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  • zmeul - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    270$ ?!?!
    EVGA GTX1060SC sais hi
  • lazarpandar - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Yeah 1060 availability is surprisingly good. No reason to buy this...
  • DrKlahn - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    No availability on NewEgg for the 1060 (none for the reference 480 either). Haven't been any since day 1 that I have seen. Early benches show the Nitro competing quite well with heavily overclocked 1060's. If your intention is to only keep the 1060 a short time, it's a compelling choice since it's DX11 performance is a bit better. Low level API's the reference 480 is slightly better overall than the 1060 and the Nitro even more so. As their usage increases the 480 seems like a more solid long term choice. The Nitro at that price point is even more compelling.
  • xthetenth - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Just for one if you want to get the most out of your money and pair it with an inexpensive freesync screen, NV has literally no answer.
  • just4U - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    "No reason to buy this..."
    ---

    I dunno... from all the reviews I've seen of the 1060/480 I'd say that the only reason to buy a 1060 is because you can't find a 480 in stock... as the 480 is clearly the better card.

    For the majority out there.. provided their not fanboi's of either company I think they'd be happy with either card especially coming off mid range radeon/GeForce cards of even a generation ago as both seem to offer near 980 performance.
  • yannigr2 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    Vulkan and DirectX 12 says Hi.
  • systemBuilder - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link

    Wow thats so weird that the channel is stuffed with 1060 product and its available everywhere. It's extremely hard to get an Rx480 because they are flying off the shelves at lightspeed, i guess everybody wants one. I'm so glad I got mine on July 5th because it seems AMD is suffering from having a product thats way more popular than the 1060 lol ...
  • komplik - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    In our country there is full stock of reference RX480 but sells wery bad as best sellers are GXT1070 and surprisingly GTX970 with same price tag as 8GB RX480.
  • Lolimaster - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    You can run 2 RX480 and access full Vulkan/Async suppport.

    You can't SLI GTX1060, nvidia screwed you and only emulated async.
  • shing3232 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    Can 1060 even do SLI?
  • WinterCharm - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link

    Nope.
  • komplik - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    DX12 and multi GPU is right way and works with GTX1060, but there is no reason for doing sli with slow cards as 1060. You can buy GTX1070 for same price as 2xRX480, you have same average performance - some titles are better on 2xRX480, some are worse as not scaling well, but you have absolutely better perf in games which do not scaling and no negatives of multigpu. And at half consumption, less heat, less noise...
  • yannigr2 - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    Vulkan and DirectX 12 says Hi.
  • kuttan - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    Back in the days when GTX 680 and HD 7970 launched, GTX 680 was faster more efficient card of the two. Now HD7970 (R9 280X) is on par or beats higher end GTX 780 in most new games and the GTX680/770 become an irrelevant abandoned card. This new RX 480 vs GTX 1060 comparison same old story repeat ^ ^
  • SunnyNW - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I feel really bad for AMD...At least last generation they had competing performance at all tiers. This generation it looks like they wont even have that, and with mainstream adoption of DX12 and such still at little ways out I'm not sure where AMD finds the cash to be competitive in the future (R&D money).
    AMD might have the $200 and below market but ONLY at Nvidia's discretion.
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    It might be a bit early to feel that way. AMD's approach to the GPU market in the 14/16nm generation is to appeal to the mainstream first. Because NV was expected to release higher end products first, that would ideally give AMD a means to avoid direct competition for a little while and a price war that would drive sales volume and margins downward. Without numbers, its difficult to say if the business strategy is effective so far. Meanwhile AMD is still planning to release low-volume halo products later.
  • squngy - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    The thing is, 1060 might not be faster than rx480 in dx12, but it is MUCH smaller and cooler.

