NVIDIA GTX 1060 in 2021 Revisit: Benchmarks vs. 2060, 3060, 6800, & More

today we're revisiting one of the most popular gpus of all time the gtx 1060 we're specifically looking at the six gigabyte model some of you might remember why that's funny and it's because nvidia couldn't stop releasing gtx 1060s there were at least five or six that we can remember there might be more no one knows they're out there in the ether somewhere but we're looking at the six gigabyte version of the 1060 today which was the first one that launched and it launched with an msrp of 250 dollars quite a change from today's rtx 3060s at 330 price point if you can find it before that this video is brought to you by squarespace squarespace is what we've been using for years to manage our own gamer's nexus store and we've been incredibly happy with the choice squarespace makes e-commerce easy for those interested in starting stores but it also has powerful tools to build all types of websites photo galleries for photographers resume and portfolio sites and small business sites are all easily done through squarespace having built a lot of client websites the old way before running gn full-time we can easily recommend squarespace as a powerful fast solution go to squarespace.com gamersnexus to get 10 off your first purchase with squarespace so the 1060 launch was sort of copied with the 1600 series launch where nvidia did they stopped themselves they figured it out they calmed down but but it started getting a little crazy there's the 1650 of course but the 1660 and the 1660 ti and the 1660 super started to make things confusing especially with as little as a couple percent difference between some of them the 1060s however came out originally in july of 2016. if you look at the steam chart it's still one of the most actually it's currently the most popular gpu used by steam's surveyed user base asterisk on the surveyed part so in july 2016 there was the 1066 gigabyte and then later the 1063 gigabyte in august of 2016 then the gtx 1060 five gigabyte in december of 2017 that one was weird but it was targeted at a specific market which was supposed to be internet cafes and gaming cafes and then the gtx 1066 gigabyte with g5x in october 2018 and somewhere in there there was a gtx 1069 gigabit per second model with some partners and of course there were the gtx 1060 mobile units there might be a couple others that we're forgetting but those are the main ones and video went a little crazy with this card but again if you look at the steam hardware survey a nine point five two percent utilization among steam surveyed users today is pretty good and in october that was at 10.9 percent it's been higher than that too and the gtx 1060 has been one of the most ever used gpus following in the footsteps of other 60 series cards previously if you look back at articles that were posted around launch the card originally sold for 250 it dropped later as most cards do and that's where we had more of an issue with the rtx 3060. like we said in the 3060 review our stance was basically met and it was meh because as we said in the review all you have to do right now is put literally any gpu on the market the specs don't matter it doesn't just you don't even need to publish specs just throw something out there put a heatsink on it put a price on it and poof it'll disappear so that's the magic of gpus today and that's why the 3060 can be sold so much higher price than the last known msrp of the 1060. and that's the critical point is it's not just about the launch msrp which by the way was lower it's also about the last known msrp which was lower a lot lower closer to 200 then of course you've got the 2060 in between these two where the 2060 its last msrp officially was 300 so still 30 cheaper than the modern 3060s but the difference at the time of the 1060 was that the founders edition was brand new in fact it was so new that a room full of press had to be over 100 people in the media there were utterly baffled by the name founders edition for no less than one hour we legitimately spent the entirety of the technical media and nvidia's executive team including jensen juan the ceo spent at least an hour talking about the name so founder's edition was new and at the time it was priced higher than the cards that were from partners and when we published a piece explaining this this it was such a hot topic that we had to post a content piece explaining the name of the card that's when you know you've made a mistake of course we don't have crazy names today from from well i intel until needs okay so maybe there's a few crazy names today but the gtx 1060 fe the reason it was confusing it was because people won the name was kind of stupid and normally it was reference and that was it and so then you get this new legendary edition card and it costs more and video was trying to position it as a fancy specially built card it was not technically limited edition but kind of and the end result was that if you look back at the msrp of the 1060 fe and any other 10 series fe card the msrp looks higher than it was in reality because that was the card that launched that was the price everyone reported even though later the board partners could come in sometimes 50 or 100 lower head-to-head the many gtx 1060 cards remained mostly within a couple percentage points of each other when we first tested them all and that was for performance even the nine gigabit per second models the memory capacity wasn't as much of an issue at the time and this means that the three gigabyte card was relegated to the it's fine pile as in it's okay or you might as well but now of course the three gigabyte model has trouble with some games horizon zero dawn throws errors if you're below a certain memory capacity normally three gigabytes uh red dead redemption two doesn't really like it once you're out of gtx 970 and below which is three and a half gigabytes sort of but it's not as bad as the two gigabyte gtx 960 where a lot of games just won't even launch or run at certain resolutions certain game settings or they'll if they do run they'll start altering the texture quality and the image quality so it's not even a like for like so we're just looking at the 1066 gigabyte it's the most popular from what we can tell the three gigabyte isn't far behind in most games for fps but that's because it falls behind one other aspect that returns a dna for a did not finish result and that is the ability to launch or run games in a like for like scenario because of the memory capacity reduction for mostly just the modern games enough of the history of the 1060 let's get into the benchmarks we'd like to start with gta for these gp revisits as we've said before it's because it's era appropriate the gtx 1060 came out about a year after gta 5 on pc which came out about two years after the console launch so it's a 2015 game for pc from 2013 on console and that means the 1060 should do better with this one than the other games we test 1080p testing has the gtx 1060 six gigabyte model at 92 fps average which is actually great performance that's not totally surprising given the age of the game but shows the card is still perfectly good for a lot of games out there there's nothing to feel bad about if you own a 1060 and are happy with its performance the gtx 1060 led the gtx 960 by 70 percent a massive uptick as a result of the architectural changes in pascal other high performers on the used market might include the gtx 980 ti or the gtx 1080 but you'd have to shop locally or get really lucky the rtx 2060 is improved over the 1060 but in this title it's not to a degree that's necessarily worth it it'd be more worthwhile for rtx gaming or features like dlss 1440p proves it's still playable on the gtx 1060. and that's great news it won't remain true in modern games but 60fps isn't bad performance the rtx 2060 provides much more value in these higher resolution scenarios as does the rtx 3060 it's not quite double the 1060's performance but it's approaching that and of course it's also a little bit more expensive and true msrp versus msrp ignoring all other factors gta 5 at 4k is rough so we'll keep it short the 1060 did 30 fps here and 6 gigabytes was more than enough memory and even 4 gigabytes on the 960 does okay here but you can see the choppy behavior on the gtx 962 gigabyte to get a better understanding of when and how vram limitations become problematic the real problem is just that the gpu core isn't enough to handle this workload with the closest capable card being the gtx 1080 or the rtx 2060 at a sub-optimal frame rate cyberpunk is the newest and most abusive gpu test we're currently running and