RX480 vs GTX1060

[fastboy]

me personally would take the 1060,there isnt much between them BUT the 1060 runs cooler and consumes less power (why anyone would pick a more power hungry and hotter card when they are both the same performance I don't know)

if you have a freesync monitor it would make sense to pick the 480,but apart from that the 1060 would be my choice.

either way you should be happy.

 

[smilertoo]

The gsync price premium can be enormous given the cost of the tech actually involved. I expect a move towards dx12 with the ps4 neo and xb1 scorpio showing up so the AMD card is probably the better long term option.

 

[motiv]

Basically if power consumption and dx11 is ya thing get get the 1060. If dx12 vulkan is your need, get a nitro 8gb.

They both cost the same.

Stay away from the 1060 3gb unless you want to sell it on a years time

 

[Seanspeed]

I would not buy 1060 at all. In 1.7 years special optimizations will be dropped , only general as it has happened to maxwell. RX 480 is getting better and better already in many titles . Not to mention the 3GB version which is already putting that card into a not wanted child position.

P.S.: not to mention the nvidia driver problems in this year. Sky-high already. My best advise is, do not update until is working , because i don't want to spend more and more time to fix the issues caused by nvidia drivers. Just kinda had enough from it.

1.7 years? lol That's an oddly specific figure there. Haha.

But really, 'special optimizations' wont be dropped. Driver optimizations by then will simply be nearly as mature as they can get for the specific architecture. Volta will be out by then and that will be the architecture with room for improvements to take advantage of all the new features and systems it can enable.

In terms of your driver issues, it sounds like you've been very unlucky. There will always be the odd case where something goes wrong on a PC given the massive variety of hardware and software configurations PC users have. Nvidia sell tens of millions of GPU's, so inevitably there will be people who run into issues. Same goes for AMD. This isn't an exact science. Seems to be an extremely tiny minority in either case, though.

 

[Brazo]

Dx12 = 1060 minor win when averaged out over benchmarks
Dx11 = 1060 major win (all the time)
Vulcan simply isn't relevant at the moment or over the lifespan of either card.

Heat 1060 win
Power 1060 win
Price well AMD fans need something?

 

[passifid]

Dx12 = 1060 minor win when averaged out over benchmarks
Dx11 = 1060 major win (all the time)
Vulcan simply isn't relevant at the moment or over the lifespan of either card.

Heat 1060 win
Power 1060 win
Price well AMD fans need something?

the only real thing saving AMD for me is freesync i can still play tomb raider at 4k on high settings with a couple of mediums on tomb raider(2013) perfectly smoothly even though my avg frame rate is about 53 with frequent drops into low 40s
freesync is super cheap too

 

[Seanspeed]

The GTX660,GTX660TI,GTX760 and GTX960 all have tended to fare worse than the AMD equivalents. I had two of them - I should know. So now apparently that is going to be totally reversed.

Well if AMD have truly spent a lot more effort with their Day 1 drivers like they claim, then yea, the situation could be quite different going forward(if we're just talking driver developments here). Older AMD cards got more benefits because their drivers were less mature on release relative to Nvidia's. There was simply more room for improvement.

Taking a long time for drivers to mature and to get the full potential of a card is not necessarily a good thing, depending on how you look at it.

That said, the GTX960 was never a good card. It was priced cheaper for a reason and even then it still wasn't the best card to get in that price range. Were it not for riding on the coattails of the amazingly successful GTX970, I think the 960 would have sold terribly.

 

[Seanspeed]

Dx12 = 1060 minor win when averaged out over benchmarks
Dx11 = 1060 major win (all the time)
Vulcan simply isn't relevant at the moment or over the lifespan of either card.

Heat 1060 win
Power 1060 win
Price well AMD fans need something?

It depends. I do think DX11 will still ultimately be more relevant for the next couple years. But after that? DX12/Vulkan will probably start to become closer to the norm, at least for big-name titles. And not just DX12 'ports' built off the backbone of a DX11-heavy implementation, but serious, native, low-level instruction development, with graphics engines that have been more tailored to provide the tools and optimizations that better utilize these low level API's. Basically, the advantage of using DX12/Vulkan will grow over time. Will be similar to how the transition to DX11 worked, where early incarnations of the API and the titles that utilized it did not see a substantial benefit in most cases. But after a while, as tools improved, as the API improved and as developers and engines were better prepared to handle the new features and multi-threading capabilities, DX11 became a *necessity* if you wanted to push graphics and still get acceptable performance.

