GTX 1060 vs. RX 480: Which Graphics Card is Better? (After Driver Update)

For those looking for a mid-range graphics card, this generation’s two leading choices are NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 and AMD’s RX 480. Both cards come with two models of varying video RAM capacities and price points:

GTX 1060 6 GB vs RX 480 8 GB

The prices for the GTX 1060 6 GB and RX 480 8 GB hover around the $250 range, with higher quality cards reaching as high as $280.

Higher VRAM doesn’t necessarily translate into higher performance. Though both the GTX 1060 3 GB and RX 480 GB perform slightly worse than their higher VRAM counterparts, it’s mostly not because of the amount of VRAM. Having more VRAM does alleviate video memory bottlenecks when gaming at resolutions higher than 1080p, such as 1440p. Modded games with high-resolution texture packs may require upwards of 5 GB of VRAM.

There is no certain way to know how much video memory a game actually uses, as all currently available software methods show the amount of requested memory — not what is actually used. So, the application may in fact request 6 GB of VRAM, but in reality use only around 3.5 GB.

In the long run, the main performance difference between the 4 GB and the 8 GB RX 480 would be clockspeeds as both cards use the same graphics processing unit, the GPU on the card with 4 GB just has a lower core clock. The difference between the two cards will mostly be seen in VRAM-intensive titles, such as GTA V, or at higher resolutions (1440p, 4K). Otherwise the cards should perform identically at the same clockspeeds.

On the other hand, NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 3 GB and 6 GB do not use the same chip — the one on the 3 GB card has some parts of it disabled, making it all-around 10% slower than its bigger brother.

Concerning the performance of these cards, the RX 480 8 GB launched with a measurable disadvantage compared to the GTX 1060 6 GB, but AMD was able to reduce that difference with constant driver updates, as we can very well see in HardwareUnboxed’s recent performance overview of the two cards.

As we can see from the graph, the performance is equally distributed between games, so the choice, again, comes down to what you play. It is important to keep in mind that the RX 480 uses DirectX 12 and Vulkan in a more efficient way, allowing for a higher performance boost in games based on these new APIs. Nvidia on the other hand, as the market leader, has the ability to get support for much more games, thus optimizing them better for their hardware.

Some more benchmarks

The power use of the cards is similar to their smaller siblings. Again, the RX 480 uses about 50W more, so if power use or heat output are concerns, the 1060 is the better option. High quality heatsinks are recommended for both, but the RX 480 in particular.

Another important factor to consider when choosing between these cards is the monitor. If you’re planning to buy a new monitor, then getting a FreeSync+AMD GPU combo would be the best bet as it would be far cheaper than a G-Sync+Nvidia GPU combo in that performance range. Adaptive frame synchronization technology allows for tear- and latency-free gaming, which may in fact the deciding factor when choosing a graphics card in this price range.

Winner: Tie

The RX 480 is the more future-proof choice here, as it sees significant performance improvements in DirectX 12 gaming. Following recent driver updates, the 480 is also very slightly faster than the 1060 on average. But the GTX 1060 provides steadier framerates, consumes significantly less power, and generates less heat, making it an appealing alternative.(source-hardware unboxed)