Truth be told, the majority of gamers do not need an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. You may want it, but “want” is not “need”. The GeForce GTX 1060 has far more mass appeal, at a much more palatable price. Here are the few custom cards that stretch the dollar to performance ratio.
Truth be told, the majority of gamers do not need an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. You may want it, but “want” is not “need”. The GeForce GTX 1060 has far more mass appeal, at a much more palatable price. Here are the few custom cards that stretch the dollar to performance ratio.
ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE GTX 1060 OC
The design of the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1060 OC hews close to that of other Pascal-based ASUS ROG Strix cards. This means a stealthy, all-black cooling shroud that can look almost boring.
We say look, because the card actually comes alive once you plug it in, with LED lights on the cooling shroud and on its side. These are part of the ASUS Aura RGB feature set, and can be customized using the Aura utility.
The ASUS card boasts the highest factory overclocks among all the cards in this shootout, with a base clock of 1,645MHz and boost clock of 1,873MHz in OC mode. To deal with the faster speeds, ASUS has gone with its DirectCU III cooling solution with triple wingblade fans.
We set the fans to work at full speed to see how noisy they could get, and while they do get fairly audible, the tone was less annoying than the Gigabyte at maximum speed.
There are a total of five direct contact heatpipes between the GPU baseplate and the heatsink. This means that the card has a decent degree of passive cooling capabilities to fall back on before switching to active cooling, which allows the semi-passive fans to remain idle for longer.
The PCB also utilizes a 6+1 phase power design, an upgrade from the original 3+1 phase power delivery system on the Founders Edition card.
Another standout feature is the ASUS FanConnect technology, which takes the form of two 4-pin fan headers located at the end of the card. ASUS is currently the only brand to offer this feature, and it allows you to connect two chassis fans to the GPU and peg them to the GPU’s temperature instead of the CPU. This is a neat idea – it makes sense as GPUs are usually the single largest source of heat in any chassis, even if there isn’t exactly a pressing need for it.
+ Strong performance and good cooling.
- Rather expensive for its target audience.
AT A GLANCE GPU
The translucent strips on the cooling shroud light up when the card is plugged in.
ASUS has replaced one of the DisplayPort connectors with an additional HDMI port.
The two 4-pin FanConnect headers are located at the end of the card.
GIGABYTE GEFORCE GTX 1060 G1 GAMING
We actually like the look of the Gigabyte card the most. With a black shroud and bright orange accents, the card manages to ooze gamer cred while still being quite tasteful.
It can go as high as a 1,620MHz base clock and 1,847MHz boost clock in OC mode, but there’s a lower clocked Gaming mode with a 1,594MHz base clock and 1,809MHz boost clock if you prefer slightly quieter operation.
The WindForce 2X cooler comprises two 90mm fans that spin in alternate directions. According to Gigabyte, this reduces air turbulence and helps dissipate heat more effectively. Each fan also has Gigabyte’s signature ridged design, complete with more pronounced fan edges, that Gigabyte says helps to boost airflow. When set to work at 100 per cent, the fans can really get quite loud, and also slightly more grating on the ears than the ASUS.
However, compared to the WindForce 3X cooler on the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 G1 Gaming, the WindForce 2X has scaled back on certain elements of the cooling apparatus. For instance, while the latter features three pure copper composite heatpipes, the dual-fan cooler has just two direct contact heatpipes (flattened to maximize contact area) to draw heat away from the GPU.
The smaller size of the GP104 versus the GP106 die – 200mm² as opposed to 314mm² – means that too many direct contact heatpipes can sometimes be redundant as there are only so many that can touch the smaller GPU directly. (This is actually part of the reason why MSI ditched direct contact heatpipes in favor of a GPU contact plate on its own 1060).
The card uses a 6+1 phase power delivery system, the same as the ASUS card, which once again is plenty for the GeForce GTX 1060. In addition, Gigabyte has swapped out the regular 6-pin PCIe connector for an 8-pin. This raises the power ceiling for the card, and should provide just that bit more of overclocking headroom.
+ Cheaper than most competitors.
- Fans can get quite noisy at full speed.
AT A GLANCE GPU
TRANSISTOR COUNT 4.4 billion
CORE CLOCK 1,620MHz (OC mode)
MEMORY 6GB GDDR5
MEMORY CLOCK 8,008MHz (OC mode)
PRICE $495
The card comes with a full-length metal backplate for extra support.
