GTX 1060 Vs RX 480 - head to head showdown

[SiDeards73]

For people on a 3 year upgrade cycle (and there are many) Future performance is more important then what is the norm today.

Getting a 1060 doesn't make any sense in that regard

True this, very true. For people who only upgrade on a 3+ year cycle, looking ahead is much more important than looking at the hear and now, why by something for right now if it struggles next year, you got a few more years of even worse performance ahead?

 

[Jono8]

For people on a 3 year upgrade cycle (and there are many) Future performance is more important then what is the norm today.

Getting a 1060 doesn't make any sense in that regard

But there are what, 4 or 5 DX12 games that favour AMD compared to the whole rest of the PC games library.

You could argue getting an RX480 just to get a bit better performance in a handful of games (which you may or may not even play) doesnt make any sense.

For the record i think both cards are equally good choices at their price points.

 

[Nasher]

AMD tend to support old cards for much longer as well. Nvidia pretty much ditch the previous gen the day the next one comes out. As we saw with the 780, performance took a nose dive once the 9xx series was released :/

So a 480 does make more sense for long term use.

 

[Gregster]

For people on a 3 year upgrade cycle (and there are many) Future performance is more important then what is the norm today.

Getting a 1060 doesn't make any sense in that regard

True this, very true. For people who only upgrade on a 3+ year cycle, looking ahead is much more important than looking at the hear and now, why by something for right now if it struggles next year, you got a few more years of even worse performance ahead?

That still doesn't make sense. Will those people not be interested in what performance they will be getting in DX11 as well then? I would want to know how a card I am possibly purchasing will perform in DX11/DX12/OGL/Vulkan and get as much info as possible. There is a whole stream of games coming over the next 3 years and they will mostly be DX11.

 

[Feoilban]

For the record i think both cards are equally good choices at their price points.

And which card would you buy today knowing that your next GPU purchase is 3 years down the road ?

 

[Gregster]

AMD tend to support old cards for much longer as well. Nvidia pretty much ditch the previous gen the day the next one comes out. As we saw with the 780, performance took a nose dive once the 9xx series was released :/

So a 480 does make more sense for long term use.

I will quote me from yesterday, as this seems relevant.

ohhh, one thing I do remember though and quite important this really and a plus for AMD (maybe?) There has been a couple of drivers in the last few years and forgive me if my memory is wrong but I am sure someone will remind me.... 12.11 was the big GCN driver that gave AMD's 7xxx a big boost in frames, that came out 10 months after the 7970 launch and showed what the 7970 was capable of. It smashed up the 680 in most games and was like a new card for those that had 7970s. Next came the Crimson drivers more recently and they gave the 2xx/3xx/fury series a nice boost that was similar to the 12.11 drivers. Now NVidia either have great optimisation from the off (I think this is the case) or they rarely bother with any optimisations and what you see is what you get. People claim that NVidia gimp divers but what they are missing is there isn't any gimping, it is AMD improving and giving their customers the performance they paid for.

Funny old world but I am trying as hard today as yesterday

 

[Feoilban]

That still doesn't make sense. Will those people not be interested in what performance they will be getting in DX11 as well then? I would want to know how a card I am possibly purchasing will perform in DX11/DX12/OGL/Vulkan and get as much info as possible. There is a whole stream of games coming over the next 3 years and they will mostly be DX11.

Is DX11 performance much worse on an AIB 480 that it justifies to buy a 1060 ? I don't think so .... Knowing that I tend to look ahead in regards to future proofing, An AIB 480 is the most logic buy for me

 

[Nexus18]

I am pretty much done with games atm (especially with summer being here now), the only games that I still play are gta 5 & battlefield 4 + division every now and then and unfortunately there isn't a great deal coming out for me over the next several months so I would definitely want the best future proofing there is and ATM, that is AMD in my eyes... But then as you can probably guess, I am not one to go back and replay a lot of games, especially single player games with the odd exception i.e. batman arkham series, which don't exactly require beastly setups in the first place. With AMD being EA and UBIs sponsor, I wouldn't be surprised to see quite a few big titles using dx 12 and/or vulkan this year and next year...

