Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6GB Review

Performance Analysis

Running in OC Mode, the GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6GB is, on average, about six percent faster than a Founders Edition card. In Hitman, our results show a bigger lead than normal, suggesting that Nvidia has made some improvements in its latest round of drivers. As we've seen before, with an overclocked GTX 1060 6GB, you're getting pretty much GTX 980 performance now.

Across the six tested titles, the card is also nearly seven percent faster on average than AMD's RX 480 8GB, although most of that advantage comes from the Fallout 4 results. In fact, over the DirectX 11 titles, the GTX 1060 G1 Gaming 6GB has a healthy lead of almost 13 percent, but focussing on the DirectX 12 titles you'll see a difference of less than 1 percent on average.


Performance is very strong at 1080p – less demanding games will be consistently above 60fps or more, and the average frame rate in all games is above this. At 1440p, you'll be looking at performance more in the region of 30-60fps with everything cranked up (the ideal range for use with a G-Sync panel, although beware of the cost) and even The Division, with a minimum of 25fps, remains just in the borderline playable territory at this resolution.

The card was boosting to a stable 2,000MHz in OC Mode, dropping slightly to 1,974MHz in Gaming Mode and 1,885MHz in Eco Mode. This latter mode will probably see 1 or 2fps knocked off your average frame rates.

Between the three modes there wasn't really any difference in peak power consumption. Eco Mode would probably consume less on average over time, but not by any significant amount and we're not sure why you'd buy a card like this to drop it to reference speeds. Temperature also remained consistently low across all three modes, with the fan speed barely changing either – as usual, there's really no reason not to just run in OC Mode all the time, which is why we test at these speeds and recommend it for general use. For what it's worth, the fans peaked at 45 percent (around 1,525 RPM) under sustained load and at this speed they're very quiet and unlikely to irritate anyone but the most silence-obsessed enthusiasts.

When overclocked, the card's boost speed jumped to a consistent and impressive 2,114MHz. This time we did observe a slight increase in the fan speed, although again it was a very quiet card overall. Performance improvements were in the region of 8-11 percent, which is pretty decent for less than an hour's work.

Conclusion

Both the custom GTX 1060 6GB cards we've seen so far – the MSI Gaming X and the Asus Strix OC – have been pretty great in most regards, and Gigabyte's G1 Gaming card is another one we can add to that list, and while this isn't really a true price-performance card it does still have the edge on those two competitors on price as well.

You'll get awesome 1080p performance from this card, and 1440p gameplay will be pretty smooth as well. The overclock is meaningful, although it is a shame the memory wasn't tweaked, especially given Gigabyte's claims regarding Tier 1 memory. A backplate, RGB lighting, and bolstered power delivery components make up a well-rounded package, and the card is on par with what we've seen elsewhere for overclocking potential too. Add to that an effective and near-silent cooler that takes care of all critical components and the card starts to look very attractive. The plastic shroud could be a bit higher quality, and it's still not as quiet as MSI's Gaming X card, but then again it's not as tall and you could easily set a custom fan curve here to make it silent.

Nvidia's GTX 1060 6GB isn't going to dominate like the GTX 970 did, but if it is the card for you, then Gigabyte's effort here is a fine example of the more premium end of the scale that doesn't go overboard on the asking price.