The fans feature ridges and triangular edges to improve air flow.
The Fan Stop LED indicator lights up when the fans are idling.
MSI GEFORCE GTX 1060 GAMING X 6G
At first glance, the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G strikes you as a card that has a lot of girth to it. At 140mm wide, it is the broadest card of the lot, although the ASUS card isn’t far behind at 134mm.
This probably won’t be an issue unless you own the most narrow of PC cases, but it’s nonetheless something to take note of.
The card ships in Gaming mode, but you can boost it up to a 1,594MHz base clock and 1,809MHz boost clock in OC mode. That’s a little on the low side compared to some of the other cards, but you should also bear in mind that clock speeds aren’t the be-all and end-all of performance.
The two 100mm fans on MSI’s Twin Frozr VI cooler are larger than the 90mm ones on Gigabyte’s dual-fan cooler as well, effectively covering a larger area on the underlying heatsink. The Torx 2.0 fans are upgraded versions of the older Torx fans found on previous generation cards, featuring an alternating blade design that helps to increase air flow while channeling it over the heatsink.
The heatsink itself relies on three heatpipes – one 8mm and two 6mm – to channel heat away from the GPU. These do not make direct contact with the GPU, relying instead on a GPU contact plate that transfers heat to them. Still, they have been squared off at the bottom to maximize the surface area in contact with the heatpipes and improve the efficiency of heat transfer.
The Twin Frozr VI cooler was also the quietest of the lot with the fans set to maximum, so it looks like MSI is doing something right with the larger Torx 2.0 fans and dual-fan configuration that helps keep noise to a minimum.
In addition, it employs a 5+1 phase power design, which is more than enough for the 120 watt card. To further boost the card’s overclocking potential, MSI has also installed an 8-pin PCIe connector in place of the 6-pin one.
+ Very quiet operation even at maximum fan speeds.
- Wider than most other cards.
AT A GLANCE GPU
TRANSISTOR COUNT 4.4 billion
CORE CLOCK 1,594MHz (OC mode)
MEMORY 6GB GDDR5
MEMORY CLOCK 8,108MHz (OC mode)
PRICE $529
The large 100mm fans cover almost the entirety of the heatsink.
The backlit MSI logo can be customized independent of the lighting on the cooling shroud.
The card features an 8-pin PCIe connector for power.
A SMALLER PASCAL GPU
The GP106 GPU that underpins the GeForce GTX 1060 isn’t the same as the GP104 chip found on the more powerful Pascal cards. While it supports the same features like Simultaneous Multi-Projection, GPU Boost 3.0 and Fast Sync, it is considerably smaller, with an area of just 200mm² versus GP104’s 314mm².
It has just two Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), and a total of 10 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs). But as on the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080, each SM contains 128 CUDA cores, so the card has a total of 1,280 CUDA cores, about 33 percent fewer than the 1,920 cores on the GeForce GTX 1070. Each SM also comprises eight texture units, for a total of 80 on the GeForce GTX 1060.
In addition, the GP106 die features six 32-bit memory controllers, which gives the card a 192-bit memory bus width. Eight ROPs are also tied to each memory controller, so you’ll find 48 ROPs altogether on board.
3DMARK (2013)
(Higher is Better)
We weren’t surprised to see the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1060 OC take the lead here, given that it had the highest factory overclock out of all the cards. But while the difference in clock speeds between the highest and lowest clocked card — namely, the ASUS and MSI models — is 51MHz, this didn’t result in too wide a gulf between the cards. At the most, there was a small 2 per cent performance differential between the two in the synthetic 3DMark benchmarks.
OVERCLOCKING
(Higher is Better)
We were able to squeeze out the highest clock speeds from the ASUS card and the best results, achieving a high of a 1,780MHz base clock. We were able to boost the effective memory clock to a high of 8,408MHz as well. This netted us just under a 3 per cent increase in performance in 3DMark Fire Strike, which renders at 1080p. However, the improvement was less pronounced in the more demanding 1440p and 4K Fire Strike Extreme and Ultra tests.
TEMPERATURE
(Lower is Better)
After looping 3DMark Fire Strike for 15 minutes, the ASUS card recorded a peak temperature of 61 degrees Celsius, the lowest among the three cards. We’re used to MSI cards being the coolest in our temperature tests, so it’s nice to see ASUS show that it can be competitive in this area as well. ASUS has reused the cooler from its ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1070, and that move is clearly paying off here.