As we have seen with previous AMD cards and drivers, they will probably get more performance over time due to getting better optimisation from the hardware. Sure nvidia "could" provide the wonder driver that will get the same leap in performance for dx 12 titles but as has been said already by both sides, nvidia usually get the best from their drivers on day 1 and they work very closely with game developers and so on yet... there are now quite a few dx 12 titles out and only more will be coming so why aren't we seeing these drivers now? Especially when AMD cards that are 2+ years older are making nvidias newer and more powerful cards in dx 11 "overall" i.e. 290(x) VS 970/980/780/780ti/titan look a bit poor in comparison when it comes to dx 12.

I haven't included vulkan as OGL drivers for AMD has always been atrocious so you can't really say for sure about the performance leap until nvidia get vulkan working properly.

Although that statement by the doom developers seems a bit odd:

We are working with NVIDIA to enable asynchronous compute in Vulkan on NVIDIA GPUs. We hope to have an update soon

Didn't they demonstrate vulkan on the 1080 first? Don't Bethesda and nvidia have a good relationship from all their previous games? Why use the words "we hope"? To me that sounds like they aren't exactly sure that they can get the best from vulkan for nvidia gpus and are just "hoping" for the best

And as people always say, nvidia usually get the very best from their cards/drivers on day 1 and if not, they are usually pretty quick to get a hotfix/patch or whatever within the week.

So for short term, 1060, if you plan on keeping the card for 2+ years then the 480 imo.

I'm just glad I went with the 290 over the 780/970 looking at a lot of the latest games especially dx 12 titles

 

[fastboy]

I bought a 1060..very happy with it.

do I wish I had bought a 480..nope,either one would have been perfect for me,i bought what was in stock.

I don't care about 2 years time,i might be dead or not even gaming by then,i care about now.

the 480 may be light years ahead of the 1060 in 2 years who knows..do I care,no

just be happy with what you have got..i bet 90% of the people arguing over these cards don't even own one lol

 

[Gregster]

And which card would you buy today knowing that your next GPU purchase is 3 years down the road ?

Is DX11 performance much worse on an AIB 480 that it justifies to buy a 1060 ? I don't think so .... Knowing that I tend to look ahead in regards to future proofing, An AIB 480 is the most logic buy for me

From your posts, I would say grab a 480. Of course DX11 performance isn't much worse on the 480 and neither is the 1060s DX12 performance much worse than the 480.

I understand where you are coming from and we justify to ourselves what we buy.

 

[justwondering]

The problem with Vulkan for Nvidia is that AMD gave the team Mantle which the team then developed into Vulkan, I imagine Vulkan is always going to favour AMD which is fair in a unfair way.

 

[Gregster]

The problem with Vulkan for Nvidia is that AMD gave the team Mantle which the team then developed into Vulkan, I imagine Vulkan is always going to favour AMD which is fair in a unfair way.

Indeed however it will take time for NVidia to get to grips with it. AMD were working on Mantle for years before their own cards were using it. I sure hope it doesn't take NVidia that long though

 

[willb1967]

So I'm looking for a new graphics card in the 200-250 quid range and thought I'd check the forums while I watched the stock on the main site... some of these threads are a ridiculous.

I currently write software that uses D3D12 as a part of my living (AMA on root sigs, descriptor tables etc. if you like), not cryengine mods or unity/unreal with D3D12 support, but actually work with the API directly.

Futuremark didn't mess up.

In D3D12 you build command lists on the GPU and submit them to command queues for execution. There is no vendor specific way to submit command lists. There is no AMD async path and/or Nvidia Async path. You execute your graphics lists on a direct queue, and typically submit any compute command lists on a compute queue. Then if the hardware supports some form of async you'll get a lower frametime than submitting everything only to the direct queue.

It is true that you can and sometimes should tailor your render path to different hardware to improve performance in D3D12. That's also been true in D3D11. There are things you can do that unfairly cripple one vendor's performance while the other handles it fine. Some hardware prefers shared data in a constant buffer, while other GPUs work faster if you put that data in a 1D buffer. Some lose half their export rate if you render to certain buffer formats, and others **** the bed if you pass more than 64 bytes between shader stages, or pass a non-multiple of 16 bytes.

I already stated there's no alternative method to submit compute commands that favours one vendor in D3D12. But you could conceivably change the commands themselves depending on the detected hardware. Maybe one vendor prefers a larger or smaller threadgroup size, or whatever. That's a separate render path isn't it? So what are you now measuring in your benchmark, the performance of different hardware or the performance of different threadgroup sizes? You can't fault Futuremark for making the hardware/drivers the only variables in a hardware benchmark.

