Back when the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition came out last July, it drastically altered the graphics-card playing field. It provided entry-level virtual-reality (VR) capability at much cheaper prices, and it pushed aside the GeForce GTX 960 while rivaling the previous generation's baseline VR card, the GeForce GTX 970. This kind of performance jump was big news, especially for a one-generation leap. Soon after, many of Nvidia's card-making partners upped the ante further with overclocked GTX 1060 cards. Most of these cards have vendor-specific cooling systems and designs, while generally having higher base clocks than the Founders Edition, which in turn led to more performance gains.
The Asus GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition ($308.99) we're looking at today adds a little something extra, though: faster memory. With the release of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Nvidia debuted new 11Gbps memory, a step above the top-end 10Gbps memory in the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition. In addition, the chip maker announced that its board partners would begin making GTX 1060 cards with up-ticked memory, too. This Asus model is one such example, with 9Gbps memory, compared to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition's 8Gbps standard stuff. This, in addition to higher core GPU clock speeds, should make the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 a bit snappier than the Founders Edition cards of 2016.
We'll verify that in the Performance section of this review, but for now let's take a closer look at what separates the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 from its Founders Edition kinsman. We'll preface that discussion, though, by acknowledging the elephant in the room these days surrounding video cards: pricing, and the cryptocurrency craze.
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This spring, awareness around an emerging type of digital currency, Ethereum, let loose a huge run on midrange video cards, the engines of cryptocurrency creation. Like Bitcoin in its early days, Ethereum was a mine-able commodity accessible to consumer miners, and these buyers rapidly began snapping up the most cost-efficient cards for working on mining loads. These proved to be AMD's midrange Radeon RX cards (the RX 470, RX 480, RX 570, and RX 580), and when these became scarce, shoppers set their sights on older Radeon cards like the Radeon R9 390 or R9 390X, as well as the middle of Nvidia's line: the GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060, and GTX 1070. Thus, when we looked at the pricing of these cards in midsummer 2017, they were bent out of shape entirely versus where they were at their debuts or even the start of the year.
This may well have reversed itself to an extent by the time you read this; Ethereum was becoming harder to mine by the day, and the value of the currency was seeing sharp short-term swings. All indications were toward a cooldown, and the likely entrance of lots of cards into the secondhand market, reverting pricing to a semblance of normalcy. So we'll look at this card in relation to its like-positioned kin strictly in terms of performance; looking at midrange video cards at the moment, from a value perspective, is like sweeping the porch during a hurricane. We expect this state of affairs to level off later this year.
[Editors' Note: Be aware that pricing and features for video cards based on a given graphics chip can vary, depending on the actual card maker. AMD and Nvidia make video "reference cards" based on their graphics processors, which they often send out for review. Third-party partners—MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte, EVGA, Asus, and many others—make and sell some cards that adhere closely to the design of these reference boards ("stock boards"), as well as versions with slight differences in port configuration, clocking, the amount and speed of onboard memory, and the cooling fans or heat sinks installed. Be sure the specs and ports/connections on any "partner" board you're looking at match what we've reviewed before making any assumptions. Here, we're reviewing Asus' 9Gbps-memory version of the GeForce GTX 1060; earlier versions of GTX 1060 cards shipped with 3GB or 6GB of 8Gbps memory. It's also slightly overclocked out of the box, compared to the GTX 1060 Founders Edition.]
Design & Features
If you want to know on a deep-dive level what makes the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 tick, then please reference our original Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition review linked above, which provides under-the-hood details about how the GPU operates. This Asus card is basically the same in terms of underlying silicon, except with a higher clock speed and the faster 9Gbps memory. (More on the former in the next section.)
While the hardware under the hood might be similar, the Asus card is vastly different in appearance from the GTX 1060 Founders Edition. For one, the Asus card forgoes the blower design utilized by the Founders Edition, in favor of a dual fan system for cooling...
With a blower design, bear in mind that the heated air is mostly pushed out the back of the chassis through the backplane. With this design, you'll want to be sure you have a bit more airflow through the chassis.
