GTX 1060M Laptop Pricing

[Aereldor]

5 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

@Aereldor The 1060 is not a replacement for the 960m FYI. It's the replacement for the 970m. I don't feel like it's going to be priced similar to the 970m Clevo replacements simply because Nvidia already jacked the prices for the desktop equivalents. The corresponding pascal card 960->1060 is more expensive than Maxwell. 

Indeed. It makes me wonder what the replacement for the 960m will be. Possibly the 1050m?. The replacement for the GTX 960 from Nvidia appears to be the GTX 1060 3GB, which will probably launch at $199.

[Pendragon]

Just now, Aereldor said:

Indeed. It makes me wonder what the replacement for the 960m will be. Possibly the 1050m?. The replacement for the GTX 960 from Nvidia appears to be the GTX 1060 3GB, which will probably launch at $199.

3gb is a pretty dumb move from Nvidia. It might be the 1050ti. Most people expect the replacement for the 960m will be a 1050ti. 

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, Pendragon said:

3gb is a pretty dumb move from Nvidia. It might be the 1050ti. Most people expect the replacement for the 960m will be a 1050ti. 

Won't the 1050 Ti launch after the 1050? That's how it worked with the GTX 550, 650, 750, and 950. 

Why do you say the 3GB 1060 is a dumb move? Do you believe that the VRAM amount will bottleneck the graphics processor?

[Pendragon]

8 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Why do you say the 3GB 1060 is a dumb move? Do you believe that the VRAM amount will bottleneck the graphics processor?

Yes. 3gb modern day is a pretty dumb move from nvidia. The 960m had 4gbs. So Nvidia knows that even modern day 1080 games need around 4gbs. Similarly the RX480 is offered at a minimum of 4gbs. Even the RX460 is offered in a 4gb version. Sure 3gb is fine, and you might not run in "many" problems, but in any slightly more memory intensive games it'll chug. Keeping in mind that since 4gb is the current norm, future games are gonna be developed with a 4gb card in mind. 

[Aereldor]

25 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

Yes. 3gb modern day is a pretty dumb move from nvidia. The 960m had 4gbs. So Nvidia knows that even modern day 1080 games need around 4gbs. Similarly the RX480 is offered at a minimum of 4gbs. Even the RX460 is offered in a 4gb version. Sure 3gb is fine, and you might not run in "many" problems, but in any slightly more memory intensive games it'll chug. Keeping in mind that since 4gb is the current norm, future games are gonna be developed with a 4gb card in mind. 

Do you think it would have gone over better if they had decided instead to release a 4GB version for, say, $220?

[D2ultima]

27 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

Yes. 3gb modern day is a pretty dumb move from nvidia. The 960m had 4gbs. So Nvidia knows that even modern day 1080 games need around 4gbs. Similarly the RX480 is offered at a minimum of 4gbs. Even the RX460 is offered in a 4gb version. Sure 3gb is fine, and you might not run in "many" problems, but in any slightly more memory intensive games it'll chug. Keeping in mind that since 4gb is the current norm, future games are gonna be developed with a 4gb card in mind. 

It's dependent on the Memory bus. I'd rather 3GB 192-bit over 4GB 128-bit, honestly.

 

6GB would also work fine, they could do just that.

 

The RX 480 is not as low-end as a 1050 would be, but it has a 256-bit memory bus so only 2GB/4GB/8GB/16GB could be used.

 

3 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Do you think it would have gone over better if they had decided instead to release a 4GB version for, say, $220?

That would have required the card to be either nerfed or buffed. Nerfing would set the 1060 on a 128-bit memory bus, and buffing would have used a 256-bit memory bus. That would make it 4GB/8GB, which would inevitably drive up its price.

 

I wouldn't want another 128-bit memory bus card that's not entry-level like GP107.

[Aereldor]

4 minutes ago, D2ultima said:

-snip-

I wonder whether a GTX 1060 3GB will perform on par with a 970 and be the bare minimum point of entry for VR. 

Not that it should end up with 2.5 gigabytes of VRAM (/s).

[Pendragon]

1 minute ago, Aereldor said:

I wonder whether a GTX 1060 3GB will perform on par with a 970 and be the bare minimum point of entry for VR. 

Using VR with a 970 isn't exactly the best experience. Honestly I think they should of moved up the boundaries to 980. It's just not comfortable. 

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, Pendragon said:

Using VR with a 970 isn't exactly the best experience. Honestly I think they should of moved up the boundaries to 980. It's just not comfortable. 

Well, the raw horsepower of a GTX 970 coupled with simultaneous multi-projection should bring the experience up to that of a 980, shouldn't it?

[D2ultima]

2 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

I wonder whether a GTX 1060 3GB will perform on par with a 970 and be the bare minimum point of entry for VR. 

