Nvidia announced that its GeForce GTX 1060 will launch later this month. The graphics card will take advantage of a new GPU core codenamed “GP106” that is based on the company’s new Pascal architecture.
Like all Nvidia Pascal GPUs, the GeForce GTX 1060 uses TSMC’s 16 nm FinFET transistor technology, which helps reduce power consumption and improve performance. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 contains 1,280 CUDA cores with a reference boost clock speed of 1.7 GHz. Nvidia said that the GPU should be highly overclockable too, as overclocking lab tests performed by the company’s engineers have hit 2 GHz.
The GPU core will have access to a total of 6 GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8 GHz. Nvidia didn’t tell us how wide the bus interface between the CPU and RAM is, but judging by the memory configuration, it’s likely 192-bits wide.
Nvidia claimed that its GeForce GTX 1060 will offer more performance than its outgoing GeForce GTX 980. At the same time, the GPU will consume considerably less power; Nvidia listed its power consumption at 120 W versus the 980’s 165 W TDP.
At first, we thought Nvidia might be talking about VR performance, similar to how it claimed the GeForce GTX 1080 would be seven times faster than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. This does not appear to be the case, however, as Nvidia also said that the GeForce GTX 1060 will have comparable performance to multiple GeForce GTX 980 Ti GPUs in SLI while running VR content that has been optimized for Pascal.
Although Nvidia’s Founder’s Edition card is a typical full-length GPU, we will likely see more compact models of the GeForce GTX 1060 in the near future. The actual PCB that Nvidia used for the GeForce GTX 1060 is relatively short, so an OEM simply needs to install a smaller cooler to cut several inches off of the card’s overall length.
The default display output configuration on the GeForce GTX 1060 will be three DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.0a connector and a dual-link DVI port.
Nvidia will ship its Founder's Edition GeForce GTX 1060 later this month. Custom versions of the GeForce GTX 1060 developed by Nvidia’s board partners will be available on launch day, as well. The company will also release VR FunHouse on that day, as well as Ansel, which will be used in The Witcher 3 and Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
We got a look at one of MSI's upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPUs (pictured above), which uses a dual-fan cooler design. MSI opted to place a single 8-pin PCI-E power connector on this card to give the GPU extra overclocking headroom.
Nvidia said that it will sell its GeForce GTX 1060 Founder's Edition for $299, but the GeForce GTX 1060 itself caries an MSRP of $249, so versions from board partners will be around that price. The GeForce GTX 1060 will be available from multiple retailers starting July 19.
Update, 6/7/16, 9:30am PT: Corrected a sentence.
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