Nvidia 1060 – Gaming Power At A Low Cost?

Performance At A Steep Price

If you are a hardcore PC gamer like me, you probably went nuts when you saw the benchmark scores released by Nvidia for the 1080 and 1070 models. These video cards were out performing the Nvidia Titan at a much lower price. It was mind boggling the amount of raw power these cards were putting out. But of course there was a catch. It was still pretty expensive overall. The 1070 model was priced at $389 and the 1080 model at $589. One could argue that this single component was more expensive than a next-gen console. To be fair, these were very low prices historically speaking, for the amount of raw power you were getting. But it was still outside the sweet spot for someone who is on a budget.

AMD Budget Video Card Push

Then AMD announced the RX 480 for $200. A video card that is VR ready, can pack a punch, and not break your wallet. Not quite the same potential of the 1070 card. Far from the beast that is the 1080. Nevertheless, it is still an attractive alternative for many on a budget. There are many reasons why gamers look for budget video cards. A lot of young gamers have low paying jobs right out of college or even high school. Some older gamers who have become professionals and earn slightly more, also have the misfortune (or fortune if you’re an optimist) of being married with children. This usually leads to minimum resources being allocated for entertainment purposes relating to video games. Luckily for us, Nvidia took note and decided to counteract AMD’s low end card that boosts big numbers.

Raw Power At A Low Price

Lo and behold, the Nvidia 1060 enters the race, the champion of the gamer faced with the struggle of making every dollar count. At the price point as low as $250 on some sites, it is only $50 more than the AMD RX 480, and $139 less than bigger brother 1070. But lets nerd out and talk performance and specs. This little monster features the 16nm FinFET based Pascal architecture, which will deliver a big increase in performance and efficiency over its predecessors. We’re getting 4.4 Billion Transistors on the GP106 GPU core with a die size of 200mm^2. Let that sink in for a moment. 4.4 billion transistors, don’t know what that is? Run a quick google search and be amazed. Mind blowing. Just to give you further perspective on the matter, the Nvidia 980 was $550 when it came out. You’re getting better performance than that for $250. Let’s be honest, the Nvidia 980 can still run Witcher 3 at MAX settings without breaking a sweat, so it’s no slowpoke in the video card world.

The video card became available mid-July and is currently in stock at popular places such as Best Buy, Amazon, Newegg, etc. As a current owner of the Nvidia GTX 770, I am excited for the upgrade in performance and will feature a follow up post reviewing how I feel about the product. Make sure to comment below if you are also excited for this new video card or if you’re an AMD fan, and tell us why.