NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) vs AMD Radeon R9 280X

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) is an end-of-life desktop graphics card that released in Q3 2016 with a MSRP of $299. It is built on the Pascal GPU microarchitecture (codename GP106) and is manufactured on a 16 nm process.

Memory

The GTX 1060 has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory, with a 2,002 MHz memory clock and a 192 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 192.2 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The GTX 1060 includes 1,280 CUDA cores, the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,506 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,709 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 80 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 48 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The GTX 1060 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports DVI, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 300 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 120 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The GTX 1060 has the 132nd best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 16.64% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 17,401 score and $299 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 58.2. This is the 57th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.