Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Review

I wonder: with Battlefield 4, why not add the Mantle-enabled rendering path? All existing tests show it to be pretty much equivalent to DX12, and future high-performance, low-latency titles are much more likely to make use of DX12, Vulkan etc. than DX11 or OpenGL...
On that review, as a matter of fact, you use pretty much only DX11 games and only one DX12 title; new API paths are available in Dota2, Talos Principle and Doom 2016... Why not include them, as a reference for the future of gaming, instead of only showing off DX11 games?

This review is kinda strange. You use Project Cars what is known of running so bad on AMD cards, yet there are no dx/vulkan 12 titles except AOTS. We already have Doom(Vulkan), and Total War+Hitman for dx12. This review is weirdly Nvidia biased. People who buy mid lvl cards are not going to change it for at least 2-3 years. And we will see more and more dx12/vulkan titles yet you only include dx11 games with mostly Nvidia support. Never gona read tomshardware ever again.

The GTX-1060 seems to be a good 1080/1440 performer, basically on par with the RX-480 in titles that display no bias (2 of the 9 titles in this suite) In titles that display an Nvidia bias (5 of the 9 titles) The GTX-1060 is somewhat faster. In titles that show an AMD bias (2 of the 9 titles) the GTX 1060 is somewhat slower. It is basically impossible to deny the fact that Toms test suite leans pretty strongly to the green side, but it's accurate as most studios tend to optimize towards Nvidia over AMD.

My only real gripe with the test suite selection is "Project Cars" This title is and always has been known to display a completely unrealistically positive performance bias towards Nvidia hardware. How this title has become a staple in a test suite that claims to be "objective" I do not know. However I can say the repetitive inclusion of this title is completely unacceptable.

This repetitive choice rivals Toms inclusion of "Metro Last Light" in the " 7990 vs. GTX-690 The Crowd Picks a Winner" where a group of users were gathered to participate in a blind hands on gaming comparison of the 2 GPU's. At this time Metro LL was known to be a strongly nvidia optimized title that showed very strong negative performance disparities towards AMD hardware( some people couldn't even play it before a patch was released), very similar to the now used "project cars". If the mere inclusion of this title in an opinion based performance analysis isn't enough, The event organizers at TomsHardware knew full well ahead of time that Metro Last Light would not even load on the dual GPU AMD board.. So being fair and objective as they are they obviously removed the title from the test suite to avoid a false negative that would obviously sway public opinion right ? Nope, they kept it and even awarded points to the GTX-690 for for the intentional ace in the hole.

Now a 1 time inclusion of a title like "project cars" may only be a little distasteful and is nowhere near as serious as the obvious stacking of the deck I previously described.. That said the repetitive inclusion of a title with such bias and unrealistic results does begin to rival the blatant and intentional nature of the 7990 v. 690 debacle I previously described.

Me personally, I will be choosing the RX-480. Comparably less expensive AIB boards will be neck and neck with similar GTX 1060 boards in the now and continually faster going forward. Historically AMD hardware has always been more powerful from a raw throughput standpoint. Where Nvidia makes up this ground is by heavily optimizing current gen hardware for current gen games. When an Nvidia hardware/game generation becomes dated and is no longer optimized for, it begins to fall off of the performance curve rather drastically (just look at the GTX-6/7XX family now..)

Compare this to AMD who while often slightly behind at launch due to less optimization, tend to significantly improve hardware/driver optimization globally across their architecture over time. Just look at how the GTX-760 used to strongly beat a 7950 and at times even challenge the flagship 7970. Now it lags behind behind even the 7870/R9-270X and cant touch the 7970/280X/380X that now even beats the faster GTX-960.

My point in all this ? I think the 1060 is a good little card; especially for the TDP, well done Nvidia. That said.. I have said for a long time and will continue to say that Toms has a way of shining nvidia cards in the best possible light at launch and that throughout time the GTX-1060 will slide solidly behind the RX-480 in terms of performance and longevity. Oh and get rid of project cars, trash.