NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Review: Pascal Value And Performance Per Watt

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, July 19, 2016, 09:00 AM EDT

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Test System, Heaven v4.0 And 3DMark

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-5960X octal-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default / auto settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure optimal memory performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and the latest build of Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System

Intel Core i7 Powered

Hardware Used:
Intel Core i7-5960X
(3GHz, Octa-Core)
Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P
(Intel X99 Chipset)

Radeon RX 480
Radeon R9 390
Radeon R9 Nano
GeForce GTX 1060
GeForce GTX 960
GeForce GTX 980 (OC)
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 1070

16GB Corsair DDR4-2133
OCZ Vertex 4
Integrated Audio
Integrated Network

Relevant Software:
Windows 10 Pro x64 (10586)
AMD Catalyst 16.6.2
NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v368.64

Benchmarks Used:
Unigine Heaven v4
3DMark "Fire Strike"
Thief
MIddle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Ashes Of The Singularity
Hitman 2016
LuxMark
Steam VR Performance Test
FRAPS

Unigene Heaven Benchmark

Psuedo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering as well.

Unigine Heaven

heav1 2

heav2 2

The GeForce GTX 1060 performed very well in Unigine Heaving, slotting in just behind the much more expensive Radeon R9 Nano, but well ahead of the Radeon RX 480s.

Futuremark 3DMark FireStrike

Synthetic DirectX 11 Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike has multiple benchmark modes: Normal mode runs at 1920x1080, Extreme mode targets 2560x1440, and Ultra mode runs at a 4K resolution. GPU target frame buffer utilization for normal mode is 1GB and the benchmark uses tessellation, ambient occlusion, volume illumination, and a medium-quality depth of field filter. The more taxing Extreme mode targets 1.5GB of frame buffer memory and increases detail levels across the board. Ultra mode is explicitly designed for high-end single GPU and CrossFire / SLI systems. GT 1 focuses on geometry and illumination, with over 100 shadow casting spot lights, 140 non-shadow casting point lights, and 3.9 million vertices calculated for tessellation per frame. And 80 million pixels are processed per frame. GT2 emphasizes particles and GPU simulations.

3DMark Fire Strike

The GeForce GTX 1060 doesn't come quite as close to the Radeon R9 Nano in the Fire Strike Ultra test, but the overall trend remains the same -- the GTX 1060 lands just behind the R9 Nano, but ahead of the Radeon R9 390 and recently-released Radeon RX 480.