Msi- Geforce Gtx 1060 6gb 6gb Gaming X Video Card Review

Now that the GeForce GTX 1060 video card has officially launched, we're bracing for the onslaught of custom boards created lovingly by Nvidia's partners. The offset in our hands is an MSI card with its overclocked and well-cooled GTX 1060 Gaming 10 6G ($369.99). Cipher major has inverse in the GTX 1060 version from the GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming Ten 8G board we also reviewed, except for the tiny graphics-chip heart beating inside the bill of fare's metallic exoskeleton. And then this review will be a chip shorter than if we were examining this particular species for the first time.

But looking at the card, you lot can tell the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G ($369.99 at Newegg) has a lot in common with its big brother. The 2 cards expect pretty much identical. Both video cards sport a sugariness-looking reddish/black color scheme, along with the visitor'due south Twin Frozr Half-dozen dual-fan design with LED highlights. The logo on the border of the card is RGB-lit and can be customized, but the ruby-red LEDs on the fan blades are just that—cerise, and only red.

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The carte du jour besides features a metal backplate, which has been a sought-after feature on loftier-end GPUs for a while now. That kind of plate looks more polished than a bare PCB if yous tin view your card after installation (you see the back of any card more the forepart, in about windowed PC cases), and it has become a feature that separates premium GPUs from the less expensive ones. Then we're glad to see MSI kept it for this midrange GPU. (This MSI GTX 1060 bill of fare costs barely half equally much every bit its equivalent GTX 1080 carte, after all.)

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Overall, the aesthetics for this generation of cards from MSI are just top-notch, in our opinion. Information technology'southward just the right balance between aggressive and flashy without crossing the border into potentially overdone. (See Zotac'due south GeForce GTX 1080 Amp Extreme ($369.99 at Newegg) for a carte that, while wildly fast, may accept gone a scrap besides far on the eyeball aspects for some buyers.)

At present, on to what separates the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G from the Founders Edition (Iron) version of the GTX 1060 made and sold by Nvidia proper. (The GTX 1060 Iron, essentially a reference bill of fare, is bachelor only via Nvidia.com, for $299 in a "express edition" that'll exist sold for as long as in that location'due south demand.) Aside from the entirely different cooling apparatus and artful, the MSI card's biggest change is that information technology features an eight-pivot PCI Limited power connector, which is an uptick from the single six-pin one establish on the Atomic number 26 card. Despite the actress juice, the Gaming X 6G is still listed as a 120-watt card, which is the aforementioned every bit the Founders Edition version. The Gaming X too features a six-phase ability design, more the three+1 design used by the Founders Edition. That should allow for smoother power delivery for overclocking.

The MSI is a large card, as well, much bigger than the FE card at eleven inches long versus nine.75 inches...

The width of the cooler is 5 inches (MSI) versus 3.75 inches (Founders Edition). If your PC chassis is space-constrained, take heed.

Another big difference—and one that is expected on a menu of this nature—is that it'southward highly overclocked and overclockable compared to the Founders Edition. You lot can certainly overclock the Founders Edition menu, but out of the box it runs at Nvidia'south "base spec" settings, which are i,506MHz for the base clock and one,708MHz for the maximum boost clock. Retail versions of the Gaming X 6G, however, run at 1,569MHz base and 1,784MHz boost out of the box (equivalent to MSI'south Gaming mode in its Gaming App software), which is quite a difference. It's possible to tick that up farther to 1,594MHz/1,809MHz, through MSI'due south software, via an "OC mode" setting. (The software has Quiet, OC, and Gaming fashion settings, with Serenity being the equivalent of the Founders Edition at stock settings.) Information technology's literal i-click overclocking, as you just click the box you lot want (Gaming, OC, Quiet), and the card runs at those speeds. The central screen in the software looks like this...

Clock speeds and cooling aside, this is all the same a GTX 1060 at center, and so many specs remain the same. It has 6GB of 8Gbps GDDR5 memory, though it's overclocked past 100MHz out of the box. The retentiveness runs on a 192-bit double-decker, and the bill of fare offers one,280 CUDA cores, along with 3 DisplayPort connectors, an HDMI port, and a DVI port for those with older monitors. Also, in case it needs to exist pointed out, this GPU supports all of the Pascal tech we've discussed earlier, such every bit Simultaneous Multi Projection (SMP), Ansel, and GPU Boost 3.0. Also, like the Founders Edition of the GTX 1060, it does non back up multi-card configurations, a.k.a. Nvidia SLI. (The GTX 1070 and 1080 do support twin-card SLI.)

