GTX 1060 Vs RX 480 - head to head showdown

[humbug]

Based on the recent reviews of the aib cards - there's no denying that the gtx 1060 wouldn'tbe the better card; it uses less power, which results in less noise, and overclocks higher, which means it will probably perform better or even similarly to the rx 480 in dx 12 games. Given it already has a pretty darn good performance advantage in dx11 I'd say this seals the fate of the rx 480 as the worse card of the two (sadly).

I would wait for official benchmarks before drawing any conclusions but having said that AIB reviews so far seem to put the RX 480 in a much better light, even in DX11.

It seems to be getting huge gains from a just proper cooler and a small overclock.

At the top of this page there are slides where the RX 480 OC beats the 1060 @ 2100Mhz more often than not, in Doom its some 35% faster, thats a massive win for the 480.

 

[dasBOT]

more dx12/vulcan titles better for amd, 1060 is direct competitor now but in half a year people who bought 1060 will regret not to pick 480

 

[Marine-RX179]

In the past 2 years I've owned 2x GTX 970's, 2x MSI 8Gb 290x's, a GTX 980 and two Titan-X's.
I still have the 980 in my spare rig and the two Titan-X's in my main PC. The two 290x's I sold after 8 days of ownership. They were rubbish, and ran straight up to 90 degree's, within 2 minutes of gaming.

I'm no Nvidia fanboy as my previous 3 cards were all AMD but the crap drivers forced me to sell my 7990, which up till then was a great card. It crashed my PC after 10 seconds of startup. The only way to fix it was to roll back to old drivers. Even after 3 driver updates.

Sorry, but it would seem your problem with AMD is more to do with the reference coolers or having two custom cards in Crossfire in an average airflow case or with the two card sitting too close together, and also driver support for crossfire?

My 290x was reference too, and increase fanspeed to 55% in a PC case with good airflow, the temp didn't exceed 85C even after half hour of Heaven Bench loop. I did however upgrade the cooler to a Gelid Icy Vision 2 not long after, and the temp did not exceed 65C on average. Now I am using the Corsair HG10A bracket with a Corsair AIO cooler, and temp generally don't even exceed 50C

One of the reasons why the 290 is much hotter running is because it has the necessary hardware with forward thinking to support new and upcoming tech, whereas Nvidia designed their cards in a way wanting the users to upgrade again asap (in particular with how their cards performance are heavily software driven instead of hardware driven). Their cards performance has a "best before date" (like food and drinks) which the peak performance deteriorate when they driver teams move onto working on new architecture. Take your 980 for example, it will still perform at it's peak performance for old and existing games, however for new titles released after EOL, performance WILL drop and it would be down to 970 level, or even lower down soon enough. I mean just take a good look at 780Ti for example...it was released after the 290 series and was faster than them (was faster than the 970 also), but now in newer titles it lag such a margin behind behind them it ain't even funny.

 

[flopper]

One of the reasons why the 290 is much hotter running is because it has the necessary hardware with forward thinking to support new and upcoming tech, whereas Nvidia designed their cards in a way wanting the users to upgrade again asap (in particular with how their cards performance are heavily software driven instead of hardware driven). Their cards performance has a "best before date" (like food and drinks) which the peak performance deteriorate when they driver teams move onto working on new architecture. Take your 980 for example, it will still perform at it's peak performance for old and existing games, however for new titles released after EOL, performance WILL drop and it would be down to 970 level, or even lower down soon enough. I mean just take a good look at 780Ti for example...it was released after the 290 series and was faster than them (was faster than the 970 also), but now in newer titles it lag such a margin behind behind them it ain't even funny.

same performance equals same experience but overall for the future amd wins as they hold value better long term.

 

[Scougar]

What I just don't get about the 480, is that sometimes it is way ahead of the other AMD cards (and occasionally the 1060), but then on the other end it is severely lagging behind things like the 970/390.

It's like a jekyll and hyde card. But why?

In Crysis 3 it isn't even beating a 290 for example (Techpowerup review of Asus Strix 480). What the heck is up with that? Same with Battlefield 4. Many other examples.

Just drivers, or something else?

 

[humbug]

What I just don't get about the 480, is that sometimes it is way ahead of the other AMD cards (and occasionally the 1060), but then on the other end it is severely lagging behind things like the 970/390.

It's like a jekyll and hyde card. But why?

In Crysis 3 it isn't even beating a 290 for example (Techpowerup review of Asus Strix 480). What the heck is up with that? Same with Battlefield 4. Many other examples.

Just drivers, or something else?

Those games, i know especially Crysis 3 use a lot of GPGPU compute, that can heat up the GPU, the reference cooler on the RX 480 can throttle <100Mhz in most things, could be more in Crysis 3.
The Cooler in like an old Athlon CPU cooler

Best thing is to wait for AIB cooled reviews.

 

[puppetworx]

I think they gave up on driver optimization in favour of "close to the metal" APIs (Mantle) because it is cheaper for them if they have game developers doing the work (and they're doing it anyway for consoles). The result is good performance in DX12 and Vulkan but poor performance in DX11 and OpenGL.

Nvidia on the other side seem very optimization focussed for big games. People have been complaining recently that whenever Nvidia release a new architecture the 'old' cards performance disappoints in new games because no more optimization is done for them.

 

[humbug]

I think they gave up on driver optimization in favour of "close to the metal" APIs (Mantle) because it is cheaper for them if they have game developers doing the work (and they're doing it anyway for consoles). The result is good performance in DX12 and Vulkan but poor performance in DX11 and OpenGL.

