When AMD announced its RX 480, it made it clear the new Polaris family would target the mainstream market rather than the high end. Nvidia launched the GTX 1060 in response, and the 1060 generally outpaces the RX 480, albeit at a higher price point. Now, Nvidia has launched a new GTX 1060 at $200 to compete against AMD’s lower-end 4GB RX 480 — but despite calling it a 1060, there are some important differences.
As for the GPU’s overall competitive performance, it’s roughly what you’d expect from a near-GTX 1060 at this point. In DX12 titles, AMD’s RX 480 tends to outperform the 1060, sometimes by large amounts. The RX 480 8GB is typically faster than the 1060 3GB across both DX11 and DX12, especially when resolutions rise and the 1060 3GB runs into frame buffer trouble. There are multiple titles where the gap between the 1060 3GB and 6GB starts off relatively small, but grows as resolution rises — suggesting the 3GB RAM buffer may not be quite enough for gaming in 2016, at least not beyond 1080p.
Data and graph by Guru3D
Source: Nvidia quietly launches new GTX 1060 3GB