Not that it should end up with 2.5 gigabytes of VRAM (/s).

the vRAM won't make much difference. VR is all FPS. Honestly in a couple months I bet 970 won't be VR minimum anymore. Games will unoptimize themselves into oblivion due to the new cards, and a 1070 might be the new "VR" requirement by next year or so. It's why the "780" isn't the baseline for VR either, even though there's a 6GB version. 970 runs better in a lot of games because tessellation, etc.

 

When AMD has a 1070-level card that isn't $650 then we might get the VR requirement bumped up. By the time people shift to Pascal and Vega for performance, the only way to get 180fps (VR requirement) in a game without setting it to garbage settings (FAR LESS considering the CPU requirements; games like BF1 and stuff are probably never going to hit VR without DX12/Vulkan killing their ridiculously overboard CPU usage) is to use a stronger card.

[Pendragon]

1 hour ago, Aereldor said:

Well, the raw horsepower of a GTX 970 coupled with simultaneous multi-projection should bring the experience up to that of a 980, shouldn't it?

no. doesn't work that way. smp polymorph modules aren't on maxwell cards. SMP is a hardware implementation on pascal only. I don't know how you get smp would make the experience better on maxwell. 970 just doesn't have the horsepower to run VR properly even though it's touted as the VR min. 

[Aereldor]

33 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

no. doesn't work that way. smp polymorph modules aren't on maxwell cards. SMP is a hardware implementation on pascal only. I don't know how you get smp would make the experience better on maxwell. 970 just doesn't have the horsepower to run VR properly even though it's touted as the VR min. 

Unfortunately, you've completely misinterpreted my post.

 

What I was saying is that the GTX 1060 3GB will probably have the same horsepower as a GTX 970, and with its Pascal hardware that supports Simultaneous Multi-Projection, it should yield a VR experience equivalent to a GTX 980 but with less raw horsepower- namely, equivalent to about a GTX 970.

[Pendragon]

1 minute ago, Aereldor said:

What I was saying is that the GTX 1060 3GB will probably have the same horsepower as a GTX 970, and with its Pascal hardware that supports Simultaneous Multi-Projection, it should yield a VR experience equivalent to a GTX 980 but with less raw horsepower- namely, equivalent to about a GTX 970.

Could be. With SMP it'll possibly double in performance. or go the other way that d2 mentioned where optimization goes to hell cause there's better hardware.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, Pendragon said:

Could be. With SMP it'll possibly double in performance. or go the other way that d2 mentioned where optimization goes to hell cause there's better hardware.

Double? Does that mean that we could see VR-capable performance from a GTX 1050? It's probably going to sit between the RX 460 and 470 in terms of performance.

[Pendragon]

5 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

Double? Does that mean that we could see VR-capable performance from a GTX 1050? It's probably going to sit between the RX 460 and 470 in terms of performance.

Doubtful. SMP isn't universal. The technology is too proprietary, but it's pretty cool. There's ALOT of technical things that went into SMP that I have 0 clue about, but the jist of it is that instead of rendering both left and right eye, it can render off 1 and have 2 projection centers. So optimally 2x. But developers could probably say fuck that and just shift up VR requirements. 

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

Doubtful. SMP isn't universal. The technology is too proprietary, but it's pretty cool. There's ALOT of technical things that went into SMP that I have 0 clue about, but the jist of it is that instead of rendering both left and right eye, it can render off 1 and have 2 projection centers. So optimally 2x. But developers could probably say fuck that and just shift up VR requirements. 

Higher system requirements for VR will help hardware sales, but will drive away an enormous number of potential consumers.

Then again, relying heavily on Simultaneous Multi-Projection will render AMD cards obsolete, as only their best cards would be able to compete with NVidia's lowest-tier cards. The RX 480 might actually be beaten by a 1050 if that ends up happening.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, Aereldor said:

@ShadowCaptain, @AluminiumTech, @exercutor5, @D2ultima, @Wedsea040

I believe we may finally have a lead. These images are probably fake, but if we were to assume they're legitimate-

http://imgur.com/a/Wd7f3

The cheapest laptop of the bunch, with a Core i5 6300HQ, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB SSD, comes in at about 15,000 Norwegian Kronor, which is roughly equivalent to $1800. If this stuff is cheaper in the US than in other countries (as it almost always is), I think $1500 might be a safe expectation.

 

Furthermore, to all of those who suggested that laptops will contain full (if slightly underclocked) desktop chips- you might just be right.

I'm sorry but that pricing is just unbelievable. That has to be BS. The Inspiron 15 gaming version was like $900 for a 960M.

[Imglidinhere]

47 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm sorry but that pricing is just unbelievable. That has to be BS. The Inspiron 15 gaming version was like $900 for a 960M.

And again, the 1060 is NOT a replacement for the 960M. Enough people... just skip through the thread and you'll encounter at least two to three posts of people stating this. It's obvious. They aren't going to go from GTX 750 Ti performance to GTX 980 performance for the entry-level group. It's just not going to happen. That's not wishful thinking, that's dreaming of the perfect company, which Nvidia isn't.