Nvidia on the other side seem very optimization focussed for big games. People have been complaining recently that whenever Nvidia release a new architecture the 'old' cards performance disappoints in new games because no more optimization is done for them.

I'd say it more about AMD concentrating on the future while Nvidia on the here and now.

Look at Hawaii XT, it used to lag behind the 780TI, its been killing it in the last couple of years, hell even the 7970 is just about a match for the 780 these days. who would have thought that would ever happen?

In DX12 and Vulkan AMD are killing Nvidia more often than not, Nvidia just aren't working well with those new API's, AMD are.

 

[Poneros]

Whenever you look at reviews notice how the majority of tested games are gimpworks titles. Very few only assess a more neutral selection - where amusingly enough AMD wins. Fancy that!

 

[Gerard]

You have to admit, that cooler has to have been a penny pitchers option. Seems so bizarre a choice, with the money on the board they seem to have spent, then tried to claw it back with a terrible cooler.

The cooler on the 1060 is pretty much the same, just has a slightly thicker copper section.

 

[humbug]

Whenever you look at reviews notice how the majority of tested games are gimpworks titles. Very few only assess a more neutral selection - where amusingly enough AMD wins. Fancy that!

Nvidia can pick and chose who they send stuff to, if Reviewers want that stuff they had better well do as they are told.

 

[z10m]

Those games, i know especially Crysis 3 use a lot of GPGPU compute, that can heat up the GPU, the reference cooler on the RX 480 can throttle <100Mhz in most things, could be more in Crysis 3.
The Cooler in like an old Athlon CPU cooler

Best thing is to wait for AIB cooled reviews.

Reference RX 480 throttles not only due to the temperature but also if not mostly due to the power limit.

 

[SouthEastBlue]

OK I've been on a graphics card merry go round lately, but I'm gonna buy new (want a low power card really) so it's either a a cheaper £250 GTX 1060 like the mini EVGA one or an RX480 Nitro/Devil.

Is there a clear winner?

 

[jimferno]

OK I've been on a graphics card merry go round lately, but I'm gonna buy new (want a low power card really) so it's either a a cheaper £250 GTX 1060 like the mini EVGA one or an RX480 Nitro/Devil.

Is there a clear winner?

GTX 1060 uses less power and performs better in DX11 titles.

RX480 performs better in DX12 titles.

Bit of a toss up, neither seems better overall than the other atm. You'll be paying roughly the same for a decent version of either card too.

 

[h4rm0ny]

OK I've been on a graphics card merry go round lately, but I'm gonna buy new (want a low power card really) so it's either a a cheaper £250 GTX 1060 like the mini EVGA one or an RX480 Nitro/Devil.

Is there a clear winner?

Clear? No. On balance? 480.

 

[old gamer]

OK I've been on a graphics card merry go round lately, but I'm gonna buy new (want a low power card really) so it's either a a cheaper £250 GTX 1060 like the mini EVGA one or an RX480 Nitro/Devil.

Is there a clear winner?

Well the 1060 uses less power if that's your main concern.
Both cards will serve you well and there are different reasons to buy the 480 or 1060.
For me I think I would go with the nitro/devil 480 as I think vulkan and dx12 would swing it for me

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Get a 480, and wait for all its games that its going to perform much better than the 1060 in (supposedly), as no point in getting the 1060, when it gives that great performance here in the now, just play the waiting game, can always just play DOOM while your waiting.

 

[Gregster]

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Get a 480, and wait for all its games that its going to perform much better than the 1060 in (supposedly), as no point in getting the 1060, when it gives that great performance here in the now, just play the waiting game, can always just play DOOM while your waiting.

And then like my GTX660(against the HD7870) and GTX960(and the HD7870) performance goes down the pan and its why from trading blows with a R9 380,the GTX960 now gets thrashed Gameworks titles like The Division.


Plus after trying Doom under Vulkan and the fact OpenGL works better - LMAO. That is from Bethesda and iD who are close to Nvidia,like Ubisoft was with The Division.

I expected some performance degradation with my GTX960 4GB against a R9 380. Happening within nine months was a record.

It was a bloody joke when sodding ARK ran better on my mates R9 280 at Christmas.

But I suppose that is why some of you tend to spend £400+ on cards,right?? None of you actually game on cheaper cards and its bloody annoying poorly my card has aged against the R9 380 and I suspect some of you made similar jibes against it then too.



Plus, where is the async driver for my GTX960 - I am still waiting for months now.

Edit!!

It gets better:

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/02/16/vulkan-graphics-api/

The Vulkan Graphics API Is Here—and Your NVIDIA GPU Is Ready

They said that in February - apparently not ready yet??

You want to tell me when it is ready??

So no async driver for Maxwell yet??

No Vulkan driver yet??

Yet apparently AMD got one out for Doom??

From the pro-AMD developers id and Bethesda.

That is why Nvidia was boasting about Doom when showing off the GTX1080.

Oh,but you knew that right?

LMAO,but lets make excuses for Nvidia.

 

[Griffildur]

How long have you used that 960 and how long has it served you well?

The fact that only now some other card is better makes no difference. Nobody cares that in several years from now, this or that will be better. By then we will get other things.

Get something good to last you for years and perform well in everything not in just one game, nobody cares about promises of good things to come at some unspecified point in the future. We have games to play in the meanwhile!