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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB in 2025: Nostalgia or a Relevant Choice?

Review of an Outdated but Legendary GPU

Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB is one of the most popular graphics cards in gaming PC history. Released in 2016, it remained a favorite among gamers for years due to its balance of price and performance. However, as we enter 2025, with technologies like ray tracing and AI rendering emerging, the question arises: is there still a place for the GTX 1060 in modern builds? Let's delve into the details.

Architecture and Key Features

Pascal: The Foundation of Stability

The GTX 1060 is built on the Pascal architecture, manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process. Its key features include:

- 1280 CUDA Cores — providing high parallel data processing.

- GPU Boost 3.0 — automatic overclocking to 1.7–1.8 GHz, depending on the model.

- No support for RTX and DLSS — these features were introduced with the Turing architecture (RTX 20 series) and are unavailable on the GTX 1060.

Important! In 2025, the lack of hardware ray tracing and AI acceleration (Tensor Cores) makes the card unsuitable for modern games running at ultra settings.

Memory: GDDR5 in the Era of GDDR6X

6 GB GDDR5: Is it Enough?

- Memory Type: GDDR5 (not GDDR6 or HBM).

- Capacity: 6 GB — sufficient for games from 2016 to 2020, but too little for AAA titles from 2025 (for example, "GTA VI" or "Starfield" on ultra settings require 8+ GB).

- Bandwidth: 192-bit bus + 8 Gbps = 192 GB/s. For comparison, the RTX 4060 (2023) has 272 GB/s.

Conclusion: At 1080p, memory is adequate, but at 1440p and 4K, frame rate drops are likely due to insufficient VRAM.

Gaming Performance: Realities of 2025

1080p: The Last Bastion

In modern projects at medium settings, the GTX 1060 shows:

- Cyberpunk 2077: 25–35 FPS (Low), 18–25 FPS (Medium).

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare V: 40–50 FPS (Low), 30–40 FPS (Medium).

- Fortnite: 60–70 FPS (Medium, without DLSS).

1440p and 4K: Not recommended — FPS rarely exceeds 30 even on Low settings.

Ray Tracing? Only Through Mods

Hardware ray tracing is unavailable, but enthusiasts use third-party mods (e.g., Reshade). The result: 10–15 FPS at 1080p — more of an experiment than a gaming experience.

Professional Tasks: Basic Capabilities

CUDA to the Rescue

For non-professional use, the GTX 1060 still holds up:

- Video Editing: Rendering in Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve at 1080p is successful, but at 4K, lags may occur.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and AutoCAD work, but complex scenes are processed slowly (3–5 times longer than on an RTX 3060).

- Scientific Calculations: CUDA/OpenCL support is useful for student projects, but for serious tasks, cards with more cores are required.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP 120 W: Easy Integration

- Recommended PSU: 400–450 W (e.g., Corsair CX450).

- Cooling: Most models are equipped with 1–2 fans. In compact cases (Mini-ITX), overheating up to 75–80°C under load is possible.

- Tip: Regular replacement of thermal paste and dust cleaning will prolong the card's life.

Comparison with Competitors

Historical Rivals

- AMD RX 580 (8 GB): In 2025, offers similar performance but benefits from a larger VRAM size.

- NVIDIA RTX 3050 (8 GB): 30–50% faster, supports DLSS and ray tracing, priced at $200–250 (new models).

Conclusion: The GTX 1060 falls short even against budget GPUs of 2025, but it may serve as a temporary solution for a budget under $100.

Practical Tips

Who Should Consider the GTX 1060 in 2025?

1. Owners of Old PCs: Upgrade without changing the PSU and motherboard (PCIe 3.0 compatible).

2. Retro Gaming Enthusiasts: Ideal for projects from the 2010s at ultra settings.

3. Office Builds: Supports 4K monitors via DisplayPort 1.4.

Nuances

- Drivers: NVIDIA's support is gradually decreasing. The last relevant updates were in 2024.

