Home / NVIDIA / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile: Performance and Specs

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile: An Outdated Warrior or a Budget Option? Review in 2025

Introduction

Even nearly a decade after its release, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile remains one of the most discussed mobile GPUs. By 2025, it can no longer boast flagship performance, but it continues to attract users looking for budget solutions for basic tasks. In this article, we will explore what this graphics card is capable of today and who might still find it useful.

Architecture and Key Features

Pascal Architecture: A Modest Legacy

The GTX 1060 Mobile is based on the Pascal architecture, released by NVIDIA in 2016. The manufacturing process is 16 nm, which appears archaic by modern standards (where 4–5 nm chips dominate). The card contains 1280 CUDA cores and a boost clock of up to 1733 MHz.

Lack of Modern Technologies

The GTX 1060 Mobile does not support ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). This limits its capabilities in games of 2025, where such features have become standard. However, for its era, it provided decent performance in Vulkan and DirectX 12.

Memory: Balancing Volume and Speed

GDDR5 and 6 GB: Is it Enough in 2025?

The graphics card is equipped with 6 GB of GDDR5 memory with a 192-bit bus. The bandwidth is 192 GB/s. For gaming at 1080p, this volume is sufficient, but modern projects with high-detail textures (e.g., Starfield 2 or GTA VI) could cause memory to max out, resulting in FPS drops.

Comparing with Modern Standards

Against GPUs with GDDR6 (300–600 GB/s) or HBM3 (up to 1 TB/s), the GTX 1060 Mobile lags in data transfer speed, which is particularly noticeable in open-world games and when rendering 4K content.

Gaming Performance: Realities of 2025

1080p: The Last Stand

In less demanding titles (CS2, Fortnite, Valorant), the card delivers 60–90 FPS on medium settings. However, in AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the average FPS drops to 30–40 frames even at low presets.

1440p and 4K: Not Suitable for This GPU

Attempts to run games at 1440p often lead to uncomfortable gameplay (20–25 FPS). 4K is an unattainable goal without using upscaling technologies, which the GTX 1060 does not support.

Ray Tracing: Technically Impossible

The absence of RT cores makes any experiments with ray tracing pointless.

Professional Tasks: Limited Applicability

Video Editing and Rendering

Thanks to CUDA cores, the card can handle basic editing in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, but rendering complex projects takes 3–4 times longer than on modern GPUs with Tensor cores.

3D Modeling

In Blender or Maya, the GTX 1060 Mobile shows modest results: rendering a mid-level scene takes 15–20 minutes compared to 2–3 minutes for the RTX 4060 Mobile.

Scientific Calculations

For CUDA/OpenCL-based tasks (e.g., machine learning), the card is poorly suited due to its limited number of cores and outdated architecture.

Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP: 80 W — A Plus for Compact Systems

The low power consumption allows the GPU to be used in thin laptops. However, in 2025, even budget models are often equipped with more efficient chips (e.g., RTX 3050 Mobile with a TDP of 60 W).

Cooling: Risk of Overheating

Owners of devices with the GTX 1060 Mobile should regularly clean the cooling system and use cooling pads. In laptops with poor ventilation, GPU temperatures can reach 85–90°C under load.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon RX 580 Mobile: An Equal Rival

In terms of performance, the GTX 1060 Mobile is close to the RX 580 Mobile, but it falls behind in games optimized for Vulkan (Doom Eternal). However, NVIDIA drivers are more stable, providing an advantage in cross-platform projects.

NVIDIA RTX 2050 Mobile: An Evolutionary Step

The lower-end RTX card from 2022 outperforms the GTX 1060 Mobile by 15–20% in games and supports DLSS, making it a more desirable option in 2025.

Intel Arc A370M: A New Player

Intel's budget GPU (2023) shows comparable performance but handles modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate) better and costs around $200 compared to $150–170 for used laptops with GTX 1060.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: 80 W — Not a Problem

Laptops with GTX 1060 Mobile typically come with adapters rated at 120–150 W. When upgrading the system, ensure the power supply can handle the load.

Platform Compatibility

The card only works in laptops with processors no newer than Intel 10th Gen or AMD Ryzen 3000. For modern platforms (Intel 14th Gen, Ryzen 8000), additional BIOS settings may be required.

Drivers: Check for Support

NVIDIA officially ceased releasing Game Ready drivers for the GTX 10 series in 2024. To run the latest games, modified Community drivers may be necessary.

Pros and Cons

Advantages:

- Low price: Laptops with GTX 1060 Mobile cost $150–250 (new stock remaining).

- Sufficient performance for older games and office tasks.

- Energy efficiency.

Disadvantages:

- No support for RTX, DLSS, FSR.

- Outdated drivers.

- Limited performance in modern games.

Final Conclusion: Who is the GTX 1060 Mobile Suitable for in 2025?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Are looking for a budget laptop for studies, work, and less demanding gaming (e.g., Minecraft or Rocket League).

2. Plan to play games from 2015–2020 at high settings.

3. Value battery life: Systems with GTX 1060 Mobile are often equipped with large batteries.

However, for modern AAA games, professional 3D rendering, or working with neural networks, this GPU is no longer suitable. In 2025, the GTX 1060 Mobile serves more as a "nostalgic" option than as a relevant solution.

Basic

Label Name

NVIDIA

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2016

Model Name

GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

Generation

GeForce 10 Mobile

Base Clock

1404MHz

Boost Clock

1670MHz

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.

80.16 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.

133.6 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.

66.80 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.

133.6 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.

4.189 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

80W

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

None

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

4.189 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

3723

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

4.387 +4.7%

GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB

4.287 +2.3%

GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

4.189

FirePro W8100

4.135 -1.3%

Radeon Pro 570

4.039 -3.6%

3DMark Time Spy

Radeon RX 5600 OEM

7004 +88.1%

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max Q

4854 +30.4%

GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile

3723

Radeon 760M

2329 -37.4%

Radeon 660M

1526 -59%