not care about this late review.xenol - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
4K seems kind of pointless, we all know it's going to be sub 40FPS which few people are going to recommend this card for 4K gaming.Also what's the point of SLI on a card that doesn't support it?
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
If 4K is pointless then so are most of the 2560 tests which use ultra settings and produce <60fps.4K with medium settings, no AA would be much more interesting to me.
MarkieGcolor - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
True. I'm just saying it would be interesting.I understand that if you want 1060 sli you should just buy 1080, but I feel Nvidia disabled sli to keep the second hand market at bay and sell more new expensive cards.