1050Ti or 1060 3GB?

jawlesspython04 · Mar 26, 2018

I can purchase the most expensive 1050 Ti in my country (Asus ROG Strix 1050Ti) or the least expensive 1060 3GB (Gigabyte GTX 1060 3GB Windforce OC) for the same price. Which one should i go for? I know that the 1060 is faster but wouldn't the 4GB VRAM be beneficial? Also, the price of the 1050Ti has significantly dropped. Same goes for the 1060 (both variants).

If needed, my PC specs currently are:
i7 920 2.67GHz
8GB RAM
GTX 750 Ti
475W PSU

My motherboard does not support CPU Overclocking. (X58 Chipset)
Right now i have a 1366x768 19" Monitor but will be getting a 1080p monitor soon. Won't be going 1440p or 4K Anytime soon. 1080p is more than enough for me.

Lutfij · Mar 26, 2018

GTX1050Ti 4GB or GTX1060 6GB. Not the 3GB version. Where are you located?

theyeti87 · Mar 26, 2018

Side question - What X58 chipset board are you on that doesn't allow overclocking?

WildCard999 · Mar 26, 2018

Without knowing the exact model of the PSU I'd go for the 1050 ti which is enough for your current monitor and when you make that step up to 1080P. Also I wouldn't buy the most expensive one, the least expensive one compared to that Asus Strix is probably minimal so if you can save some money going with a cheaper one I'd highly recommend doing so as you can use the money saved for a new monitor or other upgrade.

InvalidError · Mar 26, 2018

The 3GB 1060 may get memory-bound before you can push details high enough to make full use of its processing power in newer games which tend to use a fair amount more VRAM. Either save a while longer for the 6GB version or go with the 1050Ti.

theyeti87 · Mar 26, 2018

Given that you are currently under 1080 resolution and plan to go no further than that, I would suggest the 1050Ti as the best bang for your buck. Its a big step up from a 750Ti.

feelinfroggy777 · Mar 26, 2018

The 1060 3gb is a better card than the 1050ti. Forget about the extra gb of VRAM. The 1050ti is not fast enough to make good use all of the VRAM it has. To get a stable 60fps on the 1050ti, detail settings will have to be at medium. For most games, setting the detail settings at medium will not require more than 3gb of VRAM. If you are targeting high settings at 30fps, then there may be some cases where you would see an advantage with the 1050ti. But those would be limited.

With all that being said, I would save for a little longer and get the 1060 6gb. There is a big difference between the two 1060 models.

InvalidError · Mar 26, 2018

feelinfroggy777 :

Depends on the game. FFXV PC will use at least 4GB of VRAM if you play at anything beyond the lowest details.

Also, the i7-920 may be too low on single-threaded performance to play many modern games particularly well.

feelinfroggy777 · Mar 26, 2018

InvalidError :

He will have to play on the low setting with the 1050ti for Final Fantasy XV anyway, so the extra VRAM will sit idle. What good does having the extra VRAM do if the card cant push the fps in the first place? That is the whole point.

cryoburner · Mar 26, 2018

A 1060 3GB will get on average nearly 50% higher frame rates in most demanding games at 1080p. At the same price, going with the 1060 3GB would be the best option. The lower VRAM might affect performance in a few current, and some future games, but that most likely can be worked around by lowering texture settings a bit. It will likely be harder to work around the 1050 Ti's lower overall performance, and already many games will need to have their settings significantly lowered to run well on a 1050 Ti. The 6GB version of the 1060 will undoubtedly be better though, as in addition to the extra memory, it also has around 10% more processing cores, making it around 10% faster than the 3GB version, even when the memory limit doesn't come into play.

