Nvidia is on a roll and many cards have been launched from the company’s stable lately. While the latest GTX 1050/1050i is making some news for the company, the Geforce GTX 1060 has been doing quite well from some time. So to get you guys an overview of the 1060 board we called for the card and put it to a general test. We received the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders’ edition and here is what we feel about it.
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We pulled the cover right of the base and it revealed the GTX 1060. The box just had the graphic card inside and no cables or documents inside. The card has a similar construction as its GTX 10 series siblings. In the Geforce range, the GTX 1060 sits between the 1070 and the recently launched 1050/1050 Ti; this is in regards with the price, but in terms of performance the positioning changes quite a bit. Custom boards are available from Nvidia GeForce Partners like Zotac, MSI, and Gigabyte and start from about INR 21,000. Our review unit was the Founders Edition so we can expect it to be priced tad higher than the others boards.
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So before we get to the performance let’s see what the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is made out of-
Specifications:
| GeForce GTX 1060 | 6 GB | 3 GB |
| GPU Engine Specs | ||
| NVIDIA CUDA Cores | 1280 | 1152 |
| Base Clock (MHz) | 1506 | 1506 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 1708 | 1708 |
| Memory Specs | ||
| Memory Speed | 8 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Standard Memory Config | 6 GB GDDR5 | 3 GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Interface Width | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec) | 192 | 192 |
| Technology Support | ||
| Simultaneous Multi-Projection | Yes | Yes |
| VR Ready | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA Ansel | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA SLI Ready | No | No |
| NVIDIA G-SYNC-Ready | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA GameStream-Ready | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA GPU Boost | 3.0 | 3.0 |
| Microsoft DirectX | 12 API with feature level 12_1 | 12 API with feature level 12_1 |
| Vulkan API | Yes | Yes |
| OpenGL | 4.5 | 4.5 |
| Bus Support | PCIe 3.0 | PCIe 3.0 |
| OS Certification | Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86 | Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86 |
| Display Support | ||
| Maximum Digital Resolution | 7680×4320@60Hz | 7680×4320@60Hz |
| Standard Display Connectors | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI | DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI |
| Multi Monitor | Yes | Yes |
| HDCP | 2.2 | 2.2 |
| Graphics Card Dimensions | ||
| Height | 4.378″ | 4.378″ |
| Length | 9.823″ | 9.823″ |
| Width | 2-Slot | 2-Slot |
| Thermal and Power Specs | ||
| Maximum GPU Temperature (in C) | 94 | 94 |
| Graphics Card Power (W) | 120 W | 120 W |
| Recommended System Power (W) | 400 W | 400 W |
| Supplementary Power Connectors | 6-Pin | 6-Pin |
Speaking of the specifications, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 benefits from 1280 CUDA cores that is 512 cores more than the 1050 Ti and 640 less than the GTX 1070. But clock speed is where the GTX 1060 attempts to bridge the gap; with a base clock speed of 1506 Mhz, the GTX 1070 can be clocked to 1683 where as the 1060 can do 1708. This boost clock speed of the 1060 is just a tad lesser than the GTX 1080. So, with a power consumption of just 120W the GTX 1060 can deliver performace that is at par with its elder siblings that need 150W to 180 W.
This card makes use of 6 GB GDDR5 RAM clocked at a speed of 8.0 Gbps. You can connect the GeForce GTX 1060 to your workstation via Dual Link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, and Display port 1.2. One of the very first things, we noticed is that the GTX 1060 does not support Scalable Link Interface, that means no linking of two or more video cards together to produce a single output. Some hardcore gamers would find this as a big turn off but it is recommended to use a single GPU for a PC for a smooth performance experience.
Speaking of the performance, the Geforce GTX 1060 is quite a performer and can easily give sleepless nights to its AMD counterparts that sell for a similar price especially the RX 470 and 480. With the help of the new performance oriented Pascal GPU architecture, the 1060 is able to provide a decent performance as compared to the ones with the previous Maxwell architecture. The GTX 1060s is good for a gameplay of QHD resolution but recommended for FullHD resolution as the performance on this downsized resolution is better.
The texture levels and overall visual experience is decent but substantially higher than the 3GB variant. Interestingly, the visual effects of the GTX 1060 can be tweaked like on the higher GTX 1070. The 1060 also gets the Turbo boost 3.0 as the 1070 helping the GTX 1060 to achieve a higher number than the official Boost clock of 1708 MHz. Big thumbs up to the VR readiness of the card. G-Sync tech helps achieve a smooth display by synchronizing display refresh rates to the GPU in the device it is installed on. The GTX 1060 also delivers a decent watts-per-frame count.
The GTX 1060 is the youngest of the 10 series GPUs but tries hard to provide a performance at par with its elder siblings of the same series. For its price it does give you a power efficient performance without consuming a lot of energy. The custom boards made by Nvidia partners, including Asus, MSI, Zotac andEVGA, are priced between INR 15k and 25k with the EVGA board being the expensive of the lot. So if you looking to buy a card for the first time, the GTX 1060 will be a smart choice but if you are looking for an upgrade from a tad lesser performing card then you should definitely wait. Having said that, if you are using anything that sits in your PC wit 4GB of RAM or lesser then you can consider the GTX 1060. Well there is a downer, gamers planning to buy an auxiliary card for their PC’s GPU then you can’t, as we mentioned earlier – No SLI.
Here is an image gallery of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founder’s Edition Graphic Card, click to expand!