Software

The Gaming X 6G includes the same software packet we evaluated in our review of the GTX 1080 Gaming Ten 8G, and then nosotros won't go into information technology in particular a 2nd time. Click over to that review to check information technology out if you desire a more detailed give-and-take, but we'll provide some screens of it here...

The software package includes MSI's Dragon Eye function (and so you tin watch YouTube videos while you are in-game), an onscreen-overlay feature to monitor your GPU, the aforementioned overclocking tools, and a utility to modify the color temperature of the display, optimizing it for activities like movies and gaming. Overall, it's fantabulous software and adds a lot of value to the package.

A Performance Preface

Earlier we become into the deeper testing results, some notes.

Things are in flux these days for testing GPUs, as two emerging technologies that this carte du jour was built for are difficult to exam definitively. The start is DirectX 12 (DX12), which is just now coming on the scene. There are merely a few existent-world benchmarks for it. Withal, DX12 will likely be the standard graphics API in the hereafter, and so it is important to know if a card tin can handle DX12 well before buying.

We tested the GTX 1060 with all the newest DX12-capable games nosotros had on hand, including Hitman (the 2016 edition), Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Ashes of the Singularity. We tested it using a load of games under DirectX 11, too, because that API will however be in wide use for at to the lowest degree some other year, and probably much longer.

The 2d technology that'southward difficult to exam at present is virtual reality, or VR for short. The GeForce GTX 1080 was built to run VR twice as fast as its predecessor, and in all the launch presentation documents, Nvidia referred specifically to the card's VR performance. Notwithstanding, there are ii major competing VR headset platforms, in the forms of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, with more than coming to market place soon, and it's hard to establish a lone test that is applicable to all scenarios.

Steam has its own VR benchmark, merely at the fourth dimension of this writing, it didn't output a score beyond a elementary "Fidelity Score" and a green/yellow/red scale for VR readiness. Instead, it just indicated whether or not your PC was ready to handle games using an HTC Vive. Since the baseline recommendation for both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift is a Core i5 processor and a GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, the GTX 1060 and the Core i7 CPU in our examination bed would easily pass this test. We garnered a green-light recommendation of "READY" and a Fidelity Score of viii.7 with the GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G in the Steam VR criterion. (The Founders Edition GeForce GTX 1060 garnered the aforementioned recommendation but an 8.0 score.)

Futuremark is likewise working on a VRMark examination, but it was just in beta when we wrote this. We'll accept to wait for future, finalized VR benchmarks. Merely if you lot're considering buying a GTX 1060 primarily for VR, yous can balance assured that current VR-fix games and those launching in the near time to come volition run on this card just fine.

Also, note that we tested the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G in its highest easily achievable state of melody, which is MSI'south OC style. Our review card shipped that way, but retail cards won't. (They ship in Gaming Mode, which is all the same ticked-upwards, merely not every bit much as OC mode.) Even so, getting the card to OC mode is a i-click affair in the MSI Gaming App that overclocks the card to around 1,900MHz, and it's almost certainly the reason people would opt for this bill of fare over the Founders Edition version. So we left the menu there for testing, rather than downclocking information technology. Go along that in listen when examining these benchmark results.

Performance

We started off our testing with Futuremark's 2013 version of 3DMark, specifically the suite's Fire Strike subtest.

Fire Strike is a synthetic test designed to measure overall gaming performance, and Futuremark has expanded Fire Strike nowadays into three subtests. In the past, we used the bones examination (known but every bit "Burn down Strike"), too equally the more than demanding Fire Strike Extreme test. Only new-gen GPUs are so powerful, relatively speaking, that nosotros had to move upwards to the most punishing test, Burn Strike Ultra, which is geared toward simulating the stresses of gaming at 4K.