Asus changed the color scheme, as well, using black with red accents instead of Nvidia's gray-and-black design. The two cards also differ slightly in dimensions. Asus' card is shorter in length (8.6 inches, compared to 9.8 inches), while the Founders Edition isn't quite as tall (4.4 inches, versus 4.9 inches). The extra half-inch of GPU cooler sticking up could be an issue for installing the card in a small-form-factor chassis.
The Asus card also sports a metal backplate, and impressively, despite the faster clock speeds and memory, it requires only one six-pin power connector...
The Asus card is well-stocked with ports, too, with two HDMI 2.0 ports, two DisplayPorts, and a DVI port...
These ports should give users with new and old monitors alike plenty of connection options.
As for onboard graphics memory, this Asus card comes with 6GB of 9Gbps memory. As we noted earlier, that's a step up from the 2016 GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition and other initial GTX 1060 cards, which used 8Gbps memory. (Note that some versions of the GTX 1060 come with just 3GB of onboard memory; at the time of the GTX 1060's debut, this accounted for about $40 to $50 of price difference.) When the GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition came out a few months ago, its increase in memory speed from the 10Gbps memory in the GTX 1080 Founders Edition to 11Gbps led to big performance increases in the course of our testing.
Of course, a big part of that was the GTX 1080 Ti GPU versus the vanilla GTX 1080, not just the faster memory. This Asus card is making a similar jump from the GTX 1060 Founders Edition's RAM (from 8Gbps to 9Gbps) but keeps the core GPU silicon the same, though it's a touch overclocked out of the box here. Together, those two aspects should lead to some performance uptick. But before we move on to the Performance section to see how much of a difference it makes, let's talk a bit about Asus' included software.
Software
This card, and many others from Asus, are compatible with the company's GPU Tweak II software, a free download from the company's Web site. Among other things, it allows for one-click overclocking.
Running the software displays the Home menu, which shows which of three preset modes your card is running in: OC, Gaming, or Silent...
Gaming mode is the default setting, set for a base GPU clock of 1,595MHz and a maximum boost clock of 1,810MHz. This info, along with other card details, can be viewed by clicking on the Info tab...
While these clock speeds are already higher than those of the Nvidia Founders Edition version of the GTX 1060 (1,506MHz base and 1,708MHz boost), they can be pushed higher still by switching to OC mode. This will offer a modest improvement in clock speeds, bringing the base clock up to 1,632MHz and the boost clock to 1,847MHz. These gains in clock speed translated into small performance gains, only an additional frame or two in most of our gaming benchmarks.
In our experience, we also got more than a few black screens and game crashes while in OC mode, which did not make the extra few frames seem worth it to us. However, those brave souls who wish to get the maximum possible overclocking performance from this card can click on the Professional Mode button in the bottom-right corner of the Home tab to allow for more precise GPU tuning...
If this looks too intimidating, simply click the Simple Mode button in the bottom left corner of the screen to return to the original screen and the relative safety of one-click overclocking.
In addition to OC and Gaming modes, you can also set your graphics card to Silent mode, which slows down the clock to reduce heat and fan noise. This mode is intended for when you are watching a movie, listening to music, or just want to make sure your card is running quietly (although, in our experience, the card was pretty quiet, even under load).
Finally, next to this window is another, smaller one that displays current information about your card's clock speed, temperature, and the like...
Also available from Asus in connection with this card is the XSplit Gamecaster software, which allows for streaming and recording of game play. It enables an overlay that shows live info about your graphics card, such as clock speed and temperature, and it has GPU Tweak II controls integrated in it, as well. Users who purchase this and certain other qualifying cards from Asus can get either a 14-day free trial or a one-year license for free. This GTX 1060 card qualifies for the one-year license; however, users must go through a byzantine redemption process to qualify for it. If this interests you, check the details on Asus' Web site, as details of the offer could change.
