Nvidia has unveiled the GTX 1060, the most affordable member of its Pascal-based graphics card lineup yet. Starting at $250 (UK price TBC, but likely £220), Nvidia claims the GTX 1060 is faster than a GTX 980—a card that costs upwards of $400 (£380)—and features a power-sipping TDP of just 120W. It'll be released worldwide on July 19.

While the full technical details behind the GTX 1060 aren't available just yet, Nvidia has revealed that the card is based on a new GP106 chip, rather than a binned version of the the GP104 chip used in the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. The GTX 1060 sports 1280 CUDA cores, 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8GHz (only a 6GB version will be available), and a boost clock of 1.7GHz that Nvidia claims is easily overclocked to 2GHz and beyond. Power supply is via a single 6-pin connector.

Like the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, the GTX 1060 will be available from manufacturers like Asus, Zotac, and Gigabyte, as well as directly from Nvidia in Founders Edition form at a higher $299 (~£260) price. The extra $50 buys a dual-FET power supply, as well as a similar blower-style cooler to the more expensive Pascal cards, albeit one made out of plastic rather than metal and measuring a shorter 240mm.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/nvidia-gtx-1060-specs-price-release-date/

Seems like a shot right back at AMD - $50 more for allegedly faster performance paired with more power efficient performance - interesting times indeed!

It'll more then likely match a 980, maybe beating it by 5% in favorable scenarios.

If true, would still be good, though $300 for the 6GB is too much imo.

Seems like a good option, hopefully it becomes readily available sooner than these first 2 cards.

Since the 1070 was promised to cost 380 dollars but ended up being around 600 dollars (550 euros) here in Finland, I need to find something cheaper as an upgrade. If the price of the 1060 sets at below 400 euros I might bite. Or then I'll just get a used 980 for even cheaper.

@joe_mccallister: Not all that interesting when there are only 2 GPU manufacturers and one is clearly insanely far ahead of the other.

Oh what I would give for some real competition in the CPU and GPU markets...

This is already tempting me.

Meh ill believe it when i see it, not talking performance but price and availability. This thing will release and sell for what they said the 1070 would imo.

Even if this doesn't bench higher than a 980, it's an upgrade from my 750 Ti. For 1080p, the 1070 is overkill for me, and I don't notice higher levels of anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering anyway. Hopefully the EVGA/MSi/Gigabyte/etc cards will actually be around $250 (give or take $10 or $20) given the current situation of there being no 1070s at the $379 MSRP that Nvidia said there would be, because I'm long overdue for an SSD.

Nvidia already announced the price at $249, they aren't just going to change it. I'm not sure quite what you are trying to get at here. Now if you're saying prices on the secondary market may be higher due to low availability at launch, then of course that's possible just as it is with any product that is in high demand.

If you're suggesting that people are going to pay $379 for a 1060 when they could just wait and get a 1070 for the same price whenever that is in stock, I just don't see that happening except in a very small percentage of edge cases. That doesn't make any sense.

@mike: nah, 250 is bullshit just like 380 and 599. I havent seen first party nvidia sell anything other than the over priced founders editions, so 2nd party would be the only chance for it to sell at that announced price and i have yet to see it on any of the cards. So yeah I'll believe it when i see it.

Wait, wait. How many TFLOPS is it?

4.4 tflops with performance that's supposed to be at or slightly faster than a 980.

The 480 is 5.8tflops with performance that's at or slightly faster than a 980.

Prices of the 1070s are starting to drop down to closer to what they were when announced, I'm thinking that'll prevent the artificial inflation we saw of the 1070's and 1080's and also help alleviate some of the demand on the 1070 from more price conscious folks.

how does it match against the 480x me wonders.

this is great for a shitload of people, but i'm already set on at least a 1070. not that i'm a rich bastard by any means (quite the opposite).

Don't compare nvidia Flops with AMD.

@hmoney001: Don't compare flops in general. Some older generation cards have more flops, but are slower in reality than their newer counterparts with fewer flops.

I hope this thing can be sold for 250. The 1070 is 500+ euro here in the Netherlands and the 1080 700+.

Yeah, i can see that. Obviously the announcement of the GTX 1060 and ist price was something Nvidia was holding back in weaponize form. That is business; and likely business more above-the-boards than in other industries. Yet, it is true that the real price and availability of 1060 will be interesting to watch.

@hassun Well, I think Nvida would not share your lack of faith for where AMD is going. AMD has PS4 and Xbox One chips going into every system, and at least on Sony's side that is a guaranteed 10 million units sold every fiscal year for another three years. AMD has a new deal in China to make semiconductors as a joint venture for the server market over there. On the western side of the consumer market AMD has great CPU/GPU (APU) designs that are very popular on the low-end. Sure on the high-end 'enthusiast side' AMD does not do as well, but they are not doing bad. Their stocks prince has gone up 250% in the past year, not a perfect indicator, but Wall Street is bullish on AMD. So, yeah, I think Nvidia is still very worried about AMD's growth.

This seems like really bad news for AMD, and AMD really can't afford bad news right now. The 480 seemed like a good deal with 970/ 390 performance for $200, but 980/ 390x (maybe even Fury?) performance for $250 could be a great one. Obviously we need to wait for benchmarks.

With the founders edition at $300, we'll not see a $250 card anywhere. They set the price with the founders edition and advertise the MSRP that all of the board partners choose not to meet. In some cases they'll be more than Founders because why would they put out a better card for cheaper? This has already happened with the 1070 and 1080 (not talking about markups and resellers).

Literally just ordered a 1070 a few hours before this was announced. I didn't miss you at all, PC component shopping.

@monkeyking1969: I'll believe in AMD's resurgence when I see it. Also of course this isn't really about APUs but dedicated GPUs and looking at the market share Nvidia has these days...

I don't squabble about graphics cards but I think it's been clear to go nVidia and have for a while. When I'm ready to get a new card, this might be a good option for me.

Not good at all for AMD

AMD Finally did a business move set the imagination of gamers on a budgets on fire, then Nvidia went and did this. Poor AMD

@yesiamaduck: Finally? AMD's been an interesting choice in the 100-250$ segments for years now. Nvidia's solutions were often too expensive or not available. Same thing might happen with the 1060: faster, but more expensive and difficult to get in certain regions.

We need a third party to get into the mix to shake things up, only having 2 choices is just kinda shitty. Same with processors

Too early to say, but could be good bye for AMD.

This is an incredibly dumb question, but I'm curious if the 1060 would give me a noticeable difference from the AMD 7870 I'm running now. I know it's an older card, but is it worth the upgrade?

@albedos_shadow: Yes.

Which CPU do you have?

"Secondary market?" What's the primary market? Fact is MSRP means nothing when they don't provide a reference model, meaning the Founder's MSRP is the effective price for the base model.

AMD is not going anywhere. They've been a pretty clear choice for years when it comes to budget builds. It's easy to look at charts and see green team cards at the top but that $60 difference between a r9 390 and a 970 was not a non factor.

I think I've lost all sympathy for AMD a while ago. They need to get their act together and start competing. I don't know how, maybe hire new people, merge with some company, throw pinata parties every friday to raise morale - but they need to get back in the race because they're not even on the same track anymore.

@hmoney001: An i5-3570K at 3.40hz

1060 definitely an upgrade over a 7870. It would've been an upgrade over my 7950, I opted for a 1070 though.

Don't expect to see 250 at launch, but I bought my 1070 for 400; near "msrp". Could be a lot of third parties around the 250-275 space. For the people wanting to spend more on the 480 8gb for the bigger memory, if it's worth it(more memory on lower end cards usually never is, could be worth more here), the 1060 is going to be very competitive.

Unfortunately, as the GTX 1070 and 1080 have already shown, these will not be priced at MSRP. Expect pricing above $300.