given that it's tested on high settings for our standardized bench it's rough on the gtx 1060. the 1060 ended up at about 34 fps average landing just below the rx 580 and not far above the gtx 970 this is one where you'd probably want to upgrade settings could be dropped further but the game starts to look bad pretty fast we have graphics optimization guides on our channel if you require additional assistance in making some settings choices where you can sacrifice the least visual quality for the most fps game shadow the tomb raider is up now in this one the gtx 1066 gigabyte held 63 fps average with lows proportionally spaced at 55 and 54 for 1 0.1 percent that's good performance overall especially for the 1060 and it shows that it's still fully capable of a lot of modern games at 1080p 63 fps average has the card an impressive 68 ahead of the 964 gigabyte with the modern rtx 360 at about two times the performance of the 1060. that's enough to either move you into higher refresh gaming or to higher resolution gaming assuming you can find a 3060. if you're looking at a used gtx 1066 gigabyte it's still doing well here we didn't rerun the three gigabyte model but we recently ran three and a half gigabyte 970s and two gigabyte 960s through and the most common problem was that a good deal of modern games will either refuse to launch or will potentially silently tank image quality as a result of lower memory capacities like three gigabytes and below in particular for horizon zero dawn for example at 1440p the gtx 1060 falls down the chart it's still mostly playable but in more intense parts of this game it'll start exhibiting choppy playback you could drop the settings from our high test settings to balance this but usually it's easier to just drop the resolution instead the gtx 1080 shows that it still offers good value here while the rtx 2060 would provide meaningful uplift and get you into playable territory for many games at 1440p and a couple at 4k more modern cards if found would get you about a two times increase in fps at the 30 60 level while a used 5700 xt would also offer meaningful uplift unfortunately the current mining market doesn't make the 5700xt a common find the 1060 is still doing well overall and if you can find one used locally it might be a good option but only if the pricing supports it the global market is rough for the gtx 1060 if you're looking at ebay or something forget about it we unfortunately saw one go for over 900 on ebay with the majority of them from a quick glance still selling that around the original 300 msrp from 2016 except in 2021 shopping your local listings or markets would be the best bet maybe you'll find someone who isn't going to rip you off rainbow six siege is an easy title to run today that's popular the gtx 1060 still runs at 151 fps average at 1080p here so if you're playing games more like rainbow six like league or fortnight this card can even hit high refresh targets of 1080p monitors the gtx 1080 end up would be a good upgrade pathway in a sense but again that's if you can find one that said an upgrade isn't explicitly needed unless you're seeking an even higher refresh rate or higher performance in other games at 1440p the gtx 1060 still holds on at 93fps average this is objectively good performance but it's weak in a relative sense when compared against just this title if you're targeting 144fps average a dtx 1080 or better would be a decent option at 1080p red dead redemption 2 has the gtx 1060 at 43 fps average while running our custom higher settings this is a challenge for the 1060 but a settings reduction would make it playable not great but playable the options don't get good until the gtx 1080 and up and that only be worth it in a normal market and at a normal used price the rtx 2060 isn't far from that level of performance although the rtx 3060 offers a larger jump from among the new cards we're looking at about a 111 percent uplift in the 3060 versus the 1060 which is maybe why some people see the 3060 as great value but against the rest of the cards on the modern market like we said in our review we think it's positioned somewhat greedily since nvidia knows it can sell any gpu right now 1440p went about as well as you'd expect the gtx 1060 ended up in unplayable territory you'd jump to at least a 2060 for some baseline level of quality at 1440p but the holding value of the 2060 won't be as future looking as a 5700 xt or an rtx 3060. horizon zero dawn is up next this one had the gtx 1060 in playable territory at 1080p and it actually did well enough to hold 60fps average with consistent frame times and lows overall if you're still running a 1060 or if you're looking at a used one it may be good enough for a little while yet primary upgrade options remain the same as previously mentioned hitman 2 is next but this one is severely limiting at 1080. everything from the 1080 ti and up is bouncing off of a cpu limitation here except the 6800 xt below that we have valuable insight for the gtx 1060. this is an older title as well intentionally brought back to the suite just for this card and the 1060 does fine we're mostly proving the point that with older or simpler titles these cards are still good they also seem to do okay at 1080p with some newer games but it depends on which one it is at 1440p the gtx 1060 still does okay but it slips below 60 fps there's no doubt that the 60 class of gpus from nvidia has scaled impressively over the years but so too has the price we can't give credit to the 3060 for improving as much as it has when so much of that improvement is included with another price hike so even today the gtx 1060 really isn't bad for 1080p gaming it struggles in things like cyberpunk but you start looking at rainbow six siege perfectly fine and that would follow for counter-strike uh global offensive or league of legends or fortnite as well and to that end the point we kind of always try to reiterate with these revisits of older hardware is if you're using it and you're happy with it or you haven't really thought of a reason to replace it until you maybe see new gpu reviews or videos like this then just remember that uh as long as you're still happy with the device and you don't have an explicit reason to replace it there's really no reason to replace it it's a waste of your money and it piles on e-waste and if you do replace it well either hang on to it for a secondary computer or find an e-waste recycler to repurpose it for someone else normally they'll try to reuse before they reduce and that's the ideal way we work with for example crammed an institute near us where they'll take older hardware put it in a system for someone else to use who maybe doesn't care about having high-end graphics and then it's still useful but the 1060 today if you have to buy used maybe you can find one on the second hand market near you from someone who has a soul and isn't going to rip you off for 900 for gtx 1060. if you can find one of those people then you you hang on to them you can buy one of the cards and get by well enough until the gpu market replenishes but obviously there's a limit to what's reasonable to spend and that limit is probably about 100 or less although that number is mostly pulled out of the air but just based on the msrp of other cards if they were on the market that's probably where the 1060 should fall if you're upgrading from a 1060 well if you're looking used anything at 1080 into up so 1080 or 2060 or 1660 type cards those and up will get you a meaningful uplift and if you want 1440 then go into a 2060 as a baseline is a good place to start or an rx 5700 xt if you can find it and if you want higher than that obviously uh 3060 would be a massive jump it's over two times in just the average fps number but depending on the game but it's actually more expensive than the original card was so depends on where you are today financially versus when you built your system with a 1060 originally so uh we're still waiting for lower priced cars to fill the market this was once in we don't have those yet but as soon as we do we'll review them and hopefully they'll exist and that's it for now thanks for watching as always you can subscribe for more or go to store.gamersnexus.net or patreon.com gamers nexus if you'd like to help us out directly or buy one of our teardown toolkits on the store because you want to keep your old hardware alive and that's a good endeavor we've got a video on that too if you want to see the thermal results before and after and what it means for the performance of old video cards being brought back to life with a simple teardown reassembly thanks for watching we'll see you all next time i

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 422,150

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, gpu benchmarks 2021, video benchmarks 2021, gtx 1060 benchmarks, gtx 1060 6gb 2021, gtx 1060 benchmarks 2021, gtx 1060 review, gtx 1060 vs rtx 3060, gtx 1060 vs rtx 2060, gtx 1060 vs rx 6800

Id: ZnhFA-r_YvA

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Techkalakosis]

25-40fps in Cyberpunk 2077 with EVGA's SC 1060 3gb and a good fan curve with MX-4.

Great little card. Can't even imagine the performance of a 3060.

[u/RandomCollection]

Sadly relevant these days because many folks don't have a choice.

There's no clear GTX 1060 / RX 480 replacement at the $250 USD price point and with the pandemic/crypto induced GPU shortage, you can't really buy GPUs very easily anyways (most of the people I know who buy Nvidia 3000 GPUs or RDNA2 are using prebuilts).

We need stock to improve before anything can be done.

Edit: Typo

[u/Snord]

Still sadly relevant these days. My old PC has one, and I’m keeping it as a backup if my 3080 has problems. Not worth selling, even for the $250 I can probably sell it for. It cost $275 four years ago when I bought it, which is insane in hindsight.

[u/FirstAtEridu]

Just checked the places where i can get a 1060 from, Ebay, Amazon, local Ebay alternatives, online shops etc. The result? I might as well spend 700 € for a scalped 3060. Often times it's cheaper.