The Gaming X 6G got off to a good commencement, as it pulled out a fairly impressive atomic number 82 over its midrange-cost rivals (including previous-gen GTX 960 and GTX 970 cards) in this opening salvo. Not merely was information technology a smidge faster than the GTX 1060 Founders Edition bill of fare, but information technology decisively passed the $239-MSRP AMD Radeon RX 480, likewise, by a margin of a bit over 10 percent.

Tomb Raider (2013)

Here, we fired upwards the 2013 reboot of the archetype title Tomb Raider, testing at Ultimate detail and iii resolutions.

The MSI Gaming Ten 6G excelled in this benchmark, pulling out a good for you lead over the other GPUs in its near price range. At 4K resolution, it was more than ten percent faster than the Radeon RX 480. It was also able to hitting over 100fps at 1080p, which is indeed awesome for a $299 GPU.

Sleeping Dogs

Next, we rolled out the very demanding existent-world gaming criterion test congenital into the title Sleeping Dogs…

One time over again, the Gaming 10 6G took no prisoners in its general cost range, and ran at 89.5fps at 1080p compared to the Radeon's 65.7fps, which is quite a margin. The Founders Edition GTX 1060 was likewise way in the rearview, managing just 69.8fps. Overall, the Gaming X dominated this benchmark.

Bioshock Infinite

The popular title Bioshock Infinite isn't overly demanding, equally recent games go, but it's a still-popular one with stellar skillful looks. In its congenital-in benchmark program, we set up the graphics level to the highest preset (Ultra+DDOF)…

One time again, the Gaming X 6G led the midrange pack here, though its pb over its rivals was "just" about 10 percent this time effectually. At 4K, the Gaming X 6G was about 20 percentage faster than the Radeon, however, and was able to run at almost 42fps, which is super for a sub-$400 card.

Hitman: Absolution

Next up was Hitman: Absolution, which is an aging game but still pretty hard on a video card.

At this betoken, the results are no longer a surprise, but the Gaming 10 6G was indeed the fastest in its price ring in this benchmark and even rivaled some of AMD's upper-end silicon here. And non simply did it shell the RX 480 by healthy margins at all resolutions, it consistently eked past the GTX 1060 Founders Edition.

Far Weep Primal

At present, on to a newer championship. Ubisoft's latest open-globe first-person hunting game is one of the nearly demanding titles nosotros utilize, thanks to its lush leaf, detailed shadows, and otherwise incredible environments.

This brutal benchmark proved to exist a near tie between the overclocked Gaming X 6G and the Radeon RX 480, with the Founders Edition roughly between the two. The Radeon and the MSI card were virtually tied at 4K and 1440p, and within a few frames of one another at 1080p, making it a wash overall.

Ashes of the Singularity

Oxide's Ashes of the Singularity is a bit of a difference every bit a benchmark, equally information technology's a real-time strategy title, rather than a get-go-person shooter or a third-person action title. Due to the planet-scale nature of its boxing scenes, with hundreds of onscreen tanks, ships, and other implements of futurity warfare, it can be extremely demanding at high settings. And considering of the plethora of rendered units, this game is also more CPU-spring—especially at loftier settings and resolutions—than most other recent games.

We tested AoTS in both DX11 and DX12 modes, with the DX11 mode up first. Looking at the scores, we meet the GTX 1060 doing quite well in this benchmark, as it was able to outpace the Radeon RX 480 past 7fps at 1080p, and too continue upwardly with the GTX 980. This is one examination where Nvidia'south claims of GTX 980-level performance take certainly held upwardly. You'll note the relative lack of departure betwixt results on a given card from resolution to resolution; that's the CPU limitation in action. (Our testbed PC employs a "Haswell" Intel Core i7-4770K.)

Nosotros ran this test in Standard mode, too, and information technology showed the same CPU-limited beliefs.

Thousand Theft Auto V

As one of the most popular game franchises on the planet, Grand Theft Auto really needs no introduction. The "V" installment took a lot longer than many expected to land on the PC. But when it finally did in early 2015, it brought with it a number of graphical improvements and tweakable visual settings that pushed the game far beyond its console roots.

