Nvidia unveils the GTX 1060

[Gfted1]

Faster than a GTX 980 for $250.

[Bartimaeus]

Nice.

 

...Although, I've actually seen 980s for a little sub-300 recently...but still.

Edited July 7, 2016 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

May have to upgrade.

[Humanoid]

It's very good that they didn't try to force a 3GB card onto that price point - at the $250 it seems a good deal, especially considering how much of a bad deal the GTX960 was. AMD will have to hope that their custom 480s can clock high enough to match it, since they won't be able to release anything faster until around the end of the year at the earliest. (We know that an overclocked 480 can reach 980 stock speeds, but the area of real interest is the actual ceiling vs ceiling performance)

 

Question is, I suppose, when it'll actually be available for that $250 price point, given that the GTX1070 hasn't dropped to it's supposed $379 MSRP yet. This whole FE pricing thing is annoying at any level, but is at least vaguely understandable for low-supply, high-demand high-end cards. For mid-range cards, it seems pretty ridiculous.

[Gorgon]

What's FE  pricing ?

[Zoraptor]

"Founder's Edition". Basically a badge for not being patient and paying over the odds as an early adapter.

 

1060 looks like it's a spoiler card for the 480 more than anything else. Can't see it having wide availability at its stated price point either.

[Gorgon]

More like 'sucker's edition' then.

[Spider]

According to Nvidia they're having a higher price point on their own cards so they're not competing with their partners cards. So intentionally overpriced to drive partner sales. But in reality, yeah it's a sucker's fee.

[teknoman2]

the first leaked benchmarks put it under the RX 480 in performance.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9202637/fs/9188962#

still, if the 1080 and 1070 are any indication, the amount of 1060s available for sale when the launch day comes will be 1 for every 100 interested buyers at best.

[Bartimaeus]

Hm, that's not exactly fantastic for a more expensive card. Actual game benchmarks will be more useful, plus maybe they still need to do a driver update for it - we'll know in the coming weeks.

[Humanoid]

The 960 still sold like hotcakes despite being an objectively poor deal on the price-performance front. Even assuming those numbers are representative of final performance, it's still more competitive than its predecessor ever was, and that combined with brand loyalty suggests to me that it'll probably sell very well regardless. That is, assuming the $249 MSRP isn't a flat out lie.

[teknoman2]

The 960 still sold like hotcakes despite being an objectively poor deal on the price-performance front. Even assuming those numbers are representative of final performance, it's still more competitive than its predecessor ever was, and that combined with brand loyalty suggests to me that it'll probably sell very well regardless. That is, assuming the $249 MSRP isn't a flat out lie.

and assuming it's not another paper launch

[Deadly_Nightshade]

the first leaked benchmarks put it under the RX 480 in performance.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9202637/fs/9188962#

still, if the 1080 and 1070 are any indication, the amount of 1060s available for sale when the launch day comes will be 1 for every 100 interested buyers at best.

 

Huh, because the review I saw from LinusTechTips had it over the RX 480 in every category except Hitman (a very AMD optimized game).   

Although the RX 480 is still beating it handily when it comes to price-for-performance assuming that the overdraw issue is fixed.

[Humanoid]

It depends on the benchmark suite each reviewer uses, and paying attention to the selection of titles each uses is instructive. The biggest red flag would probably be using OpenGL Doom, considering both vendors get a boost from Vulkan. Objectively there's no reason to benchmark either card in OpenGL, except to introduce deliberate bias.

 

That said, the overall consensus is fairly close to the mark, the 1060 is about 5-10% faster in DX11, but generally slower in DX12/Vulkan. It's close enough in terms of both absolute price and absolute performance that anyone who buys either because of brand loyalty isn't being ripped off.

 

One thing to keep an eye on is that the custom 1060 models don't seem to get much of a boost over reference at all, whereas custom 480s are looking a decent improvement over the poor reference cards. On the other hand, custom 1060s aren't carrying a price premium over reference, while custom 480s are, to the point where the prices will probably end up the same. So the best advice would be to look for the head-to-head custom vs custom benchmarks and proceed from there. Wouldn't be surprised if the DX11 gap disappears, which would be fair enough if the cards were priced the same.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

That makes sense, they also used a reference RX 480 because they figured that having a custom one might skew results some.