I think anybody who doesn't plan on upgrading in the next couple years would probably do better to go for an RX480 because of this. It will still ultimately be a pretty weak card in 3-5 years time, but it will probably be better than the GTX1060 in most new, bigger-name titles at the very least.

 

[HardStyler3]

Dx12 = 1060 minor win when averaged out over benchmarks
Dx11 = 1060 major win (all the time)
Vulcan simply isn't relevant at the moment or over the lifespan of either card.

Heat 1060 win
Power 1060 win
Price well AMD fans need something?

all ******** why you still compare reference rx 480 against custom gtx 1060?

custom against custom dx 12 rx 480 wins by a good amount
dx 11 very slight win for 1060
and i am valueing dx 12 more because its the future

heat kinda the same with good custom cooler
power 1060 wins

so kinda the same for me

dx 12 and freesync make the rx 480 win +8gb vram

 

[h4rm0ny]

if you have a freesync monitor it would make sense to pick the 480,but apart from that the 1060 would be my choice.

Rather that should be "if you have or expect to get one". And the latter is quite likely. Freesync and Gsync give equivalent results in most scenarios. And they're a very nice add if you game at all. So whenever you buy a new monitor, you're likely to either not be willing to pay a lot extra for Gsync or you'll buy one with Freesync because that's a very small premium on the price overall. So going forward people who don't care much will probably buy a monitor with Freesync - OEMs are pretty much adding it to anything that isn't Gsync and why wouldn't they? People who do care will still probably get a Freesync monitor because it's cheaper than Gsync for pretty much the same results. Only ones who will choose a Gsync monitor over a Freesync one will be those who are already invested in Nvidia AND want to spend a significant extra markup on their monitor purchase to use it.

Eventually, Nvidia are going to add Freesync support though they will refuse to admit that right up until the last moment as the instant they concede defeat Gsync sales will collapse.

 

[Geck0]

No, you don't see any logic since you are not adding anything at all apart from making generalisations and even with power consumption you apparently seem funnily obssessed about it,yet come across as a champaign socialist running a desktop system consuming a few 100w at the wall,and using it to argue with me on the internet.

If you are not running a bus powered card,a low power motherboard and CPU,a low power monitor,then I really think you don't care about power consumption.

I really hope you are using a tablet when web browing since you seem obsessed with saving power. Or is that nice big screen worth the extra 30W to 60W at idle??

Plus I love how you were trying to twist the RX480 cards like the Nitro as having issues,and AMD cards running hot.

I love how you also twisted the AMD RX480 card sales too - during the GTX1060 launch week,the RX480 sold more cards at a similar price which is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what I expected. That has nothing to do with exchange rates.

Maybe by proxy Nvidia will sell more GTX1060 6GB cards NOW,since you can't even get enough RX480 AIB cards since they are all on pre-order. Its either the AIB partners failing in production or AMD still massively overselling RX480 cards - WHO KNOWS?? A mystery.

Yet my GTX960 for all its saving the planet still is falling behind the R9 380.

Where is all these async,and DX12 updates promised by Nvidia?? Oh wait the GTX1060 is released - is that the update?

You worry about saving the planet and the few quid a year you won't actually notice. I will worry more about a card which I can use for longer.

But I suppose you will jump onto the GTX2060 by then right?? I would rather not spend £250 on a midrange card every 18 months. That is how long the GTX960 lasted as a current card before it was replaced - a mere 18 months before the GTX1060 was released. So early 2018 for the Volta based GTX2060. Going to be interesting to see how that goes. Hopefully,not how the GTX960 is going now.

The GTX660,GTX660TI,GTX760 and GTX960 all have tended to fare worse than the AMD equivalents. I had two of them - I should know. So now apparently that is going to be totally reversed.

Yes,I will make sure I check the meter when gaming.

What I find hilarious is nVidia shills touting how "green" their cards are for sipping a few less watts when they freely acknowledge (check their upgrade threads out) that the cards they buy have a short life span performance wise and hence they tend to buy new cards every generation or other year.