- Price: New cards are rarely found on the market, with prices ranging from $80 to $120.

Pros and Cons

Strengths

- Low power consumption.

- Quiet operation in budget builds.

- Availability in the secondary market.

Weaknesses

- No support for DLSS/FSR 3.0 and ray tracing.

- Limited VRAM capacity for modern games.

- Restricted performance at 1440p and above.

Final Verdict: Who is the GTX 1060 For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

- Budget Gamers willing to play on low settings at 1080p.

- Owners of Old Systems where replacing the PSU or CPU is impractical.

- Enthusiasts building PCs for retro games or experiments.

Alternative: If the budget allows for $150–200, opting for a new RTX 3050 or AMD RX 6600 is a better choice, as they offer modern technology support and future-proofing.

Conclusion

The GTX 1060 6 GB in 2025 is an example of a "surviving" legend. It is no longer the king of performance, but it continues to serve those who value reliability and minimalism. However, for comfortable gaming in the new releases of 2025, it's worth looking towards more modern solutions.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

July 2016

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

Generation

GeForce 10

Base Clock

1506MHz

Boost Clock

1709MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

4,400 million

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

16 nm

Architecture

Pascal

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

6GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

192bit

Memory Clock

2002MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

192.2 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

82.03 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

136.7 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

68.36 GFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

136.7 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

4.287 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

SM Count

Multiple Streaming Processors (SPs), along with other resources, form a Streaming Multiprocessor (SM), which is also referred to as a GPU's major core. These additional resources include components such as warp schedulers, registers, and shared memory. The SM can be considered the heart of the GPU, similar to a CPU core, with registers and shared memory being scarce resources within the SM.

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1280

L1 Cache

48 KB (per SM)

L2 Cache

1536KB

TDP

120W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

3.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

CUDA

6.1

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

6.4

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p

Score

9 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p

Score

33 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p

Score

51 fps

Battlefield 5 2160p

Score

28 fps

Battlefield 5 1440p

Score

51 fps

Battlefield 5 1080p

Score

75 fps

FP32 (float)

Score

4.287 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

4099

Blender

Score

363.3

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER

47 +422.2%

Radeon RX 6600 XT

39 +333.3%

RTX A2000

26 +188.9%

GeForce GTX 970

15 +66.7%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

95 +187.9%

Radeon RX 5700 XT

75 +127.3%

RTX A2000 12 GB

54 +63.6%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

7 -78.8%

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070

141 +176.5%

Arc A770

107 +109.8%

GeForce RTX 2060

79 +54.9%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

12 -76.5%

Battlefield 5 2160p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile

56 +100%

Radeon RX 5600 XT

46 +64.3%

Radeon RX 5500 XT

34 +21.4%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

1 -96.4%

Battlefield 5 1440p / fps

Radeon RX 6600

100 +96.1%

Radeon RX Vega 56

91 +78.4%

GeForce RTX 3050 8 GB

66 +29.4%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

Radeon RX 550

14 -72.5%

Battlefield 5 1080p / fps

Radeon RX 5700 XT

139 +85.3%

Radeon RX 5600 XT

122 +62.7%

Radeon RX 5500 XT

90 +20%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

Radeon RX 550

20 -73.3%

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Pro 575

4.579 +6.8%

Radeon Pro 5500M

4.365 +1.8%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

4.287

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max Q

4.183 -2.4%

Radeon Pro W6500M

4.094 -4.5%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 2070 Mobile Refresh

7565 +84.6%

GeForce RTX 2060 Max Q

5497 +34.1%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

4099

GeForce GTX 780

2847 -30.5%

Radeon RX 460

1797 -56.2%

Blender

Radeon RX 6850M XT

1497 +312.1%

GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER

847 +133.1%

Quadro T1000 Mobile GDDR6

415 +14.2%

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

363.3

GeForce GT 1030

45.58 -87.5%