The Gaming Ten 6G smoked the other GPUs in this enervating game, and by a healthy margin likewise. It was able to outpace the Radeon RX 480 by about 15 percent at both 1440p and 1080p resolutions, and one time once again striking over 100fps at 1080p. Whoa.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft rises once again in the early on 2016 iteration of Square Enix's long-running activeness franchise. Every bit our hero works to unfold an aboriginal mystery (and reveal the secret to immortality) alee of the ancient and deadly Order of Trinity, she traipses through a slew of complex atmospheric environments, from arid tombs to the frigid Siberian wilderness. A dynamic weather condition organisation, and the complexities of Lara'south air current-tousled hair, add to the game'southward visual complexity.

The Gaming Ten 6G took top honors, again, in this detailed benchmark, with a greater-than-x per centum margin of victory at 4K and 1440p resolutions over the Radeon RX 480. The gap opened wider between the ii cards at 1080p, with the Gaming X 6G stretching its lead to almost 20 percent.

Hitman (2016)

The newest game in the Hitman pantheon finds Amanuensis 47 turning over a new leaf, and embarking on a journey of self-discovery equally a teacher at a school for underprivileged children. Only kidding; he kills loads of people in this i, only like the balance. It does offer gorgeous graphics in both DX11 and DX12 varieties, though. We'll tackle the erstwhile first.

With this examination, nosotros saw the MSI Gaming X 6G's winning streak come to an cease, as it was not able to outpace the Radeon RX 480 at 4K or 1440p simply was able to about tie it at 1080p.

DirectX 12 Tests

It's tough to get any existent general sense of DirectX 12 performance at this bespeak. When we wrote this in July 2016, only a few titles were bachelor with DirectX 12 support and reliable benchmarkability under Windows 10. Running these games, anecdotally, we saw no graphical differences between the titles running at DX11 versus DX12 settings. And in terms of frame rates, in some instances, titles running under DX12 offered operation gains, just elsewhere nosotros saw lesser performance.

In other words, you lot should accept the beneath results for what they are: early returns. DirectX 12 is still in its very early on stages, and those developers who have implemented it have yet to throw on the spackle and smooth over the cracks. Nosotros'll have to await at least a few more than months to say for sure how much of an advantage DX12 offers, and whether information technology sways things in favor of AMD or Nvidia in any substantive mode. Still, because this is a cutting-border card and DX12 is cutting-edge tech, it's worth taking a look at what the GTX yard-serial and its competition can exercise with Microsoft's latest gaming API today.

Ascent of the Tomb Raider (Nether DX12)

This sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider is one of the offset AAA titles to offer DirectX 12 support. Nosotros used the preset labeled Very High for testing.

The results were quite clear here: The Gaming X 6G outpaced the Radeon RX 480 by the largest margins, especially at the lower resolutions, of any of the game tests and so far.

Hitman (2016, Under DX12)

The newest Hitman title also offers up a DX12 graphics option in its benchmark that, like Rise of the Tomb Raider, looked identical to our eyes to the DX11 version.

These scores reflect the Radeon RX 480'south strength we saw in the DX11 test; the Radeon took a victory lap at all three resolutions.

Ashes of the Singularity (Under DX12)

The strategy title Ashes of the Singularity, which nosotros discussed earlier in our DX11 tests, was among the kickoff to offering DirectX 12 support, fifty-fifty when it was still in beta. In our retesting of the Founders Edition card, we ran beyond a glitch with the game that we could not resolve in a timely manner, thus the blank bars on this test for that bill of fare.

In DX12 for this game, we again had to apply the Crazy preset, every bit the CPU was an even bigger bottleneck at the lower "Normal" setting. At Crazy, things were close to even betwixt the Radeon RX 480 and the MSI Gaming 10 6G, and so we're calling information technology a draw.

Overclocking

Now, the reason some buyers volition opt for a card similar the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G is that they don't want to become too deep into the nitty-gritty of overclocking. With this card, you go a modest overclock direct out of the box, and installing a simple app and clicking a button gets you but about the balance of the way there. (That's the experience with the MSI Gaming App, with its Silent, Gaming, and OC modes.)

