Introduction
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GT OC
Pretty darn good value for 249 USD
In this article we'll review the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GT OC 6GB model, aimed at the budget minded consumer this card is much cheaper (249 USD) compared to the GAMING edition, yet comes factory overclocked but not with the niche things like RGB LED system, backplates and premium cooler.
The new GeForce GTX 1060 is once again based on Pascal, fabbed at a 16 nm node with fins baby. As it turns out, the smaller 16 nm FinFET fabrication process works out really well for Nvidia. The 1070 and 1080 have been a high clocked success story ever since their launch. Meanwhile the GeForce GTX 1060 really wasn't supposed to be launched already. But you guys can thank AMD for that, the Radeon RX 480 release definitely made some eye-browses frown at team green. Originally the 1060 was planned and due for release at the end of the summer, however again... 16 nm works out well for Nvidia and they very simply moved forward the introduction as starting today you will spot the GTX 1060 in the stores. Again high clocks, again nice memory configurations (8 GHz effective BTW) and again a product series that will be massively interesting.
It's never been a busier Summer, but hey, we aim to please and as such today we offer a review on the reference card from Nvdia. Nvidia definitely stepped it up as cooling wise we do not see the cheaper plastic designs, the 1060 will receive something similar to the 1070/1080 founder edition coolers as well. The GeForce GTX 1060 might have the GP106 GPU housed on its PCB. Where the GeForce GTX 1080 has 2,560 shader processors and the GeForce GTX 1070 with its 1,920 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1060 has 1,280 of them. This means it is has 10 SMs active (10 streaming multi-processors x (2x64) 128 shader cores). The cards will be equipped with properly fast memory as well, you can choose either a 3 GB or 6 GB model, though we strongly recommend the 6 GB models to be a bit more future proof. That memory is tied towards a 192-bit wide bus locked in at 2,000 MHz which is 8 GHz (GDDR5-effective) at a memory bandwidth of 192 GB/s.
- GeForce GTX 1080 offers just over 9 TFLOP/s Single-precision floating point performance
- GeForce GTX 1070 offers just over 6 TFLOP/s Single-precision floating point performance
- GeForce GTX 1060 offers just over 4 TFLOP/s Single-precision floating point performance
If you combine the specs you can already tell that the 1060 will be a terrific card in the 1080P domain, and even at monitor resolutions of 2560x1440 this card should hold up really well with GTA-V, Total War Warhammer, The Division and many other game hip 'n trendy titles.
In this review we'll have a look at the GeForce GTX 1060 6GT OC edition from MSI. The graphics card is the budget model, but still manages to impress. The temperature of this card will sit at 65 degrees C under full load, and just remains incredibly silent. Next to that the card has been factory tweaked for you to a boost clock of 1759 MHz. The card is fitted with just a 6-pin power connector but we'll still pass the 2.0 GHz marker when we tweak this feisty unit.
MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GT OC edition with the Nvidia GP106-A1 GPU ( OC Mode - 1,544 MHz core / 1,759 MHz boost / 8 GHz memory )