I hope you guys get past this whole "that's not real async" thing. Go look around beyond3d and see what known developers think of it - https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/no-dx12-software-is-suitable-for-benchmarking-spawn.58013/page-17

All I wanted was to read some discussion about the 480 vs 1060 to help me decide, I didn't expect to see so many pages on AMDs very specific meaning of asynchronous or how mistaken futuremark are.

Informative post. Makes a lot of sense with regard to the benchmark software.
I was looking at the same price range but decided on a Fury at £299 on here which I thought was a great price (I have a FreeSync monitor…)

All things being equal…
If you were coding for a game, as opposed to a benchmark, to be released on Xbox1, PS4, MS Windows (D12 or Vulkan). What would you likely be doing with the compute commands with regard to async compute, given the underlying hardware in the consoles is mostly identical, and how would that reflect on the Windows PC release?

 

[Mr Latte]

Do people stop playing DX11 games now then as well?

Clearly the DX11 orientated gamer should buy the 1060, simple isnt it. Although why not a 980ti on clearance for not much more (£342) if DX11 and new features are not important...

Can you please provide a list of 2016/2017 titles that are going to be only DX11, it would be appreciated, you said their are loads.
Seems many devs/studios are moving forward...

Yet people that dismiss the benefit the 480 clearly has with more potential for new titles and future proof solution. Some people may not want to be buying a new card every 12 months unlike many of you here so their decision requires looking more forward than backwards.

AMD clearly have the better strategy it seems going forward for future titles, lower price point and offer people much cheaper Freesync monitors as well.

 

[RavenXXX2]

480 is way better choice if you're looking keep it for a few years, the 1060 is a bit crippled.

 

[Gregster]

Clearly the DX11 orientated gamer should buy the 1060, simple isnt it. Although why not a 980ti on clearance for not much more if DX11 and new features are not important...

Yet people that dismiss the benefit the 480 clearly has with more potential for new titles and future proof solution. Some people may not want to be buying a new card every 12 months unlike many of you here so their decision requires looking more forward than backwards.

AMD clearly have the better strategy it seems going forward for future titles, lower price point and offer people much cheaper Freesync monitors as well.

I have said and still maintain that either will do you proud. I would be happy with either if I was gaming at 1080P in genuine honesty but the one thing that irks me is the notion that NVidia can't do DX12/Async etc and therefore the 480 is the better option. I just try to explain that things take time and not a few days either to get running and working well.

And I said a couple of days ago, there is a £160 price difference between the same sort of spec G-Sync and Freesync screen, so that really does make the Freesync + 480 combo look a really attractive buy.

 

[Nexus18]

AMD clearly have the better strategy it seems going forward for future titles, lower price point and offer people much cheaper Freesync monitors as well.

+1

I posted something similar a while ago that summed up my feelings regarding g/free sync, the same also applies to this whole dx 11 vs low level APIs (assuming that nvidia don't get the proper utilisation of "full" dx 12 and vulkan):

^^

+1

Regarding that, an article I linked elsewhere summed up my feelings about this whole free/g sync business:

Look for weaknesses that present opportunities. “It’s important to understand your rival’s weak spots and strategy,” says Will Ethridge, Pearson Education’s former CEO. “I knew one rival whose CEO was focused on driving profitability and bringing up margins. I knew that meant he would be relatively focused on short-term results while mostly ignoring product development. I also realized he would go after our top sales people to meet those short-term sales goals. So we worked extra hard to protect our key sales people. At the same time, we continued to invest in long-term product development and overseas markets, knowing it was unlikely he could follow us in the short term.”

https://hbr.org/2014/07/ceos-get-to-know-your-rivals/

It just seems odd that they are struggling to get the best from dx 12 when they were suppose to be working with microsoft in getting the best before dx 12 was even announced to the public, some even been saying that they were working on it with Microsoft before AMD were...

 

[Gregster]

480 is way better choice if you're looking keep it for a few years, the 1060 is a bit crippled.

Explain why the 1060 is crippled?

 

[fastboy]

getting popcorn

 

[southernorth]

I am eagerly awaiting the first non-reference comparison between the 1060 and 480. Is great that they are almost identical in price, but as always stock shortages might push these up once again.

I think the 1060 retains its lead, overall, in these future tests, but only very slightly. The choice then becomes entirely DX12/Vulcan related.