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.
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Leozn01 - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
Why do you guys no longer include Sony Vegas Pro in your GPU reviews?Tech-Curious - Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - link
I've been watching the RX 480 and GTX 1060 on Newegg since about two days after the former's launch. In that time, I have seen the reference 8gb 480 flash in and out of stock 2-3 times.The only 480 that was consistently available was priced waaay over the MSRP (@ $300+, the one I can find right now is at $400). 4GB models, as far as I can tell, have been nonexistent. Most importantly for me, there has been no hint of an AiB-partner board available at a decent price.
By contrast, I've seen 1060s flash in and out of stock several times in the comparatively shorter period since the 1060 launch, many of them in the $250-260 range.
The kicker was when the 470 launched and all of a sudden there were a small army of overpriced third-party 470s occupying the market segment that 480's MSRP was supposed to cover.
So, reluctantly, I snapped up a $250 1060 to replace my aging 7850. I really wanted to buy an AMD card; I had been waiting for Polaris to launch for months -- but when you combine the 480's higher power consumption, its bad reference cooler, the initial PCI-power-delivery controversy, and the lack of stock/options for what has to be at least a month now, this is what happens.
Ryan's correct; neither company's exactly in a great spot with stock, but from a cheap seats it sure seems that nVidia executed better than AMD in the short term. Pity.
m16 - Sunday, August 14, 2016 - link
I personally love blower cards. They're the best for SLI in smaller cases, but here the only good thing about them is being able to put them in small cases to begin with because there's no SLI connector.Bummer, but I bet the cards are still flying off the shelves.
Gastec - Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - link
Are you joking me? A 215% increrase in performance over GTX 960 (in Rise of the Planet of the Tomb Raider Apes) !!! Something is fishy, I can't see the performance difference in the specs. A 50-55% increase OK,but more...smelly fishy fish.Dorothycar - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
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