Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1060 9Gbps Graphics Card Review

Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1060 9 Gbps The Nvidia GTX 10xx series has been with us for a while now, and you don't have to dig through too many reviews to know why they're so popular. While I'm sure many of you would love to invest in something like the GTX 1080 Ti, the overall cost is simply too much for many. Of course, the sheer insane performance of the 1080 Ti is often far too much for most people's needs. If you're gaming at 1080p resolution on a 60 Hz monitor, and you haven't got endless cash reserves, then the GTX 1060 series is obviously a more tempting option. The card we're taking a look at today isn't just any ordinary GTX 1060. The new 9 Gbps model is still the card we know and love but now comes with faster memory out of the box, allowing for even better performance. With 9 Gbps memory, a stunning WINDFORCE 3X cooler, 16.8M RGB lighting, and factory overclocks, the latest card from Gigabyte AORUS is shaping up nicely. Now, let's grab the box and go take a closer look at what's on offer, as well as testing the gaming performance! Features Powered by GeForce® GTX 1060 Integrated with 9Gbps High Speed Memory WINDFORCE 3X with Blade Fan Design Advanced Copper Back Plate Cooling RGB Fusion-16.8M customizable color lighting Extreme overclocking with 6+1 power phases Intuitive AORUS Graphics Engine Core Clock Boost: 1860 MHz / Base: 1632 MHz in OC mode Boost: 1835 MHz / Base: 1607 MHz in Gaming mode (Reference Card Boost: 1708 MHz/ Base: 1506MHz) Aorus Performance "AORUS graphics cards are crafted for perfection in pursuit of the ultimate graphics experience for gaming enthusiasts. Based on the revolutionary NVIDIA® Pascal™ GPU architecture, AORUS graphics card brings you incredible gaming experience." - Aorus Pascal-powered graphics card give you superior performance and power efficiency Support up to 8K display @60Hz Outstanding performance for Virtual Reality gaming RGB Fusion "With 16.8M customizable color options and numerous lighting effects, you could now choose the right scheme for your gaming rig through AORUS graphics engine." - Aorus Specifications A Closer Look Equipped with their own Windforce X3 cooler design, this is one of the larger GTX 1060's on the market. Of course, that larger size means it has room for a much larger heat sink design and three powerful fans. Overall, this should mean a cooler and quieter card, but also means it should be able to maintain a higher overclock for longer. Down the side, a small Aorus logo, as well as a "fan stop" logo. Both of these are RGB backlit, for added customisation. A good array of display connectors here, with DVI, 3 x DP and 1 x HDMI. One of the most interesting features, however, is that gorgeous backplate. It covers the full length of the card, giving it added strength and cooling. You can also see some exposed copper for the GPU cooling block. Overall, this is a great looking card, but how does it perform? Let's find out! Testing & Methodology Please note that on 16/04/2017, the graphics cards featured in this review have are retested. The retesting was done to implement new changes in the way we review, the settings we use, the software required and more. We've also made some slight hardware changes to our test benches, and all games were updated, as has the OS, graphics drivers, etc. Of course, this would mean new results would not be a fair comparison to old. For your reference, the last review to feature our past results is found here. Here is the test system used for all graphics card reviews (pictured above) and game performance analysis: Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Asus Rampage V Extreme X99 Processor – Intel Core i7 5960X at stock with Turbo enabled RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz Graphics Card – Varies per review CPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15S Power Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Additional Hardware "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Games Throughout the testing procedure, we always use demanding presets which stress graphics cards to reasonable limits. However, in the interest of fairness, any technology which favours either AMD or NVIDIA is disabled. More specifically, this refers to PhysX, Hairworks and similar technologies. Additionally, we also disable all forms of AA, including FXAA, to gauge performance levels which aren't impacted by sophisticated AA. Theoretically, we could have employed FXAA because it only has a minor impact on the frame-rate, but many users strongly dislike the hazy image this causes. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance. Some benchmarks may feature more cards, this is due to some tests being older or newer than others, and being used in other game specific feature tests we have conducted, so you'll find all relevant cards included in each chart as we add or remove new and old tests. Selecting strenuous presets especially at higher resolutions can cause hitching and other performance problems on graphics cards with lower amounts of video memory. For example, Rise of the Tomb Raider's Very High textures requires 4GB of RAM to maintain a smooth frame-rate. In theory, we could run the benchmarks at the High setting, but this defeats the purpose of high-end graphics cards which are designed to cope with the absolute best graphics on the market. Furthermore, the notion of enthusiast cards sporting less than 4GB memory has become less of an issue. Of course, whenever we're tackling more affordable GPUs, the settings will be altered accordingly and detailed for clarity. Identical settings are used for all resolutions, 1080, 1440, 2160, and 1440 Ultrawide unless otherwise stated. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Graphics Settings For this game, we use the Very High preset, with some small changes to increase the Texture Filtering, turn off the AA, and all V-Sync settings. Preset: Custom Fullscreen: On Exclusive Fullscreen: Off DirextX 12: On VSync: Off Anti-aliasing: Off Texture Quality: Very High Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic Shadow Quality: Very High Sun Soft Shadows: High Depth of Field: Very High Level of Detail: Very High Dynamic Foliage: High Ambient Occlusion: On PureHair: Off Specular Reflection Quality: Normal Vignette Blur: On Motion Blur: On Bloom: On Tesselations: On Screen Space Reflections: On Lens Flares: On Screen Effects: On Film Grain: On Rise of the Tomb Raider Graphics Settings Preset: Custom Fullscreen: On Exclusive Fullscreen: Off DirextX 12: On MSAA: Off VSync: Off Texture Quality: Very High Texture Filtering: 16x Anisotropic Shadow Quality: Very High Ambient Occlusion: Very High Contact Hardening Shadows: On Parallax Occlusion Mapping: High Depth of Field: Very High Level of Detail: Very High Volumetric Lighting: On Screenspace Reflections: On Temporal Anti-Aliasing: Disabled Motion Blur: On Sharpen: On Bloom: On Lens Flares: On Cloth Physics: On Subsurface Scattering: On Chromatic Aberration: On Tesselations: On Far Cry Primal Graphics Settings Graphics Quality: Custom HD Textures: On Textures: Very High Shadow: Ultra Post FX: High Geometry: Ultra Terrain: Very High Water: Very High Environment: High Anti-Aliasing: Off Volumetric Fog: Very High Motion Blur: On Ghost Recon: Wildlands Graphics Settings Preset: Custom Antialiasing: Off Ambient Occlusion: SSBC Draw Distance: Very High Level of Detail: Ultra Texture Quality: Ultra Anisotropic Filtering: 16 Shadow Quality: Ultra Terrain Quality: Ultra Vegetation Quality: Ultra Turf Effects: Off Motion Blur: On Iron Sights DOF: On High-Quality DOF: On Bloom: On God Raws: Enhanced Subsurface Scattering: On Lens Flare: On Long-Range Shadows: Ultra Software 3DMark Firestrike 3DMark Time Spy Unique Superposition Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider Far Cry Primal Ghost Recon: Wildlands CPU-ID HWMonitor TechPowerUp GPU-Z Noise Everyone has a reasonable noise level preference when it comes to comes to components on a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down; some want an entirely silent computer. To accurately gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter from one metre above our open air test bench and take an average reading at idle and load. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become energy efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components of a desktop system so having a capable graphics card is crucial to keeping power bills under control. Power is tied to heat, so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system, meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and NVIDIA have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock, so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming essential to maximise performance. We take power readings during idle state with no background applications running. Then again at 25%, 50%, and 99% completion of the Unigine Superposition benchmark, using the average as the final published result. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when selecting a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are critical. Lower temperatures are always better, and with AMD and NVIDIA opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account, it is important that graphics card vendors use high-performance cooling solutions to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching critical temperatures are now in the past, but the importance of low temperatures remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds. We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered from Unigine Superposition after a 4K optimised run, confirming the numbers are accurate with HWMonitor. Ambient temperature is always kept +/- 1c from 21c. 3DMark Equipped with 9 Gbps memory, we would expect this to be one of the fastest GTX 1060's on the market. It should come as no surprise then, that it is! As you can see, the standard Gigabyte GTX 1060 scores 11224, while the new model clocked 11858. The scores were great at 1440p too, beating out both the Gigiabyte and ASUS GTX 1060's. And again at 4K, with the GTX 1060 9 Gbps being the 6th fastest card tested. The same is true in Time Spy, clocking in a very impressive 6th place. Unigine Superposition Interestingly, this card didn't do so well in Unigine, with the RX 580's and even a 480 beating out all of the GTX 1060 here. However, once we increased the resolution, the faster and larger amount of VRAM put the AORUS card back a the top of the mid-budget GPUs. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Synthetic benchmarks are only part of the picture, and its real games that matter to most. The RX 580 does better here in DX12, but the scores are still very competitive at around 57-58 FPS. As we increase the resolution, the GTX 1060 does gain some ground, but it's still fairly neck and neck with the similarly priced AMD hardware. Rise of the Tomb Raider The AORUS card puts up some fantastic numbers here, scoring almost 100 FPS at 1080P, and breaking 60 FPS at 1440P. Only slightly ahead of the RX 580 here, although it's unlikely those buying this card will be using it to game at 4K. Ultrawide performance was behind the AMD card, but still a good score. A few tweaks to the graphics settings could get that average above 60 FPS. Far Cry Primal Very playable scores here at 1080 and 1440, and again, you can drop a couple of settings to maintain better performance. Neck and neck with the RX 580 here, both clocking 28 FPS, although the 1060 9 Gbps pulls ahead at 21:9. Ghost Recon: Wildlands Wildlands is one of the most demanding tests we run, but the Nvidia card maintains a comfortable lead. This is an Nvidia optimised game though, and AMD cards struggle badly with all resolutions on this game. Acoustic, Thermal and Power Testing Acoustic Performance With a ZERO RPM fan mode, this card is completely silent until it's under heavy load and temperatures increase. However, with three fans, they can spin slow and quiet, allowing the card to top out at just 42 dBa. Thermal Performance That huge cooler also means it's one of the cooler cards we've tested, with the GPU core maxing out at just 62c. This is a very impressive score for a card that's so quiet. Power Usage While it runs cooler and quiet than most of the AMD offerings, Nvidia also has the benefit of improved efficiency over the RX series cards. The AORUS card clocked just 238.8w at full load. Overclocking Overclocking this card was incredibly easy, and with a simple boost of 100 MHz on the GPU core, performance improved quite nicely. However, even with 9 Gbps memory, there was still headroom to push another 250 MHz from the chips. This gave us a score of 2479, a 3.8% improvement on the stock score of 2386. Final Thoughts Price The Gigabyte AORUS GTX 1060 9 Gbps 6GB Graphics Card is available right now from Amazon for around £300. That is a little expensive, but since the stock is absolutely in tatters due to mining (at the time of writing), this price is inflated and the stock is non-existent. Comparable RX 580 cards are around £260, but again they're also out of stock right now. Overview While this is easily one of the best Nvidia GTX 1060's on the market right now. It's still the same high-performance card that we know and love. Of course, it's a little bit faster too, and that's no bad thing. The faster memory is giving immediate gains to the performance over the old model, and it's very competitive for those who are gaming at 1080P using Ultra settings. Of course, it still has plenty of power for those wanting to game at 1440P, 21:9 and even at refresh rates above 60 FPS (mostly on 1080P panels). While it's not a 4K gaming card, it can still hit 30FPS in most games using ultra settings, so there's room to wind those back to medium to get smoother performance. Build Quality The build quality is rock solid. Most noticeable is that full-size backplate, that gives the card added strength, while also providing a boost to the overall aesthetics. The Windforce cooler is one of the best on the market too. Not only does it look superb, it's also very efficient. This is one of the coolest and quietest GTX 1060's on the market today. Of course, it's also one of the more efficient cards. While the RX 580 can go head-to-head in terms of performance and is a little cheaper, it's not too hard to justify spending a little more for a cooler, quieter and more efficient card. Overall, it's a great gaming graphics card, with solid performance, excellent build quality and more. However, let's just hope the stock on pretty much any graphics card returns soon, as with the mining boom (again), gamers are really missing out. Pros Fastest GTX 1060 we've tested Amazing Windforce X3 cooler Incredibly cool and quiet Easy to overclock Solid 1080/1440 performance RGB lighting Cons None Neutral Cheaper RX 580 is still quite competitive against it "A cooler, quieter and faster Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, the 9 Gbps edition card from Aorus is sure to be a compliment to and mid-budget gaming system."