Similar Graphics Cards: Best GTX 1650 Graphic Cards The bottom line is, if you’re looking for a maxed-out experience at 1080p without making a hole in your pockets, this is the prime contender for that purpose and you will be safe with this card for a long time unless you’re aspiring to amp up the gaming to 1440p or higher qualities. Released back in 2016, GTX 1060 has been and will be (for a few more years), the silver standard for comfortable 1080p gaming.
The Best GTX 1060 – Our 5 Best Picks
No matter how much we praise this GPU, it’s still not enough. The GTX 1060 is by far one of the best and the most popular GPUs used by many gamers. It tops the steam GPU survey, concluding about 10% of GTX 1060 gamers. Back when it was released, the GTX 1060 was a mid-range Pascal card that was considered as the value for money as it had the best price to performance ratio of its time. Don’t get me wrong, in the days of the RTX 3060 and GTX 1660, it’s still a decent performer known for breaking 60 fps in medium to high settings in modern titles. Without further ado, let’s jump to our roundup for the best GTX 1060 GPUs to get. EVGA’s SSC (Super Super Clocked) model safely secures the top spot of this list for the best value GTX 1060. It easily takes the cake over EVGA’s remaining 1060 models with its higher clocks almost touching the mark of 2060MHz in its max overclocked speeds. Its base and boost clocks are rated at 1607MHz and 1835MHz.
You can amp the speeds up with Precision X to 1702 base and 2060MHz boost (max). It is paired with 6GBs of 192-bit GDDR5 memory running at 8000MHz effective clock speeds. It has an 8-pin PCIe power connector at the end of the PCB. Also, it has a meager TDP of 120 Watts, so consider yourself safe with a 400W power supply. Unfortunately, you won’t be getting an SLI-bridge on GTX 1060 series, depriving these of traditional SLI support, under NVIDIA’s directions. Taking a look at the outputs, it has three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0, and one DVI. Related Read: The Difference: Gold vs Bronze Rated Power Supplies It houses a very beefy cooling solution comprising of two durable double ball bearing fans which are installed with the 0dB feature, by this, the fans will automatically turn off under the defined threshold to curtail the redundant power consumptions. The acoustic profile of the fan was equally promising which also garners ancillary support from optimally tuned heatsinks for 13% quieter performance. EVGA has placed three straight copper heat pipes directly over the heatsinks and they span the whole length of the card to maximize the contact area. We observed 59-degree C on stock fan profiles and 74-degree C under loads, justice served. It is loaded with the latest drivers and the new overclocking software, Precision XOC, which makes overclocking easier than ever. However, many may still prefer MSI afterburner vs EVGA Precision due to its norms. It can automatically overclock and tune your card according to the required system loads. The card supports a max digital resolution of 8192 x 4320, DX12 OSD with Precision XOC, Windows 7,8, and10 (32/64-bit). All the foregoing context is a compelling telltale for this card’s acclaimed worth, therefore you are good to tap on this card without any fears. It is arguably the most aesthetically excelled card out of this list, with a traditional aggressive red and black style making it the best looking GTX 1060 graphics card on our list. It is clocked at 1595MHz for the base clock and 1810MHz for the boost clock. The MSI’s gaming software has its OC mode as default so you can squeeze an extra 140/350 MHz to the base/boost clocks which almost translates to over 2100 MHz boost clock speed.
It has 6GB GDDR5 video memory with a 192-bit memory bus. It is an absolute stunner at barraging out frames as well, under ultra-high settings, we confirmed an average 55-60 FPS in Crysis 3, TC-R6-SIEGE at about 105 FPS, PUBG at 85-90 FPS, DOOM and CSGO hitting triple digits, Witcher 3 at around 50-60 FPS. Its output consists of three DisplayPorts, one HDMI, and one DVI. It gained a bump over the reference model with its 8-pin PCIe power connector. It has a low power consumption of 120W, you’ll require a power cable with your power supply. Moreover, it is VR and Direct 12X ready. They’ve employed a solid cooling solution for this card with Twin Frozr heat-pipes for fast airflow onto the large aluminum heatsink which has deflectors on it to increase the surface area. It’s two 90 mm cooling fans (with dual bearing architecture for durability) are extremely silent and adequately powerful keeping the temperatures restricted at 80-degree C. They also have an overclock on these fans making them slightly faster than the non-overlocked version. They turn off automatically at idle temperatures and run totally silent under 60-degree C. You’ll have plenty of room for creative manipulation of its classic non-RGB LEDs via its MSI gaming app. Set it at breathing, active responding mode to game sounds, a steady mode for music, and whatnot per your taste. Moreover, it has a custom matte metal backplate serving the role of aesthetics and heat dissipation altogether. To summarize, with this card, you are guaranteed to enjoy a very sound dollar per FPS performance on 1080p. This card purports to give you the premium overclocked performance layered along with a stunning spectrum of stunning RGB lighting. You’ll get a boost clock of 1873MHz (OC Mode) and a base clock of 1620MHz. On ultra-high settings, we observed 70-80 FPS in Battlefield 1, 200-242 FPS for CSGO, 40-50 FPS in Deus Ex, 90-100 in GTA 5, 85 FPS in Just Cause 3, 168 FPS in Overwatch, and 98 FPS in PUBG.