Of course, I agree that there's little point in going for the "most expensive" 1050 Ti. If you want a 1050 Ti, look to the least expensive ones. The biggest difference between different versions of the cards comes down to the cooler, and being only a 75 watt card, that's not going to matter much for the 1050 Ti.

geofelt · Mar 26, 2018

Either will be a nice upgrade over the GTX750ti.
I would pick the GTX1060 over the gtx1050ti.
You are looking at 1152 CUDA cores vs. 768.
This assumes that your 475w psu is of decent quality and has a 6 pin pcie connector that a GTX1060 requires.

As to vram, that should probably not be a selection criteria.
Here is my rationale for that:
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, and by the game. There may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
And differences between games.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
A more current set of tests shows the same results:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/page5.html

And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.

budgetgamer12345 · Mar 26, 2018

The GTX 1060 3GB should do the job and is actually 34% better.
As techpowerup suggests even the 3GB version handles at most games high settings at 1080P with decent FPS.
Here is the proof:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/2926/geforce-gtx-1060-3-gb
http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1060-3GB-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti/3646vs3649

If you scroll down a bit at gpu.userbenchmark you see how much the FPS difference between the GTX 1060 3GB and the GTX 1050 TI.
The more VRAM doesn't mean that the GPU is actually better.
I still own a GTX 660 OEM with only 1.5GB GDDR5 and at GTA 5 it is using 2800ish MB VRAM, no problems with it no texture poppings or something called like that and got a decent framerates above 60FPS mostly.
As i have learned here from Tom'sHardware, if your gpu is running out of VRAM it is using your ram then as VRAM, but at way more slower speeds. But with this i am not 100% sure about it.

But my advice is get the GTX 1060 3GB it will do the job at 1080P.
Also every branded motherboard has overclocking support could u please post your motherboard model?

InvalidError · Mar 26, 2018

feelinfroggy777 :

No it won't, FFXV uses all the VRAM it can get its hands on and on an old CPU like the i7-920, he'd be bottlenecked by the CPU anyway with the GPU sitting at ~50% utilization even with most options maxed out.

cryoburner · Mar 26, 2018

InvalidError :

Tom's hardware actually did a roundup of various mid-range graphics cards in this game at 1080p, at both medium and high settings. Here's the page with the relevant benchmark results...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/final-fantasy-xv-performance-analysis,5513-4.html

The result? At least for the part of the game they tested, the GTX 1060 3GB far outperformed the GTX 1050 Ti at both medium and high presets. The average frame rates were 45% higher at medium settings, and 48% faster at high settings. So no, having less VRAM didn't seem to make any performance difference, at least in the context of their benchmark run. And certainly, using a slower processor than the Ryzen 1600X they tested with, such as an i7-920, is bound to result in more performance hitches and perhaps less of an overall difference in performance between the two cards, but a 1060 3GB should still perform better than a 1050 Ti, even at high settings.

jawlesspython04 · Mar 26, 2018

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, kinda hard to pick a solution now xD

Anyways, many of you are suggesting to go for the 1060 3GB or save up and get a 1060 6GB. I might do that option then but my PSU is the PSU that the PC had from the start. That PC is a Dell Studio XPS 435T with the STOCK PSU and many people have told me that those are generally not of good quality. So considering that, wouldn't the 1050Ti be better? Also, wouldn't the i7 bottleneck a 1060?

If it matters, I live in Pakistan and the motherboard i have to be exact is a Dell 0X501H

WildCard999 · Mar 26, 2018

I'd just buy the cheapest 1050 ti that doesn't require additional power from the PSU, as stated by theyeti87 you should be able to overclock your current CPU a bit (with decent cooling) that would reduce or possibly eliminate any sort of bottleneck but once you go to a higher resolution the game loads shift a bit more from the CPU to GPU so the pairing would work out fine with that setup.

budgetgamer12345 · Mar 26, 2018

jawlesspython04 :

You can overclock with that motherboard but only with software like: Intel Extreme Utility, SetFSB etc.
As for the PSU upgrade it with the money from GTX 1060 6GB and buy the GTX 1060 3GB

1050Ti or 1060 3GB?

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