Buyers who are more enterprising can download MSI's well-designed Afterburner software, which nosotros've discussed in other MSI card reviews. It lets y'all become more granular with your overclocking. That said, nosotros suspected that once we had the Gaming App's OC mode active, at that place wouldn't be a ton more overhead to squeeze out of the carte du jour. Nosotros were correct.

Using Afterburner, we did manage to become the carte du jour to summit at around 2,050MHz when running graphical stress tests such equally 3DMark, Unigine's Sky, and the game Far Weep Central. Withal, that amounted to only a minimal, if any, existent-world uptick in operation: a Graphics Score in 3DMark Ultra of three,124, versus 3,054 in uncomplicated OC mode. And Far Cry Primal (at 4K resolution and the top/"Ultra" detail setting) didn't budge from the 25fps number we got in OC mode.

With more time and endeavour, nosotros may have been able to squeeze out some other percentage point or two, only the one-click MSI Gaming App'southward OC mode volition suffice for all but the most devoted speed hounds.

Pricey But Powerful

Reviewing this GPU made us wonder almost the Founders Edition GTX 1060 card. Compared to the MSI Gaming X 6G it's slower out of the box for about the aforementioned price (though overclockable), with none of the software value-adds or LED highlights. The FE is still a very nice card, mind you, merely from our perspective, the merely reason to go with a Founders Edition card with the GTX 1060 would be if yous were planning a pocket-size form factor (SFF) PC build or other upgrade that was very tight on space, in which instance (pun intended) you'd benefit profoundly from the Fe bill of fare's directly-through blower libation. Otherwise, unless you happen to like the FE card's look or really want to practise the overclocking yourself, you lot tin theoretically acquire a slightly faster GPU like the MSI Gaming X 6G for about the same money.

As the first non-reference-pattern GTX 1060 we've seen, the Gaming Ten 6G is at an reward, since in that location'due south nothing else to compare it to, aside from the Founders Edition. However, having reviewed video cards for many years, we accept a pretty solid thought of what the other manufacturers' offerings will be similar, and we have a strong feeling they will be very similar in terms of performance, once overclocked, to the Gaming X 6G. They might not exist quite as fast, or may be a piffling faster, merely in the end we're talking slivers of difference hither.

That said, MSI has created a very strong offering with its Gaming X 6G card. It's the consummate package for a midrange gaming model. It offers course-leading performance, a killer design with first-class software, stable overclockability, and absurd, serenity running. The simply thing more we could inquire for in a midrange card? A lower price. And that's the rub in the midrange: $50 is a manner bigger price delta with these kinds of cards than with models in the $500 or $700 stratosphere.

The 8GB version of the AMD Radeon RX 480 looks to be $l to $60 less expensive than this MSI carte, so the MSI carte should exist faster on principle. We as well suspect that there'due south no way the MSI Gaming X 6G card can justify a full 50 per centum/$100 premium—especially if used at lower resolutions—over the 4GB version of the Radeon RX 480 (which comes in at a projected price of $199). Then once more, the fabulous $199 4GB Radeon RX 480 has scarely been available since the RX 480 launch.

In the terminate, that's the only negative attribute nosotros can think of for the MSI Gaming X 6G: pricing. That may change, but at this writing, we couldn't fifty-fifty discover one for sale online. Even MSI'southward step-downwardly "non X" GTX 1060 Gaming version of the card, was sold out, every bit were most of the other variants of this GPU from Nvidia's partners. Then we'll accept to see how actual pricing shakes out. If it's anything like the GTX 1070 and 1080, the cards may sell at MSRP or more for a time, until supplies of the cards stabilize.

If you lot are sold on the GTX 1060 and plan to buy one, it's safe to say the Gaming X 6G will be ane of the amend ones available. We brand this claim based on our experience with the carte du jour, as well as its big-brother GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G. It'due south a top-notch packet. Aye, you'll a fleck pay more than for nearly other GTX 1060 cards. But if you desire to get the most out of a GTX 1060 GPU with minimal effort, it'll get you there.

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G

Pros

The Bottom Line

The Gaming Ten 6G is a finely tuned version of the GTX 1060 that tops AMD's Radeon RX 480 in near tests (and Nvidia's ain Founders Edition GTX 1060, too) correct out of the box.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/msi-geforce-gtx-1060-gaming-x-6g

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