In a nutshell, it chews up any game at 1080p on ultra settings. Like the foregoing cards, you’ll get 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM with a 192-bit memory bus. It comes equipped with an 8-pin PCIe power connector, two DisplayPorts, one DVI, and two HDMI 2.0 ports to simultaneously connect the headset & monitor. Its TDP is 120W with a recommended power supply of 400W. It is VR-ready. It comes equipped with an overbearing cooling solution. We have three 90mm “wing-blade” fans which support the idle fan speeds aptly named as 0dB fans by ASUS which they only spin once the card enters a certain temperature range requiring active cooling. Thanks to their numbers and wing-blades, we didn’t require them to run at maximum speeds under heavy loads thereby keeping noise levels and thermal in tight check without excessive power draw. The confidence in ample cooling even under idle fans comes from its long heatsinks and superimposed 5 heat pipes which effectively soak up the significant amount of heat from the GPU. Helpful Roundup: Best GPU Coolers With that being said, it successfully limited the temperatures to 72 degrees C. Now you can have a thoroughgoing command on your GPU with GPU TWEAK II. It allows you to monitor clock speeds, voltages, RGB lighting, fan speeds and fine-tunes them however you want. Furthermore, you can stream your gameplay with XSplit Gamecaster just with a click of a button. Lastly, you are advised to download “GeForce Experience” from NVIDIA to get the latest drivers and every automatic update onwards. ASUS stuffed in all the premium features in this card to exalt it to the highest quality possible making it a worthy buy down to its last penny. It can be considered the best performing GTX 1060 graphics card on our list. Finishing at fourth, GIGABYTE’s WindForce 6GB edition is a bred-to-the-bone cooling elite as its name implies. Its base clock pegs at 1582MHz and the boost clock running at 1987MHz which obviously goes beyond advertised speeds. As for the performance, it almost catches up to the remaining cards from the list with stable 60 FPS for GTA 5, Battlefield 1, and similar games.
Related Roundup: Best GTX 1070 Graphics Cards It has a 6-pin power connector. You’ll get two DVI ports, one HDMI, and one DisplayPort. However, it does fall behind aesthetics if compared to other variants mentioned in this article, but the price tag covers that. Coming at the power phases, compared to the reference model’s 3+1 power phase design, it has 4+1 phases. It is easily appreciable from the intricate setup of heat pipes and fans that GIGABYTE has put a lot of effort to coax out this card’s cooling prowess to the fullest. Its two 90 mm fans with their enticing appellation do all the justice to their name. They are committed to creating 23% more airflow with their bi-directional spinning and unique fan blades. The heatsinks elongate throughout the length of PCB with pure copper composite heat-pipes, which are in direct contact with the GPU itself, designed to channel heat away from the GPU to heat sink. Impressively, it managed to rein temperatures at 61-65-degrees C. Overclocking has been made very easy with its XTREME engine utility, you can easily overclock or fine-tune GPU clocks with few clicks. Similarly, fan speeds are also adjustable according to the temperatures. The fans will shut down automatically under a set loading. All-in-all it is a fine bang for your buck and its dwindling stocks at amazon dictates for its fame and being the best budget GTX 1060. Last but not least, Zotac’s GTX 1060 AMP Edition exhibits base clock speeds of 1556MHz and a boost clock of 1771MHz along with the inveterate 6GB GDDR5 memory and its 192-bit memory bus. Its frame rates were pretty easy to digest at ultra-high settings in almost all major AAA titles (obviously the optimized ones) hence, it will breeze you through similar games like these at 1080p on high-ultra settings. Looking at its outputs, we have one DVI, one HDMI, and three DisplayPorts. Power wattage is standard 120W with a 6-pin power connector.
Helpful Read: GTX 1080 vs 1080 Ti The Zotac 1060 AMP edition gets the best built GTX 1060 title for its exceptional build. It has a nice characteristic silverish grey and a black shroud covering the 90 mm fan and the aluminum heat sink which spans the whole length of PCB (without a backplate). It’s dual 90 mm ZOTAC FREEZE fans also come with the 0dB fan curve feature. we recorded excellent acoustics and temperatures pegging at 77-degree C under max loads. Furthermore, its user-friendly software lets you safely overclock it easily. Helpful Roundup: Best Airflow cases The only knockout of this card is the absence of a metal backplate. You can set the fan curves at 60% through the FireStorm utility to keep it balanced. The temperature measures hovered around 75 to 77-degree C at overclocked (100% fan speed) settings. To conclude, when you take its bolstering performance at 1080p with its impressive acoustics, it is an absolute steal.
