Buy Zotac Gtx 1060
But the GTX 1060 faces tough competition from the aggressively priced AMD Radeon RX 480. The newest Radeon is targeting the sub $300 price point as well, a segment where Nvidia has struggled in the past.
buy zotac gtx 1060
There are two different versions of the GTX 1060, a 3GB and 6GB model. The version with less graphical memory also features 1,152 CUDA cores, instead of the full 1,280 CUDA cores found in the larger model, but the GPUs are otherwise identical. They both have a 1,506MHz base clock and 1,708MHz boost clock, with GDDR5 memory running at 8Gbps over a 192-bit interface.
The Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 AMP! comes in just a tad ahead of the Radeon RX 480 8GB, but not by much. Also illustrative is the GTX 960 result, which is about 40 percent lower. The 1060 provides a strong generational leap.
Nvidia's new "Pascal" architecture has been like a school bus arriving at our test lab, carrying the high-school football team. Its doors open, and a flood of video cards comes pouring out, in all sorts of shapes but one essential size: Big. That includes the card that's the focus of this review, the (relatively) small Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 Mini (6GB) graphics card ($249) designed for small-form-factor (SFF) PCs.
We've had Nvidia's Founders Edition versions of the GeForce GTX 1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 pass through our labs, as well as some aftermarket variants from MSI and others based on those graphics processors (GPUs). And though these cards have varied in design, length, and cooling capabilities, they've all essentially been huge, 10-inch-plus graphics cards that need a big PC case in which to stretch their silicon legs.
This video card from Zotac measures just 6.9 by 4.4 inches, it's a good more than 3 inches shorter than a typical GeForce GTX 1060 board such as the Founders Edition or the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G ($369.99 at Newegg)(Opens in a new window) . This allows it to squeeze into a very small PC chassis, enabling 1080p gaming at much higher frame rates and levels of detail than what was possible with the most powerful previous mini-GPU we tested, the GeForce GTX 970.
This Zotac card is one of the few compact Pascal implementations we have seen on the market so far. Gigabyte has also released a similar GTX 1060-based card, the slightly shorter Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 Mini, but we haven't had an opportunity to test that card yet.
With Nvidia's "Pascal" architecture, however, the company made major gains in performance-per-watt, allowing a card like the GeForce GTX 1060 to consume less power than previous cards while providing excellent 1080p performance. This card has a thermal-design-power (TDP) rating of 120 watts, which is 25 watts less than what we saw from a typical GeForce GTX 970 card. And even so, it's a more powerful GPU.
Despite its short length, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 Mini is quite chunky, and it remains a two-slot-wide card. It's cooled by a lone 90mm fan, and instead of requiring an eight-pin PCI Express power-supply connector (which the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G demands), it needs just a single six-pin connector to provide it with juice. (Mind you, that's not unique; Nvidia's own Founders Edition version of the GeForce GTX 1060 is also a six-pin-power implementation.) Zotac recommends running this card with a power supply rated at a minimum of 400 watts.
In terms of the horsepower numbers, this is a GPU that conforms to the basic specs of the GTX 1060 as released by Nvidia. It has a base clock of 1,506MHz and a maximum boost clock of 1,708MHz, along with 1,280 CUDA cores. The memory is standard GDDR5 RAM that runs at an effective speed of 8Gbps. And like other GTX 1060 cards, it does not support multi-card SLI installations. One GTX 1060 card is the limit with this family; only Nvidia's higher-end Pascal GPUs allow for SLI implementations, and these days those are officially limited to two cards.
It makes sense for Zotac to include this card in its product line. When we looked at the Founders Edition version of the GeForce GTX 1060, we noted that although the card was long, its blow-straight-through-style cooler added several inches to its length. The actual PCB portion of the card was far shorter, at a few hairs shy of 7 inches long. On the whole, what we have here is a "stock" GTX 1060 devoid of things like single-click overclocking frills, RGB lighting, or bulky cooling, and at a price that doesn't really exceed the cost of most full-size 6GB GTX 1060 cards. Think of it as the base model of a subcompact car, without the A/C or cruise control.
This card is also competing with the recently announced AMD Radeon RX 480, which comes in at around the same price (approximately $250) in its 8GB versions. But note that that particular Radeon RX GPU isn't being offered (yet, at least) in cards as compact as this one. So, for now, Nvidia has the shoebox-size gaming market all to itself, at least if you're constrained to a 7-inch PCB. These GTX 1060 Mini cards are the ideal solutions unless you're willing to go way downscale, or splurge quite a bit more for an AMD Radeon R9 Nano card. (When we wrote this, the available Radeon R9 Nano cards were running almost double the price of our Zotac GTX 1060 Mini card, at around $470.)
The Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 Mini includes Zotac's own overclocking software, dubbed Firestorm. Like other GPU utilities, it lets you tweak the GPU clock rate and fan speeds of the card, and monitor its temperatures and other details. It's slick, one of the better software suites we've used on a GPU. We covered it in our review of the Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Amp Extreme ($8,196.91 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , and it's unchanged, so head on over there if you want a closer look at the software. (We should point out that if you like the cut of this GPU's jib but want a longer card that can overclock better, Zotac also sells a dual-fan GeForce GTX 1060 Amp version of the GTX 1060 that's designed for overclocking.)
This GPU includes a two-year warranty, and is also VR-ready, like all other GTX 1060 cards. If you're looking to build an SFF VR box, this Zotac card or potentially Gigabyte's version (at this writing, around $10 to $20 costlier) should be at the top of your list.
The first of these is DirectX 12 (DX12), which is just now coming on the scene. There are very few real-world benchmarks for it. Still, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the future, and this card was designed to last for a few years, if not longer. So it's important to know if a card can handle DX12 well before buying. We tested the GTX 1060 with all the newest DX12-capable games we had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Ashes of the Singularity. We tested a load of games using DirectX 11, too, because that API will still be in wide use for at least another year, and probably much longer.
Steam has its own VR benchmark, but at the time of this writing, it didn't output scores beyond a simple "Fidelity Score." Mainly, it just indicates whether or not your PC is ready to handle VR games on a three-color red/yellow/green scale. Since the baseline recommendation for both the Vive and the Rift is a Core i5 processor and a GTX 970 graphics card, the GTX 1060 and the Core i7 CPU in our test bed would easily pass this test.
Futuremark is also working on an upcoming VRMark test, but it was not finalized when we wrote this. We'll have to wait for future, finalized VR benchmarks. But if you're considering buying a GTX 1060 primarily for VR, rest assured that current VR-ready games and those launching in the near future will run on this card just fine. It well exceeds the minimum recommendations.
And so, on to the benchmarks. Since this is a mini version of the GTX 1060, we'll be comparing it to both Nvidia's Founders Edition GTX 1060 card and partner boards, along with its most direct AMD competitor, the Radeon RX 480. We'll also put the pricier Radeon R9 Nano in the mix, as it's similarly small. Other cards are included for context up and down both GPU makers' lines.
Since the Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 Mini is a "stock" GTX 1060, for lack of a better phrase, it's no surprise to see it performs exactly like the GTX 1060 Founders Edition, which is the base model, minus the extra overclocking. The two cards are very close in terms of performance, and the GTX 1060 Mini is also a smidge faster than the full-size Zotac GeForce GTX 970 Amp Omega Edition we tested, too, which is not surprising.
It's interesting to note, too, that the GTX 970 Amp Omega version is highly overclockable, so this little GTX 1060 is quite powerful given its size. In comparison to the 8GB AMD Radeon RX 480, the Zotac is just a tiny bit faster, too. And that is good news for Zotac, since both cards have the exact same $249 price.
We're only on our second test and are already seeing a pattern: Once again, the Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 Mini is exactly the same, give or take a few FPS, as the Founders Edition version of the card, and also slightly faster than the Radeon RX 480 in 8GB trim. At 2,560x1,440, the two GeForce GTX 1060 cards were indistinguishable, and were able to pull to a healthy 10 percent lead over the Radeon card.
We hope you're sitting down for this, but the GTX 1060 Mini tied the Founders Edition card in this test, running a decent 48.5fps at 2,560x1,440 resolution. (The Founders Edition card ran at 48.3fps.) Neither card was up to the task of running the game at 4K resolution at max detail settings, but that's not surprising. The RX 480 trailed with a score of 39.5fps at 1440p, a difference of roughly 20 percent in favor of the GTX 1060 cards. The same delta exists at 1080p as well.
At 1080p, all these cards are smokin' fast, with the GTX 1060s topping 120fps and the Radeon trailing slightly at 112fps, which is still phenomenal. The Zotac GTX 970 hung tough, too, at 117fps, making it a close race but one in which the GTX 1060 cards still prevail around their price points.
The GTX 1060 really trounced the competition at $249 in this test, spanking the Radeon by almost 40 percent at 1080p resolution. That is a resounding defeat, and it allowed the GTX 1060s to cross the magical 60fps line by a smidge, while the Radeon RX 480 was just in the high 40s. The gap stayed the same as the resolution increased too, hitting a 42 percent difference at 2,560x1,440. 041b061a72