What they don't take into account is the amount of energy it took to collectively mine, process, ship, refine & distribute the raw materials, then research, test, manufacture, package & redistribute, advertise and then sell & deliver their cards.

Each new card produced & sold represents untold years worth of energy actually consumed by an R9 290, running knackers to the wall mining bitcoin. Before it's even powered up.

Cool & quiet, hahaah.

 

[fastboy]

who said their cards are green?

the480 and 1060 trade blows in most games,performance wise not much in it..now have a think about this one:

you have 2 480's in a shop both the same card
card 1 runs at 80c and draws 180 watts
card 2 runs at 60c and draws 130 watts

give me a good reason for choosing card 1

 

[Seanspeed]

What I find hilarious is nVidia shills

Right then and there I knew what would follow would be total drek.

 

[Seanspeed]

who said their cards are green?

the480 and 1060 trade blows in most games,performance wise not much in it..now have a think about this one:

you have 2 480's in a shop both the same card
card 1 runs at 80c and draws 180 watts
card 2 runs at 60c and draws 130 watts

give me a good reason for choosing card 1

Power draw is important to some and not important to others.

I feel that a lot of is less how much it actually saves them on power and more just pride in knowing their card is using more advanced and efficient architecture.

Either way, it's valid to value this, but it's also valid to not give a damn about it.

 

[fastboy]

power draw isn't really important to me within reason,but again..why would you choose card 1

 

[motiv]

who said their cards are green?

the480 and 1060 trade blows in most games,performance wise not much in it..now have a think about this one:

you have 2 480's in a shop both the same card
card 1 runs at 80c and draws 180 watts
card 2 runs at 60c and draws 130 watts

give me a good reason for choosing card 1

It's 60 quid cheaper to buy?

 

[HRL]

Card 1 is running at 1400Mhz GPU and 2200Mhz RAM?

 

[h4rm0ny]

power draw isn't really important to me within reason,but again..why would you choose card 1

I'm pretty sure the answers have been gone over multiple times already, haven't they? Your question supposes that the cards are have no other distinguishing traits which is false, therefore your question is flawed. The 480 has Freesync (an advantage because it does the same for most people at a much cheaper cost), an expectation of aging better than the 1060 (supportable by both historical analysis and current comparisons of DX11 vs DX12) and you can get a 4GB 480 for substantially less than a 6GB 1060 which is a fair comparison because 4GB is the level you don't want to drop below as the new baseline and gains from 6GB vs. 4GB I expect to be minimal. On this last one, because it may sound confusing, the big concern is to avoid dropping below 4GB as that's where you're going to start running into hard problems (witness recent Doom Vulkan benchmark on the 2GB 380). So if you're looking for a mid-range card, you're aiming for 4GB+, not necessarily 6GB which probably wont matter much - the all important thing is just not to go below 4GB. So the 480 can save you a lot of money.

So three significant advantages listed. All of which get conveniently left out in your hypothetical question.

 

[h4rm0ny]

It's 60 quid cheaper to buy?

Incoming response comparing non-baseline products in 3..2..1...

The important thing with a new card today when it comes to RAM, is that it's 4GB or more. 4GB vs. 6GB isn't going to gain you much. And whether or not that modest gain is worth the extra money is a question for the buyer. But what it does mean is that it's fine to consider the 480 4GB model in this discussion but not fine to consider the 3GB 1060 model because the latter is going to be badly hamstrung over the next eighteen months or so. Only the 6GB 1060 can be considered here whereas both 480s can be.

 

[fastboy]

your basing on reasons to buy the 480 as expectations?...expectations are just that,they are not set in stone,i live for the here and now and what works best now not in 'maybe' a years time.

ahh right the sweet spot just happens to be 4gb...weird that eh

yes if you have a freesync it makes perfect sense to buy a 480,i don't think anyone disputes that.

yes I wouldn't buy the 3gb model and I don't know quite what they were thinking in making that card.

regards the clockspeeds..it doesn't matter what they are card vs card if they both perform the same does it?.

as ive said before,just pick which card you like the look of because your not going to be disappointed with either for the money.