AMD can't seem to catch a break these days. I haven't been happy with any of AMD's cards or their drivers, but I want them to at least be somewhat of a player. If there is no one to contest them, Nvidia will continue to charge out the nose for their mid&high-range cards.

Just got my Strix 1070 OC today.

I think I'm good.

@john1912: AMD are doing pretty well since they have their chips powering both the Xbone and PS4.

They really aren't, at all. AMD hasn't made a profit in awhile and showed a net loss of $107 million in the first quarter of 2016 alone, and it wasn't any much better in the previous quarter either. This same period last year they reported a loss of $187 million.

I feel amd should either sell off their cpu or gpu department. Seems like they bit off too much when they bought out ati, they need to focus on making at least one of their products competitive.

I'm surprised AMD are actually still in business, is their low end stuff selling well?

They've been behind Intel for over a decade and behind Nvidia since the 8800 GTS/GTX cards (so a decade).

It's kind of funny because the opposite was true for quite a while, I distinctly remember the AMD 64 CPUs running circles around Pentium. I don't remember the name of the GPUs that were beating out Nvidia (who had an awful '5' series if I remember correctly) but ATi/AMD were winning there too.

GTX 980s are still $400 plus, GTX 1070s are $430 plus, and the cheapest GTX 1080 is $700 though out of stock pretty much everywhere. DON'T quite believe the hype surrounding the price of these cards because there is no indication what so ever these prices are coming down to what their ACTUALLY advertised for a long time yet.... The AMD 480X is quite the option right now but I'm dissapointed with its lack of power, but it is what, a $200 card? but at least it is sold at its advertised price......

There is no way in hell, a GTX 1060 will be sold at its advertised price at launch. Bare that in mind when thinking about upgrading you might want to wait closer to Thanksgiving/Christmas time before getting your upgrades.

There was a rumor floating around for quite some time last year that Microsoft was in talks to buy AMD, business wise AMD is hurting right now. I've been looking at buying a card recently and looked into the 480, unfortunately it doesn't seem all is good with it.

Bench marks are fine, price seems like a steal, but the chip has basically no headroom,. and a lot of them are having power draw issues. They are using way too much power, pulling way too much from the PCIe slot and that is no good. Potentially system damaging flaws aren't a good thing on a new card.

The 1060 seems interesting, but it is hard to say until we see real numbers. I'm a bit less optimistic on it than most.

I'm not super into what AMD is selling, and it's hard to imagine the 1060 being super amazing. I'll probably just get a 1070 or 980ti, they will survive to fight a bit longer anyway.

@pixelrat: The power 'issues' (more cards draw more power than advised from the PCI-e slot, it's not such a big deal unless the rest of your hardware is really, really bad) were fixed in a driver. And with custom RX 480's you will get a much better cooler (the reference one is as cheap as they could go) and an 8 pin connector (which can draw 150W safely on its own).

Anyway, the GTX1060 3GB is rumoured to be a bit less powerful than the 6GB version (not that you should get a videocard with less than 4GB these days).

@pixelrat: AMD fixed the power draw issue, but if you're seriously considering something in the $400 range than yeah, I don't think the 480 or 1060 are going to be for you.

@oursin_360: I read a few articles over the last few months that the Radeon wing of AMD is trying to spin off as ATI, free of AMD. The current head of Radeon Raja Koduri got control of the graphics division by threatening to leave for Intel. Rumors are that he might be holding back tech from AMD and is trying to get ATI free from their grasp and possibly go to Intel.

This sounds like something some weird ATI fanboy would say on a reddit thread. The idea that they are holding back technology is absolutely crazy; like, not even in the realm of possibility crazy.

@mcfart: I got a rx 480 instead i always build dual graphics card builds because it lets me game at ultra longer. Also selling my dual 280x cards lets me only pay for one 480. So it only cost me 240 dollars for two rx 480 cards. Not letting you sli the 1060 makes it a no sale for me. That card is going to get old fast since nividia loves to nerf their cards performance to make you upgrade faster.

The 480 and the 1060 are essentially the same price here, so the 480 no longer seems that special.