That about covers the GPU Tweak II software. We imagine that most folks will have little need to download the utility. The moderate instability we saw in OC mode seemed hardly worth the minor performance increases, and the card was quiet enough that switching to Silent mode should not make much of a difference. Those who want to squeeze the maximum performance possible out of this card may want to mess around in Professional Mode, but otherwise most users will probably use this software little. Still, if you want to experiment, it is well-designed and easy to use.
Performance Testing
As we've mentioned in other recent video-card reviews, things are in flux these days when it comes to testing graphics cards, because two key technologies—despite being available in some form for more than a year now—are proving difficult to test definitively.
The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12). DX12 is just now starting to become common in AAA titles, though there are still relatively few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card was designed to last for, at the very least, a few years. So it's important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying. We tested the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 (9Gbps) with the newest DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition) and Rise of the Tomb Raider, as well as Futuremark's DX12 benchmark, 3DMark Time Spy. We tested a bunch of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API is still in wide use and likely will remain so for some time.
The second technology that's a little tricky to test, at present, is support for virtual reality. At this writing, there are two major competing VR headsets, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, with more coming to market soon, and it's difficult to establish a lone test that is applicable to all VR scenarios. At the moment, we're using Futuremark's new VRMark test to measure VR capability. It consists of an "Orange Room" test designed to measure a card's ability to handle today's games, and a "Blue Room" test for extremely demanding theoretical future titles. The Blue Room test is so tough, no card we've tested to date gets a passing grade in it, so, for the moment, we'll only report Orange Room results. At the moment, baseline VR support for those headsets starts with the AMD Radeon RX 480, or that card's just-launched successors, the Radeon RX 580 and Radeon RX 570. On the Nvidia side of things, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is the suggested minimum card, so this boosted GTX 1060 should be more than adequate for VR.
Futuremark 3DMark
We started off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike Ultra subtest. Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance. Ultra is meant to simulate the stresses of game graphics rendering at 4K.
In this first test, the faster memory did seem to help, as Asus' 9Gbps GTX 1060 was about 5 percent faster than the Founders Edition of the GTX 1060, and almost 9 percent faster than the Radeon RX 570. It also outpaced the Radeon RX 580, but by only about 2 percent. The gap was much wider with the previous-generation Radeon RX 480 and 470, with the Asus GeForce GTX 1060 being 11 percent faster than the former and 19 percent faster than the latter, while the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti did not even come close. In fact, the only card in this competitive set to beat the Asus GTX 1060 was the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition (which did so quite handily, by over 30 percent). Bear in mind that, at their debuts, a Founders Edition GTX 1070 cost about $449, versus the $299 of a Founders Edition GTX 1060.
We also tested the cards with the lesser 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme subtest, which tests a card at a less-demanding 2,560x1,440 resolution.
The results of this test are quite similar to the previous one, with the Asus GTX 1060 outpacing everything in this lot except the GTX 1070. It also widened the gap a bit on some of its competition, although not by much: This time around it outpaced the RX 580, its closest competition, by about 6 percent.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Let's start our game testing with some older games. Here, we fired up the 2013 reboot of the classic title Tomb Raider, testing at the highest detail preset ("Ultimate") and three resolutions.
In our first real-world test, we see a continuation of the trend begun with the Fire Strike tests. The Asus GTX 1060 9Gbps was eclipsed by only the GTX 1070 (by the expected healthy margin) while holding the advantage over its closest competitors, the RX 580 and Nvidia's own original GTX 1060 Founders Edition.
Sleeping Dogs
Next, we rolled out the very demanding real-world gaming benchmark test built into the older title Sleeping Dogs…
Here, the Founders Edition GTX 1060 was only 4fps behind our souped-up Asus version at 1080p, while the RX 580 was 17fps behind the Asus. However, this advantage was smaller at higher resolutions, with all three cards basically tied at 4K.
Bioshock Infinite
The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn't overly demanding, but it's a popular one with stellar good looks. In its built-in benchmark program, we set the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)…
This title was a resounding victory for the 9Gbps Asus GeForce GTX 1060, as it not only outpaced both the Founders Edition GTX 1060 and the Radeon RX 580 by about 50fps at 1080p, but it also managed to outpace the GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition by a whisker at all three resolutions. It also managed just shy of 60fps at 4K, so if your game library includes lots of older, less demanding titles, you should get at least playable frame rates at 4K with this card.
Hitman: Absolution
Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card...
In this test, the Asus 9Gbps GTX 1060 basically tied with the Founders Edition, while beating the Radeon RX 580 by 19fps at 1080p. The GTX 1070 reasserted its dominance on this test, scoring 20fps higher than both GTX 1060s at 1080p.
Far Cry Primal
Next, we moved to a more recent game, released in 2016. Ubisoft's latest open-world first-person hunting game is one of the most demanding titles we use, thanks to its lush foliage, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments.
These tests were closely contested, with a cluster of cards competing for the top spot. Both GeForce GTX 1060 cards, as well as the Radeon RX 580 and RX 480, were separated by 4fps or less on all the Normal Preset tests, with the RX 570 only trailing the Asus 1060 by 6fps at 1080p. The Ultra Preset thinned the herd a bit, but the GTX 1060 cards and the Radeon RX 580 basically showed a three-way tie here, with the GTX 1070 pulling well ahead of them all, as expected.
Tom Clancy's The Division
Our latest DirectX 12-supporting game-benchmark addition is Ubisoft's popular third-person open-world RPG shooter, set in a near-future New York in the midst of a pandemic. We use the Medium and Ultra presets at each test resolution.
These results did not favor the Asus card, as the RX 580 outpaced it by about 10fps at 1080p for both graphics presets. Furthermore, the RX 570 also managed to edge it slightly in some tests, although the two basically tied. At the Ultra preset, the Founders Edition GTX 1060 also basically tied the Asus, with the RX 480 and 470 also being able to keep up.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Lara Croft rises once again in the early 2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running action franchise. As our hero works to unfold an ancient mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) ahead of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather system, and the complexities of Lara's wind-tousled hair, add to the game's visual complexity.
Again, in this test we see the Radeon RX 580 keeping pace with Asus' 9Gbps GTX 1060 at all three resolutions and in both presets, and actually outpacing it by fair margins at the higher resolutions on Medium settings.
At the Very High preset, the Founders Edition once again essentially tied the Asus, even with the latter's faster memory.
Hitman (2016)
The latest game in the Hitman franchise finds Agent 47 turning over a new leaf, embarking on a journey of self-discovery as a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Just kidding, of course; he kills loads of people in this one, just like the rest. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though.
We used the DX12 setting only here, because if you're spending this much on a card, you're going to want to play on the latest settings, even if DX11 and DX12 look effectively the same on this benchmark.
Once again, the Asus 9Gbps GTX 1060 and the RX 580 were neck-and-neck, essentially tied. Asus' card did outpace its Founders Edition brother, although by only about 4fps at both 1080p and 1440p. The Radeon RX 570 and RX 480 were both just a few more frames behind the Founders Edition.
3DMark Time Spy DX12
This is the first 3DMark test using DirectX 12, so it should theoretically show how cards stack up using this fledgling API. According to the developers at Futuremark, "With its pure DirectX 12 engine, built from the ground up to support new features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is an ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards."
In our final DX12 test, we see the Asus card outpacing all the cards in this lot except the GTX 1070. Still, the RX 580 was not far behind, coming within 3 percent of the Asus, while the Founders Edition was about 7 percent behind.
Futuremark VRMark
From the maker of 3DMark comes its first VR benchmark. No headset is required to run the trial, if you'd like to test your own rig before jumping into a VR-headset investment. VR has high hardware requirements, so this test is designed to show overall capability for VR. As we mentioned earlier on, we ran the Orange Room subtest.
In this benchmark, the Asus once again finished ahead of all but the mighty GTX 1070, edging out its next closest competitors, the RX 580 and Founders Edition GTX 1060, by about 7 percent.
Conclusion
Overall, the 9Gbps Asus GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition performed well for its price class on all of our tests. It got at least 60fps at 1080p on every test (except Tom Clancy on Ultra, where it got 59.2fps), proving that it can handle newer DX11 and DX12 games at the highest settings and deliver very smooth gaming performance at 1080p. On some tests, it even managed to break 60fps at 1440p and high settings, but even when it failed to hit that magic number, it still usually delivered playable frame rates. (A 30fps rate is usually considered playable, though you want some margin there, as a 30fps rate is usually just an average.) It also outperformed all the other cards in our synthetic benchmarks in its midrange price band, except the much more powerful GTX 1070.
Asus' GPU Tweak II software was also well-designed and easy to use, although it will probably not be all that useful except to serious overclockers. The card was mostly quiet during testing, even while running our most intense benchmarks, making it mostly unnecessary to switch to GPU Tweak II's Silent mode. And in our experience, switching to OC Mode wasn't wholly stable in game testing and synthetic benchmarks. This made whatever meager gains we did see largely not worthwhile. Users interested in recording or streaming game play might be interested in the XSplit Gamecaster bonus, but be aware that if you wish to keep using it after your trial ends, you will have to start paying for it.
While this is a good card when looked at in isolation or as a major upgrade, it's certainly not worth rushing out to snag one if you already own one of the other cards in its price range. In particular, the XFX Radeon RX 580 and 8Gbps-memory Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Edition were often very close during game testing, the former sometimes even tying or beating the Asus GTX 1060 9Gbps. The advertised faster memory in this GPU made a difference in most of the synthetic benchmarks, but game testing showed only modest gains, and that on a game-by-game basis. Although the Asus card outpaced the competition in our older titles (and by a healthy margin too), the competing GPUs made up a lot of ground in newer ones, such as Rise of the Tomb Raider and Far Cry Primal. Potential buyers should keep this in mind when considering purchasing this card.
Finally, price is a big potential issue when considering this Asus card, at least at the time of this writing. When we wrote this in late July 2017, we were seeing a slight cooldown in the overheated market for midrange video cards due to the Ethereum-mining craze of mid-2017. At this moment of writing, this GPU was available on Newegg.com for a whopping $420. GTX 1060 cards with 6GB of memory were regularly going for about $250 or $260 before the 2017 mining craze hit. The XFX Radeon RX 580 XXX Edition that we tested was not available, but it was priced at $339.99 (about $100 more than it was at its debut), while the Founders Edition GeForce GTX 1060 was priced at $299.99 on Nvidia's Web site (the original price when we reviewed it—although it, too, was not available for purchase).
With the recent cryptocurrency craze, midrange video cards have become difficult to find, period; as we mentioned earlier, miners' favorites have been the ones based on the Radeon RX 470, RX 480, RX 570, and RX 580, as well as the GeForce GTX 1060 and GTX 1070. Even when these cards come available, prices are distorted beyond all recognition compared to earlier this year. So bear in mind that pricing and availability may well have changed—by a lot—by the time you read this. Meanwhile, high-end and low-end cards are generally available not terribly far from the pre-craze pricing, with some slight distortion at the margins nearest the midrange.
So, all that said: Know when you shop that any midrange video card might still be wildly inflated due to the Ethereum factor. When available, this Asus card should be going for roughly $260 to $300 in normal times. Anything more is mining-inflicted inflation.
As for this card by itself, relative to others of its ilk, this is a fine card in the GTX 1060 vein. That said, we find it difficult to wholeheartedly recommend paying all that much more for this model versus an 8Gbps GTX 1060 with 6GB of memory, or a Radeon RX 580. Given the crazy state of midrange video cards as we write this, most potential buyers are better off waiting for the cryptocurrency frenzy to abate, and for prices and availability to revert much closer to normal before shopping for the best deal. And if they can't wait, they'd do well to look at our charts, and the numbers for cards like those based on the GTX 1050 Ti. They won't be VR-ready, but those cards might serve well enough, if the alternative is paying a greatly inflated price for a GTX 1060 or an RX 580 card.
The Asus GeForce GTX 1060 OC Edition is a good choice if you're looking for improved 3D performance on older titles, and it should fare well in some 4K and most VR gameplay.
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