Official NVIDIA GTX 1060 Specs, Price, & Release Date

By Steve Burke Published July 07, 2016 at 9:00 am

Hardware

NVidia's new GP106-equipped GeForce GTX 1060 has been announced as of today, alongside partial specs, a release date, and some software. The GTX 1060 will utilize nVidia's new GP106 GPU, a Pascal rendition which cuts down on SM and CUDA core count from preceding GP104 chips (GP104-400 and GP104-200, detailed in our GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 reviews).

The GeForce GTX 1060 uses the same Pascal architecture, with the same improvements we've already discussed heavily. That includes 16nm FinFET, delta color compression advancements allowing 8:1 compression on some memory transactions, and pre-emptive compute functions that aid in asynchronous tasks. New to the GTX 1060 is GP106, which is a cut-down Pascal chip that houses 1280 CUDA cores, operating at a maximum Boost frequency of 1.7GHz. For comparative purposes, a chart with known 1060, 1070, and 1080 specs has been pasted below. The GTX 1070 has 1920 CUDA cores and the 1080 has 2560 CUDA cores.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Specs vs. GTX 1070, GTX 1080, GTX 960

NVIDIA Pascal vs. Maxwell Specs Comparison
	GTX 1080	GTX 1070	GTX 1060	GTX 980 Ti	GTX 980	GTX 960
GPU	GP104-400 Pascal	GP104-200 Pascal	GP106 Pascal	GM200 Maxwell	GM204 Maxwell	GM204
Transistor Count	7.2B	7.2B	?	8B	5.2B	2.94B
Fab Process	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	16nm FinFET	28nm	28nm	28nm
CUDA Cores	2560	1920	1280	2816	2048	1024
GPCs	4	3	2 (?)	6	4	2
SMs	20	15	10 (?)	22	16	8
TPCs	20	15	10 (?)	-	-	-
TMUs	160	120	80 (?)	176	128	64
ROPs	64	64	?	96	64	32
Core Clock	1607MHz	1506MHz	?	1000MHz	1126MHz	1126MHz
Boost Clock	1733MHz	1683MHz	1700MHz	1075MHz	1216MHz	1178MHz
FP32 TFLOPs	9TFLOPs	6.5TFLOPs	?	5.63TFLOPs	5TFLOPs	2.4TFLOPs
Memory Type	GDDR5X	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5	GDDR5
Memory Capacity	8GB	8GB	6GB	6GB	4GB	2GB, 4GB
Memory Clock	10Gbps GDDR5X	4006MHz	8Gbps	7Gbps GDDR5	7Gbps GDDR5	7Gbps
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	?	384-bit	256-bit	128-bit
Memory Bandwidth	320.32GB/s	256GB/s	?	336GB/s	224GB/s	115GB/s
TDP	180W	150W	120W	250W	165W	120W
Power Connectors	1x 8-pin	1x 8-pin	1x 6-pin	1x 8-pin 1x 6-pin	2x 6-pin	1x 6-pin
Release Date	5/27/2016	6/10/2016	7/19/2016	6/01/2015	9/18/2014	01/22/15
Release Price	Reference: $700 MSRP: $600	Reference: $450 MSRP: $380	Reference: $300 MSRP: $250	$650	$550	$200

Power draw is rated at 120W for the GTX 1060 when under full gaming load, according to information from nVidia's announcement (we are testing this), and uses a single 6-pin power connector on the far right of the board. Interestingly, this power connector is located off of the PCB, as the cooler extends past the full board (also seen in the RX 480, and plenty of other small cards using a blower fan). Rather than plant the power header in the middle of the board, nVidia's shifted right-of-center and is likely using some sort of wiring/pass-through to the solder points on the PCB. We'll look into this in our tear-down. That won't be entirely relevant unless attempting custom cooler mods on the Founders Edition card, but we will research that ourselves as the review date approaches.

nvidia-gtx-1060-founders-1

nvidia-gtx-1060-founders-2

The GTX 1060 will ship at 6GB of GDDR5 at 8Gbps. Despite rumors around the internet last week, there is no official 3GB model of the GTX 1060 known to exist at this time. NVidia made no announcement of such a product, and seems (at this moment) to only be planning a 6GB GTX 1060.

SMP support is available to the GTX 1060, with assistance from nVidia's Polymorph engines.

Note: There are no SLI fingers on the GTX 1060, and thus no support for LDA.

NVIDIA GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 FE Dimensions
	GTX 1060 FE	GTX 1070 FE	GTX 1080 FE
Dimensions	9.5” L (Card) 4” H 1.5” D(PCB only: 6.75”)	10.5” L 4” H 1.5” D	10.5” L 4” H 1.5” D

Regarding performance, nVidia's provided press release includes the following language: “GTX 1060 is on average 15 percent faster and over 75 percent more power efficient than the closest competitive product.” This is mentioned as being related to “gaming titles,” meaning not synthetic benchmarks. NVidia is clearly pointing at AMD's new RX 480 (reviewed) when claiming a 15% “faster” performance. Check back for our review as launch day nears to see if that statement holds true.

nvidia-gtx-1060-founders-4

The GTX 1060 will enter the market with a range of approximately $250-$300. NVidia's MSRP is $250 for board partners, with scalability to higher prices as those AIB partners feel appropriate. The Founders Edition card will be priced at $300, and is properly limited in production for this run of the FE. The GTX 1060 Founders Edition card will utilize the same housing materials and dual-FET power supply as the previous FE cards, but has made substantial changes to the ID. The GTX 1060 is less “tessellated” in its appearance and flattens itself a bit, while also axing the acrylic window in favor of a matte black heatsink cover.

Partner cards and the Founders Edition card will release simultaneously this time, with no lead time for the nVidia FE reference design. The GTX 1060 release date is July 19. Ansel and VR Funhouse will be made available on July 14.

Editorial: Steve "Lelldorianx" Burke
Video: Andrew "ColossalCake" Coleman

Last modified on July 19, 2016 at 9:00 am

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.