The AMD Polaris RX 480 arrived a week ago as a 4GB or 8GB 150W card on 14nm FinFET that more or less matched the GTX 970 OC/R9 390 performance for $199 or $239, depending on its vRAM capacity. We found that the reference version lacked a proper cooler for overclocking, and the 6-pin PCIe connector also held it back, so we are looking forward to AMD’s partner cards.
Now it’s Nvidia’s turn to unveil their response as the GTX 1060 6GB starting at $249 which will also be available as their reference Founder’s Edition for $299, and also including custom boards starting July 19 from Nvidia’s add-in card partners. These include ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Gainward, GALAX, Gigabyte, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac.
Nvidia claims that the GTX 1060 will be on average 15 percent faster and over 75 percent more power efficient than their competitor’s card. Manufactured on TSMC’s FinFET 16nm process, the GTX 1060 is said to deliver GTX 980-level performance and twice the energy efficiency in VR. It uses 120 watts of power for better than entry-level VR and also for DirectX 11/12 PC games.
While 1080 and 1070 are based on the same Pascal GPU (GP104), the GTX 1060 is built on a new GP106 GPU which allows Nvidia to target the same popular upper-midrange part of the market as the RX 480. The GTX 1060 features 1,280 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8Gbps, and a boost clock of 1.7GHz. Unlike the reference RX 480 which is a poor overclocker because of its reference cooler and single 6-pin power connector and 150W power draw, Nvidia says the GTX 1060 can be easily overclocked to 2GHz.
Like the other two Pascal cards, the GTX 1060 includes support for NVIDIA Simultaneous Multi-Projection technology, which allows the GTX 1060 to seamlessly project a single image simultaneously to both eyes, yielding a 3x VR graphics performance improvement over Maxwell GPUs. This allows GTX 1060 users to play VR games with higher levels of detail. Simultaneous Multi-Projection is being integrated into Unreal Engine and Unity, and there are more than 30 games are already in development, including Unreal Tournament, Poolnation VR, Everest VR, Obduction,Adr1ft and Raw Data.
BTR has received the reference GeForce GTX 1060 Founder’s Edition board which is designed and built by Nvidia and will also be available starting July 19 for $299 at www.nvidia.com only. We expect to have a full performance review up on that day.
The GeForce GTX 1060 Founder’s Edition is crafted with premium materials and components, including a faceted die-cast aluminum body, and a thermal solution designed to run cool and quiet. Like the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 Founders Edition boards, a dual-FETs power supply is used to improve power efficiency, along with a low impedance power delivery network and custom voltage regulators.
Unlike the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1070, the GTX 1060 lacks a complete backplate.
Unlike the GTX 1080 and the GTX 1070 which use a single 8-pin PCIe connector, the Founders Edition of the GTX 1060 uses a single 6-pin connector.
The connections are the same for all 3 Pascal cards.
Ansel will be Integrated into Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst and the Witcher 3 this Month
The GTX 1060 also supports Nvidia Ansel technology, a game-capture tool that allows gamers to explore and share gaming art in new ways. With Ansel, users can compose their gameplay shots by pointing the camera in any direction and from any vantage point within a gaming world, and then capture 360-degree stereo photospheres for viewing with a VR headset or with Google Cardboard.
Nvidia is today announcing the immediate availability of the first game to support Ansel, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, and Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, will be available later this month. More Ansel-supported games are in development, including Epic Games’ Fortnite, Paragon and Unreal Tournament; Cyan Worlds’ Obduction; Thekla’s The Witness; Boss Key Productions’ Lawbreakers; Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division; and No Man’s Sky from Hello Games.
VR Funhouse Available in July on Steam Adds GTX 1060 support
Nvidia VR Funhouse – the company’s VR carnival game – will be available for free later this month from Valve’s Steam digital distribution service. Developed on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4, VR Funhouse will work on GTX 1080, 1070 and 1060 GPUs with HTC Vive VR headsets. It will also be open sourced to developers and artists so they can create their own VR Funhouse attractions.
It looks like July will be a very interesting month as by the 19th, we will bring a full performance review of the Founders Edition of the GTX 1060, and we hope to be able to also compare it with aftermarket versions of the RX 480. Stay tuned to BTR! We are going to have a GTX 1060 related contest which we will announce later on today.
Happy Gaming!
Mark Poppin
BTR Editor-in-Chief