It’s the summer of graphics cards, and reviews for Nvidia’s affordable GTX 1060 have begun to hit the internet. The GTX 1060 is actually the third graphics card that Nvidia has launched this year (along with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070), but this card carries the distinction of being the best deal of the bunch.
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Starting at just $249, the GTX 1060 is a significant step up from its predecessor, the 960, but not nearly as powerful as the 1070 or 1080. This is to be expected, considering the price point, but what many PC gamers want to know is whether or not Nvidia’s budget GPU beats AMD’s $199 RX 480.
Based on performance tests from both Hot Hardware and Polygon, the RX 480 seemed to beat the GTX 1060 on a in some real-world testing. Although several stress tests from Hot Hardware showed Nvidia’s card coming out on top, the real world benchmarks with games like Shadow of Mordor and Hitman gave AMD the edge.
“The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 is a very strong graphics card in its price segment,” Hot Hardware explains in its extensive review of the GPU. “Throughout our testing, it offered performance that just missed the mark set by the pricier Radeon R9 Nano, and it often outran the 8GB Radeon RX 480.”
Although it’s not exactly blowing away the competition, it has a few clear advantages, including features like Ansel, Fast Sync and Simultaneous Multi-Projection. If you’re in the market for a cheap graphics card that can reliably handle VR gaming, the GTX 1060 is worth a look.