    Effectively, Nvidia almost certainly has more head room in both pricing and frequencies.
    Right now they choose to sell 1060s for $50 more, but they probably cost them less to make then rx480 cost AMD.
  • jospoortvliet - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    Hard to say without knowing the yields. Yes, all things equal, the RX480's gpu is larger which suggests higher costs. But glofo is using Samsung process tech which is already quite mature so who knows...
  • systemBuilder - Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - link

    Yeah duh, it probably costs less to make because it's an inferior card that loses in Vulkan benchmarks and puts out 1 TFLOPs less performance, yet it costs _more_ and does _less_ (no SLI support, less RAM, etc.) I wonder _why_ would anyone buy it?
  • zodiacfml - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    It is probably a strategy employed by both companies so that they don't step too much on each other's toes. See, Nvidia doesn't have a card yet with performance lower than the 480
  • smilingcrow - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Neither do AMD on a 1xnm process.
  • DanNeely - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    For both it's just a question of when they start selling down binned parts. The RX470 has been announced and the 3GB GP106 (with 1 of 10 clusters disabled) has been widely leaked, although with a bit of dispute about if it's going to be branded as a cheaper 1060 or 1050.

    AMD has the lower speced RX460 based on Polaris 11 lurking below that. NVidia has GP107/108 also circulating in the rumor mills but with much less detail attached.
  • Einy0 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Have you read the reviews? The 1060 is a lower performance part than the RX480 in most benchmarks and games.
  • Einy0 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I meant to say lower in DX12 and Vulkan. DX11 will be legacy only very quickly...
  • squngy - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    It usually takes about a year for majority of games to switch to new DX version.

    It might go faster for DX12 though.
  • ianmills - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link

    According to which site? 1060 has a decent advantage in dx11 while the rx480 has a smaller advantage in dx12 titles
  • Eden-K121D - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    I think that Glo-Fo's 14nm process is horse shit compared to TSMC. How is this polaris part 2.8 times more efficient than GCN 1.1
  • DrKlahn - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    The 480 competes very well under DX11 with the 1060, is slightly faster overall in DX12/Vulkan and is priced attractively. They appear to be selling all they can make. And reports indicate they have made quite a few. I only see the 480 improving as developers use more low level API's and the drivers mature.
  • RaichuPls - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    ...where do you find sources saying Polaris improves in DX12? The only benchmark showing that is AotS, and that's heavily AMD biased.
  • Vesperan - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    There is also Doom and Hitman for certain (try the HardOCP review of the 1060 for example).

    But at the moment it looks like there are DX12/Vulkan implementations, and then there are DX12/Vulkan implementations. Some DX12 versions of games dont appear to do much of anything for performance.

    The upshot (performance only) is currently the 1060 is overall better than the 480, save for Doom/Hitman (and maybe 1-2 others under some conditions). In the future it is possible that this tilts toward the 480 on the basis of DX12/Vulkan roll out and driver improvements for AMD.

    ...possible.
  • tamalero - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    As biased as running a "The way its meant to be played" Sponsored game which disables things like AA when it detects AMD cards? ;)
  • xthetenth - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Also freesync compatibility is a bigger deal in the lower cost space than a lot of enthusiasts think.
  • Alexvrb - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link

    Agreed... at this price range a high-end monitor is often unappealing. A budget Freesync unit is very attractive, however, and will improve your gaming experience hugely on a dime. You can get a 23.6" VX2457 for around $150 and that has a reasonable (for entry-level) adaptive sync range of 47-75. That's a huge improvement over NO adaptive sync 75hz displays and $150 is a bargain. If you mind your settings to keep framerate above 47 you avoid the pitfalls of conventional vsync and ditch the potential annoying tearing of a fixed-hz budget gaming build with vsync off.

    On the high end with 144hz displays I'd argue that freesync and g-sync are LESS important, since you're pushing higher framerates and minimizing tearing with a very high refresh rate to begin with. On the low end all of the problems with non-adaptive-sync displays are multiplied, so affordable freesync is really a boon to mainstream PC gaming. Now if only Nvidia would support VESA adaptive sync...
  • Bryf50 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    This generation just started 2 months ago. Chill out.
  • tamalero - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    It actually feels like a similar slump when ATI had the 2900XT series technology.
    it was slow, ate too much energy but surely was very strong in compute.
  • WinterCharm - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link

