NVIDIA has just unveiled the $250 GTX 1060, which is the most affordable member of the Pascal-based graphics card lineup. With a power-sipping TDP of only 120 W, the company claims that the card is much faster than GTX 980, another card that currently costs $400, and rivals AMD's Radeon RX 480.
Unfortunately, the full technical details of GTX 1060 have not been provided yet. NVIDIA announced that the graphics card is based on a new GP106 chip, instead of a binned version of the previous GP104 chip installed on the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080.
According to Engadget, the new GTX 1060 features 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8GHz, 1280 CUDA cores, and a boost clock of 1.7GHz, which is easily overclocked to over 2GHz. Even so, only a 6GB memory version of the card will be available.
The power supply will be fed via a 6-pin connector. And just like its GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cousins, GTX 1060 will also be available from other manufacturers like Zotac, Asus, and Gigabyte. In fact, Zotac has already announced its ZOTAC GTX 1060 AMP, which has 1280 CUDA cores and 6GB GDDR5 memory as well.
The founders Edition form of GTX 1060 will come with a higher price tag of $299. The extra $30 will buy a dual-FET power supply and a blower-style cooling system like that of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080.
According to ArsTechnica, NVIDIA has promised that both the Founders Edition and other partner cards will be available for purchase on July 19 when the card launches. But based on the supply issues surrounding the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, fans awaiting release are advised to take the promise with skepticism.
Notably, the announcement of GTX 1060 follows the recent launch of AMD's RX 480, which offers an almost similar performance to a GTX 970 at a low price of just $200. Now, NVIDIA claims that GTX 1060 is 75 percent power efficient and 15 percent faster than the RX 480.
If true, the launch of GTX 1060 will eventually come as a blow to AMD. Its only drawback is that, it will not favor gamers who wish to venture in VR and 4K gaming owing to memory issues.
Watch a video review of the GTX 1060 below: