Nvidia has officially released its answer to AMD’s Radeon RX 480 – the GeForce GTX 1060.
Both graphics card are aimed at the mainstream, Full HD PC gaming market, meaning that gamers will be closely inspecting the two products to determine which offers the best value.
We compared a number of benchmarks and the specifications of both GPUs in order to determine which card is the best to buy.
Specifications
| Specifications Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| Specifications | Radeon RX 480 | GeForce GTX 1060 |
| Stream Processors | 2,304 | 1,280 |
| Base Clock | 1,120MHz | 1,506MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1,266MHz | 1,709MHz |
| Peak Compute | 5.8 TFLOPS | 4.4TFLOPS |
| Memory Configuration | 8GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory Speed | 8Gbps | 8Gbps |
| Memory Bandwidth | 256GB/s | 192GB/s |
| TDP | 150W | 120W |
| Price | R5,339 | R5,199 |
Benchmarks
Below is a benchmark comparison of the GeForce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 480, using frames-per-second benchmark tests conducted by Guru3D.
| Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) Game Benchmark Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| Game – API | Radeon RX 480 | GeForce GTX 1060 |
| Rise of the Tomb Raider – DirectX 12 | 63 | 78 |
| Hitman – DirectX 12 | 75 | 65 |
| Total War: Warhammer – DirectX 12 | 74 | 71 |
| Ashes of the Singularity – DirectX 12 | 50 | 49 |
| DOOM – OpenGL | 94 | 108 |
| Far Cry Primal – DirectX 11 | 66 | 71 |
| Anno 2205 – DirectX 11 | 60 | 70 |
| Grand Theft Auto V – DirectX 11 | 84 | 90 |
| The Division – DirectX 11 | 59 | 62 |
| The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – DirectX 11 | 53 | 59 |
| Battlefield: Hardline – DirectX 11 | 60 | 73 |
| Alien Isolation – DirectX 11 | 137 | 138 |
| Average Total FPS | 72.9 | 77.8 |
Pricing
The Galax GeForce GTX 1060 Exoc is priced from as low as R5,199, and the Sapphire Radeon RX 480 is priced at R5,339.
Both graphics card are available at various South African retailers, although stock may be limited due to excessive demand.
Verdict
Both the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 offer superior performance for their price bracket and offer smooth Full HD gaming to the mainstream PC gaming market.
The Radeon RX 480 performs slightly better than the GTX 1060 in DirectX 12 games, likely due to its Asynchronous Compute capabilities.
However, the majority of games still use the DirectX 11 API, and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 firmly beats the Radeon RX 480 in this category.
Overall the GeForce GTX 1060 provides gamers with an average 5 FPS advantage over the Radeon RX 480 across both DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 titles.
The GeForce GTX 1060 is also currently cheaper than the RX 480 in South Africa, making it the preferred choice for Full HD gaming in both pricing and performance.
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