    They haven't even released the new GCN4 cards at the top tier yet. Those are coming later this year, and will have HBM!
  • ScottAD - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Sapphire said they are available now..I call shenanigans. Says next week but on Facebook they say "some etailers" but no Amazon or Egg
  • Outlander_04 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I can order a Sapphire nitro from a local etailer . They have no stock , but they have it listed and that's usually a sign that they will drop in a few days
  • watzupken - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I think its good to finally see a good alternative to the reference cards. I have no idea why it took this long for the non reference card to start rolling out. The non reference cards definitely will have an edge if its released before the GTX 1060.
  • smilingcrow - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Custom 1060 cards were released and in stock from day one and are still in stock. Not all of them for sure but enough for those who don't want to wait.
  • Drumsticks - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I don't know where you're looking, but every 1060 on Newegg is out of stock except for a single one that's on backorder.
  • Drumsticks - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    (Not that the 480 is any better. Also - indeed, the 1060 has actually been released and available for purchase at least)
  • smilingcrow - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    We don't all live in the USA.
  • Tewt - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    And those in the U.S. don't live in an area where the 1060 is available. What's your point?
  • fanofanand - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Seems like too little for the price premium. I would want more than 3-6% for an extra 10% of cost.
  • xthetenth - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    The cooler is a boost in itself, and according to other reviews it does a great job of keeping the chip at that maximum boost clock.
  • just4U - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    The cooler isn't a boost.. it's a alternative. Amd's new stock blowers are very good indeed.. Not quite yet where Nvidia is at with theirs but even so.. a far cry from the days where you went ew.. stock cooler (2 years ago hah..)
  • MarkieGcolor - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    Seems like a good card to me. If I didn't already have nano crossfire I'd be looking at this over 1060... and looking forward to AMD high end release. I would hesitate to buy Nvidia anymore. Too many sponsored titles that make me sick plus their pricing/release scheme. I really hope dx 12/vulcan finally puts a stop to that.
  • Outlander_04 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    With no SLI support for the gtx 1060 the Radeon is even more attractive
  • just4U - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    For some perhaps yes.. but in my experience most who buy this range of cards don't double up.. They might have intentions on doing so but.. by the time they get around to it, it just makes more sense to unload the card and buy what ever else has just come out.
  • gitd - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    1060 dont have sli. Because 2x 1060 is cheaper than a 1080... amd did their homework
    Bravo
  • powerarmour - Saturday, July 23, 2016 - link

    Amen, you're preaching to the choir brother.
  • D. Lister - Monday, July 25, 2016 - link

    @MarkieGcolor

    Wow, moral objections... telltale sign of a wise consumer.

    I completely agree that Nvidia should reduce the number of sponsored titles. Or why not stop altogether? Instead, like the benevolent and moral AMD, they should mainly sponsor benchmarks that are more suited to their own architecture.

    Also, Nvidia should totally run public polls for everything, like release schedules, organizational timetables, and how many times that Korean guy can use the men's room everyday.

    ...and don't get me started on price. This time around, I emailed Nvidia that either they give me a Titan X for free, or I'll go and buy an RX 480. They haven't responded yet, but you can bet there is all sorts of chaos at their HQ. Nvidia employees must be gathering outside the chairman's office right about now, to DEMAND a free TX on my behalf. Me? I'm excited! I'll soon be getting a free Titan X, booyah! Next, I'll ask them to give EVERYONE a free TX, mwahaha.

    See? Anyone can write unmitigated drivel.
  • nunya112 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link

    I have no idea why a company like Sapphire etc. don't throw 2 480 chips and a PLX. ppl will jump at that !
  • prisonerX - Sunday, July 24, 2016 - link

    Probably more complex to engineer than it looks with a limited market. AMD would have to design it for it to make sense, and it probably doesn't fit in with their plans.
  • versesuvius - Thursday, July 28, 2016 - link

    All the dual GPU cards have been designed by AMD before and this one is no exception. Though it would be sad if a dual RX 480 card is faster or equal to the upcoming Vega.

    The only thing that 1060 has got going for it is the lower TDP which is not going to make a lot of difference given the superior design of RX 480 with the added benefit of Saphire's Nitro.Surprisingly it is safe to say now that Nvidia lost this round. Smirk is off the face of the leather clad chief already. Let's just hope that the RX 480s will be abundantly available because a lot of people will want to buy two of them.
  • gereks - Tuesday, August 2, 2016 - link


    Not found in B & H / bestbuy yet :/

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