Performance for the masses

Nvidia geforce gtx 1060 By Koh Wanzi

byKoh Wanzi SEPTEMBER 2016

Nvidia geforce gtx 1060 By koh wanzi

With the GeForce GTX 1060, NVIDIA has completed the core of its Pascal line-up, which means it effectively has a card to appeal to three different market segments. And just as how its bigger brothers offer unprecedented power at their respective price points, so does the GeForce GTX 1060. This may be NVIDIA’s mainstream, but its performance is anything but.

The card retains all the key features of the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080, like the Simultaneous Multi- Projection (SMP) unit. It supports GPU Boost 3.0 and Fast Sync as well – GPU Boost 3.0 enables custom per-voltage frequency off sets to maximize a card’s potential while Fast Sync helps create a smoother and lower latency experience in less demanding titles like League of Legends.

It is also based on the same 16nm FinFET process as the more heavy-hitting cards, which means it benefits from significantly improved power efficiency as well. This is a 120 watt TDP card, the same as the GeForce GTX 960 that came before it, but with far better performance.

Unlike its Pascal siblings, it is based on a new GP106 GPU. The card itself uses the same faceted design and blower fan on the earlier Founders Edition cards, but it is missing a full-length backplate and has its PCB exposed. Still, the die cast aluminum body is of very high quality, and there’s little to complain about.

NVIDIA is claiming GeForce GTX 980 levels of performance on this card; our tests showed that it came close to, but falls short of factory overclocked cards like the MSI GeForce GTX 980 Gaming 4G. In a new title like Hitman, it managed 59.32fps at a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels and Ultra settings in DirectX 12 mode.

That’s fairly impressive, and this is one of the first mainstream cards to be truly capable of performing beyond 1080p. Of course, the card’s direct competitor, the AMD Radeon RX 480, is actually able to edge it out in certain titles.

If there’s one downside, it’s that the card doesn’t support SLI at all. Still, this isn’t so much a drawback as a footnote – if you really wanted more power, you could get a GeForce GTX 1070 instead for less.