[D2ultima]

37 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm sorry but that pricing is just unbelievable. That has to be BS. The Inspiron 15 gaming version was like $900 for a 960M.

Yeah, no. $1800 for a 1060 laptop is too much. It won't be so expensive unless it's decked out with SSDs and whatnot.

1 hour ago, Aereldor said:

Unfortunately, you've completely misinterpreted my post.

 

What I was saying is that the GTX 1060 3GB will probably have the same horsepower as a GTX 970, and with its Pascal hardware that supports Simultaneous Multi-Projection, it should yield a VR experience equivalent to a GTX 980 but with less raw horsepower- namely, equivalent to about a GTX 970.

The problem with this is that it's incorrect. The 1060 is closer to a 980 give or take (though stock for stock generally less than, especially considering superclocked 980s where superclocked pascal doesn't really happen much and if it does it's like 50MHz or less 90% of the time). Add the SMP to it, and it will far outpace a 980 in VR and in VR only. Not sure about 3D but honestly it doesn't even matter for 3D since no game uses it anymore, lol.

 

What you're incorrectly assuming is that less vRAM equates to less performance, which is 100% false. It's simply "less memory". If you have 32GB of DDR3 2400MHz 10-11-11-31 RAM in your desktop, and you change the kit out to 16GB DDR3 2400MHz 10-11-11-31 RAM, you lose no performance, correct? You simply become able to work with less data concurrently. This is the same with video cards. You only start noticing an issue when a game's or program's critical data has:

 

- Filled your vRAM to capacity

- Cannot be compressed anymore

- Has no more bits that can be safely removed without compromising your immediate activity (killing pre-caching in an open-world game for example will cause pop-in at long distances to show up, but it does not affect your current area unless you move EXTREMELY quickly through the map).

 

This, and only this, is what you call a vRAM bottleneck. A memory bandwidth bottleneck is something else entirely, as well.

 

The 3GB 1060 and the 6GB 1060 will perform exactly the same unless a game requires in excess of 3GB vRAM using settings that the 6GB card is completely capable of rendering (of which, most settings that eat vRAM are independent of core strength, actually, like texture resolution or shadowmap resolution). In which case, lowering settings on texture and such should suffice.

[Aereldor]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm sorry but that pricing is just unbelievable. That has to be BS. The Inspiron 15 gaming version was like $900 for a 960M.

It's a full desktop GTX 1060, though, which performs on par with a GTX 980. $1500 might be a reasonable expectation- it might even be a little too good.

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, Aereldor said:

It's a full desktop GTX 1060, though, which performs on par with a GTX 980. $1500 might be a reasonable expectation- it might even be a little too good.

And? $1100-1200 would be reasonable. $1500 would be unreasonable. A GTX 1060 costs $249 + a bit extra for MXM modules. So let's say $299. $299 + $250 - 10% (buying in bulk lowers prices)  (i5-6300HQ) + I'll leave a budget of $200 for an SSD and $100 for RAM. That totals $824. Plus let's say $50 for a motherboard and $100 for the screen. And then $100 for construction and assembly. And the final total is $1074 using the estimated costs. SSD prices could be lower and so could GPU prices. So let's say anywhere between $974 and $1074 for the cost of it. The OEM isn't making 40% margins here. There's no way that would cost $1500 unless they want to milk their customers.

 

You do not price something based on how it performs. You price it based on the price of the predecessor...... In this case the 960M was a $200 GPU which was in $900 laptops and $1100-1200 laptops. That means people should expect no different.

[don_svetlio]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm sorry but that pricing is just unbelievable. That has to be BS. The Inspiron 15 gaming version was like $900 for a 960M.

It's not. 1060M is replacing the 970M

[don_svetlio]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

And? $1100-1200 would be reasonable. $1500 would be unreasonable. A GTX 1060 costs $249 + a bit extra for MXM modules. So let's say $299. $299 + $250 - 10% (buying in bulk lowers prices)  (i5-6300HQ) + I'll leave a budget of $200 for an SSD and $100 for RAM. That totals $824. Plus let's say $50 for a motherboard and $100 for the screen. And then $100 for construction and assembly. And the final total is $1074 using the estimated costs. SSD prices could be lower and so could GPU prices. So let's say anywhere between $974 and $1074 for the cost of it. The OEM isn't making 40% margins here. There's no way that would cost $1500 unless they want to milk their customers.

 

You do not price something based on how it performs. You price it based on the price of the predecessor...... In this case the 960M was a $200 GPU which was in $900 laptops and $1100-1200 laptops. That means people should expect no different.

960M laptops are getting 1040s or 1050s.

[Aereldor]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

unless they want to milk their customers.

Makes me wonder.

[Aereldor]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

It's not. 1060M is replacing the 970M

It isn't going to be a 1060M, is it? They're just shoving the desktop chips in there.