[teknoman2]

 

the first leaked benchmarks put it under the RX 480 in performance.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/9202637/fs/9188962#

still, if the 1080 and 1070 are any indication, the amount of 1060s available for sale when the launch day comes will be 1 for every 100 interested buyers at best.

 

Huh, because the review I saw from LinusTechTips had it over the RX 480 in every category except Hitman (a very AMD optimized game). 

Although the RX 480 is still beating it handily when it comes to price-for-performance assuming that the overdraw issue is fixed.

 

i haven't seen that review but did they have DOOM there? and if yes, was it on open gl or vulcan? because on DOOM open gl the 1060 is about 20% faster than the 480 but on vulcan it's the other way around

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Here's the link.

 

But they used Star Wars: Battlefront, Rise of Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Crysis 3 for the main benchmarks (some running DX 11, others DX 12, and I'm not sure about Vulkan off the top of my head).

[Humanoid]

Hmm, that's really weird actually. The 1060 is losing a fair bit of performance running under Vulkan, which makes no sense as the 1070 and 1080 are both faster under Vulkan than OGL. Unless it's something to do with the memory bandwidth, you'd imagine it'd be something that'll be fixed in time.
 
Aside, Asus custom 480 is out, but it's likely not going to be one of the better custom versions because Asus, no doubt as a cost-cutting measure, use essentially the same cooler for their AMD cards as they do for their nVidia cards, leading to poor contact. Sapphire is launching later today I believe, and presumably will do a better job since they only produce AMD cards.
 
 
And for a bit of comic relief, here's a snippet from PowerColor's press release announcing their custom model:

 

With its restless desire to rule the universe without seeing any light; Devil 13, the ruler of the underworld, created a new Devil to rise from the underworld and master all creatures.
Red Devil as he was named , known to be the only Devil besides his creator to master all elements of the Hexagon. Controlling Fire, Lightning, Air, Magic Energy, Dark Soul, and Mirage, its presence was feared by all corners of the new world.
Ever since, no one dared to challenge Devil’s true gaming empire.

[Blarghagh]

Looking for more comparisons between 1060s and the 480s, since I'm going to be purchasing one of the two.

[kirottu]

Looking for more comparisons between 1060s and the 480s, since I'm going to be purchasing one of the two.

Here you go. It is a Sapphire 480 4gb review, but they do test it against 1060(reference model) among other cards.

[Humanoid]

Worth noting that the 4GB cards, out of the box, have a lower memory speed than the 8GB variants. Given that the actual memory chips are identical, you'll be able to easily overclock them to the same stock speeds as the 8GB cards at the very least. Most reviews will not be doing so however, so you can add a few percent onto the benchmark scores for a more accurate representation of likely performance.

[Gizmo]

... and that combined with brand loyalty suggests to me that it'll probably sell very well regardless.

I used to be staunchly in the ATI camp, because of the better DVD playback at the time, but I had to switch to Nvidia because of its performance boost in Blender; and I've never had the incentive to switch back ~yet.  So it's always going to be Nvidia for me until the Blender situation changes ~if it ever does. 

[Gorgon]

LED mode on/off is listed as a 'feature'.  When are they going to start listing 'no LED nonsense' as a feature ?

 

LEDs are like ketchup, you can put it on anything, and sometimes you definitely shouldn't.

[Bartimaeus]

Well, personally, I would instead say something more like, "LEDs are like ketchup, you shouldn't be putting it on anything you actually like."

[teknoman2]

 

... and that combined with brand loyalty suggests to me that it'll probably sell very well regardless.

I used to be staunchly in the ATI camp, because of the better DVD playback at the time, but I had to switch to Nvidia because of its performance boost in Blender; and I've never had the incentive to switch back ~yet.  So it's always going to be Nvidia for me until the Blender situation changes ~if it ever does. 

 

the main problem with the performance of AMD cards and CPUs is that they are locked into a contract with Global Foundries for their silicon. if they could get it from TSMC like nVidia does, they could clock the cores to the same speeds and combined with all the innovations they have crammed in there, they could be way ahead