Rx 480 VS GTX 1060

[UltraXHybrid]

So the GTX 1060 and the RX 480 are now both available, And looking at benchmarks the 1060 beats the 480 regardless of what title. Which is what we all expected as the 1060 comes in at a higher price point.

Currently in the UK the prices for the 480:
(via www.overclockers.co.uk)

Prices for the 1060:
(via www.overclockers.co.uk)

I'm impressed that Nvidia have released the card at a similar price point (In the UK).
And for some of the card's the 1060 is actually priced lower than the 480 which in my opinion is a big win for Nvidia as the 1060 outperforms the 480. It may not be by a huge margin, but the 1060 is still doing better than the 480 in benchmarks, temperatures and so on.

The 480 had some problems on release with the power draw being too high, I'm not going to go into detail as I'm sure there are other threads that talk about it. However I think this has been fixed in a new driver from AMD.

Secondly there is another issue, the temperatures of the 480 are just way too high on the reference card. Hopefully this is solved with board partners bringing in different fan designs.

So far i have not heard of any issues with the 1060. Thumbs up to Nvidia on this.

Now to look at some benchmarks.
Please Note: All these benchmarks are from JayzTwoCents. I do not have the cards to do the tests myself therefore i will be using the graphs from JayzTwoCents video.
Here's Jay's YouTube channel for those interested - https://www.youtube.com/user/Jayztwocents

GTX 1060 vs RX 480... 970 is included to see how it performs to similar cards

Clocks of the cards:

Firestrike Benchmark:

Metro Last Light:

Rise Of the Tomb Raider:

Crysis 3:

GTA V:

The Witcher 3:

Overall the benchmarks show clearly that the 1060 beats the 480 in every title.
However not by a huge margin. The card I think is aimed at people that want to game at 1080p 60fps. Whilst 1440p is still achievable, to reach 60fps you would need to turn down a few settings.
4K again could be considered if you were okay turning down a lot of the settings, but the card shines at 1080p which i feel there is still a huge market for people that game at 1080p.

Finally, the temperatures.

The 480 as mentioned before reaches temperatures that are too high for a lot of us. The 1060 amazingly hovering around 60 - 70s would be perfect for most people.

So what do you think?
Has Nvidia taken the lead here? Which card are you thinking of buying? Post anything you think down below.

 

[delaro]

I never buy reference cards or stock coolers they always tend to perform and cool less than the aftermarkets and in Nvidia's case they seem to be more expensive.

Does a FX 480 have heat issues? Yes but so did all AMD high end GPU's for the last few years as well as 400 series, 500 series Nvidia GPU's. The voltage issue again doesn't concern me since it's based off a 10 year old standered. It comes down to price.. $300 for a 1060 seems to high, I might consider it @ $230-$250 and using a Aftermarket cooler. As for the RX 480 $199 is a fantastic price now wait for the sales and see $170ish.

 

[bootcher]

It's a 1080p card obiously, as is the GTX 1060. The RX 480 wins the price/performance battle, since it is cheaper but performs almost the same. The GTX 1060 is about 10% on average better, but costs 25% more, if you look at the bottom prices. There is also the bonus of upgradeability on the RX 480 being able to do crossfire, and the GTX 1060 cannot SLI, though i personally do not care about crossfire or sli.
In my opinion, if you are gaming at 1080p, get the RX 480. If you are gaming at 1440p or higher, get a GTX 1070/1080.

 

[neblogai]

Well, reference RX480 (£173) is better than reference GTX1060 in price/perf., and AIB RX480 is faster than AIB GTX1060 in speed. So lets see what comes out on top. It is already clear that GTX1060 does not overclock much, lets see what Sapphire and Devil RX480 can do. Overall, it is clear Vulcan-DX12 is favouring Radeons, and in he long run they get even more lead.

 

[matt4x4]

I watched that video your benchmarks came from.
Jayz admits not knowing how certain benchmarks works or how to work them.
This is a concern!

Additionally he talks about not knowing how the PCI-e works.

The only problem with the 1060 is that it does not SLI. But the assumptions are that Nvidia's stance is if you want to SLI you'd buy the 1070 and 1080, or maybe 1060 has problems SLI'ing, breaks their profit model.

 

[Naevulle]

I have both the rx-480 and a GTX-1070. If I were comparing to the 1060 as you are, I would go with the RX-480. The colors are more vivid and to the naked eye and the performance difference is not noticeable. The 480 actually will do far better in many games versus what the benchmarks say. Compared to my 1070...the 1070 blows it away with frame rates but the picture quality of the 480 blows the 1070 out of the water.