ASUS GTX 1060 OC 6GB 9Gbps Graphics Card Review

Introduction The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is already a great card, offering blazing fast performance without the burden of the kick in the wallet that is the 1070 and 1080 series cards. If you're gaming at 1080p and even 1440p, the GTX 1060 has proven to be well suited to the job. Now ASUS are back with their latest version, which comes equipped with faster 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory, a nice factory overclock, improved power hardware and a new cooler. "ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 gaming graphics cards are packed with exclusive ASUS technologies, including DirectCU II Technology with Patented Wing-Blade Fans for 30% cooler and 3X quieter performance, and Industry-only Auto-Extreme Technology for premium quality and the best reliability. VR-friendly HDMI ports let gamers easily enjoy immersive virtual reality experiences.ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 also has GPU Tweak II with XSplit Gamecaster that provides intuitive performance tweaking and instant gameplay streaming." - ASUS DirectCU II with Patented Wing-Blade 0dB Fans for 30% cooler and 3X quieter performance. NVIDIA ANSEL for a revolutionary new way to capture in-game screenshots. IP5X-Certified Fans for dust resistant and longer fan lifespan. Industry Only Auto-Extreme Technology with Super Alloy Power II delivers premium quality and best reliability. VR-Friendly HDMI Ports for immersive virtual reality experiences. GPU Tweak II with Xsplit Gamecaster provides intuitive performance tweaking and instant gameplay streaming. While we know this chipset is already a winner, hopefully, this new version will be one of the best we've ever tested. It's no doubt a nice counter from Nvidia in light of the AMD RX 5xx refresh, ensuring they hold onto their performance lead in the sub £300 price range. Packaging and Accessories A Closer Look The card is nice and compact, which should make it well suited to more compact system builds. The cooler is pretty big, especially for a PCB of this size, but judging by the thickness of those monstrous heat pipes on the side, it's certainly not just for show. The shroud has a very nice design to it, and while it's a little oversized from the PCB, this allows for a much bigger heat sink and two large fans; bigger fans move more air and can be run at lower RPM. Around the back, connectivity is robust, with 2 x HDMI, 2 x DP, and 1 x DVI, which are all you need for any modern display, and you can easily hook up multiple displays too. Around the other end, there's a good bit of ventilation, so the card should be able to pull in extra airflow, and shift heat easily through the aluminium fin stack, plus there's plenty of ventilation at the rear exhaust. The massive heat pipes certainly look awesome, and the pass through that massive heat sink. The card is designed to cool the chipset, as well as the memory and chokes, which will certainly help with stability given this is an overclocked card. Finally, we've also got a lovely brushed metal back plate, not that I think it's needed, but it looks great. The card draws its power from a single 6-pin PCI connector. Now, let's get it installed and test it out! Testing & Methodology Please note that on 16/04/2017, the graphics cards featured in this review were completely retested. This was done to implement new changes in the way we test, the settings we use, the software and more. We've also made some slight hardware changes to our test benches, and all games have been recently updated, as has the OS, graphics drivers, etc. This would mean new results would not be a fair comparison to old. For your reference, the last review to feature our old results can't be 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. N-Sync is always disabled in our testing, graphics card power usage is set to optimised or balance, system power mode is 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 their own reasonable noise level 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 power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components of a desktop system so having an efficient 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 Straight away we see a great result from the GTX 1060, clocking in a nice bit higher than the Gigabyte GTX 1060, which came with the stock memory clock speeds, not the 9 Gbps kit. Pushing up the resolution, the 1060 is the fastest mid-budget card we've tested so far. Again, even at 4K it's pulling comfortably ahead of the older model GTX 1060. Again, another solid score, but let's move onto some real games, as Synthetic benchmarks are only part of the picture. Unigine Superposition Superposition is a very demanding benchmark and needs plenty of VRAM to get a great score so that 8GB GDDR5 is helping out a lot here. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided The GTX 1060 and the RX 580 go nicely head to heat at 1080p. AMD pull slightly ahead here again, but that's DX12 for ya, it loves AMD hardware more than Nvidia! AT 4K, there's almost no difference between the two, both doing very well. Rise of the Tomb Raider The new GTX 1060 pulls ahead again here, taking the throne from the RX 580. Another good result at 1440p, with an average framerate above 60fps. Pushing up the resolutions to 4K and we're still clocking above 30fps. Even ultrawide is running sweet, although the RX 580 is a little in the lead here. Far Cry Primal The ASUS GTX 1060 and the Gigabyte 1060 are side by side here, but clearly, the better overclock, and faster memory is giving the ASUS card the lead. Again, still a few fps ahead of the stock card. Amazingly, the RX 580 and GTX 1060 are neck and neck at 4K, although the 1060 pulls ahead at 1440p Ultrawide. Ghost Recon: Wildlands A nice side by side here, with the new faster memory on the ASUS card giving it a small lead on the Gigabyte 1060 at all four resolutions for Ghost Recon. Overclocking Amazingly, the card did have a little more to give when it comes to overclocking. The ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 manages to maintain an extra 125MHz on the GPU boost clock, and a whopping 250 MHz on the memory clock! This meant our Superposition score was able to go from 2360 to 2467; a 4.43% increase in performance free of charge! Acoustic, Thermal and Power Testing Acoustic Performance With an idle fan mode, the card runs completely silent in day-to-day scenarios. However, even with the fans spinning under full load, it's still pretty quiet given it's quite a small card. Thermal Performance The card runs right where we would expect, with the GPU maxing out at 69c. Idle is a little high, but keep in mind the card runs passively if you put the fan on all the time, this temperature would drop a lot, but you don't need it to. Power Usage Again we see the card running right where we would expect it to be, using more power than the Gigabyte GTX 1060, but this card has faster clock speeds on the GPU and memory, so it's right on the money here. Final Thoughts Price The ASUS Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB 9Gbps Graphics Card is expensive, coming in at £324.99. This is about £40 more than the normal GTX 1060 that's already on the market, and you can pick up the standard memory model with a triple fan cooler for £289.98. Yes, it is a more expensive, but it is faster and more compact that the other model, so it's certainly priced to reflect this. That does have one side effect that it's priced close to the GTX 1070 too, so best to shop around for the best deals on each to compare. Overview The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is already one of the best mid-budget cards on the market. In all fairness, it is also one of the most expensive mid-budget cards on the market with stiff competition from the more affordable RX 580, but for the most part, it does offer faster performance that helps justify some of the cost. It's also a much newer chipset than the rival AMD offerings, which means the Nvidia cards run much cooler and uses considerably less power overall, which can bring long-term savings dependant on your usage. The build quality on this card is impressive, with a thick heat sink design that spans the full-size of the card, and four large heat pipes that do an excellent job of shifting heat from the GPU, memory and other hardware. Using an oversized cooler also plays no small part in this card being able to run passively, and even when running benchmarks all day, I found it took quite a while before the fans would start; this is great news for those who want a quiet system. Even when the fans are spinning, they're surprisingly quiet, showing the benefits of aftermarket cooling solutions vs the stock Nvidia blower design. The price is high, but when you look at the fact it comes with faster memory which can be overclocked even further; which we've already proven today can deliver improved performance, as well as VR friendly HDMI ports, a decent factory overclock, 0db Fan, Auto Xtreme Technology, and more, all of which add value for money, overall. What impressed me more was that there was still some overclocking headroom left on the card too, and that faster memory had no issues being overclocked by another 250 MHz, and there were a few gains to be found on the GPU Core Clock too. Pros Excellent gaming performance Improved overclocks New and faster 9Gbps memory 0dB Cooling Compact design Good overclocking Ideal for 1080/1440p gaming Cons Priced quite close to some of the GTX 1070's Neutral One of the most expensive GTX 1060's available, but also one of the fastest. "The ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 OC 9Gbps is one of the fastest GTX 1060's on the market today, offering blazing performance for 1080 and 1440p gaming while offering great efficiency and build quality.