Why are most people here saying never to buy a 1060 3GB

[Ryujin2003]

14 hours ago, Jovidah said:

By that reasoning no one should buy a 1070 because it's a cut-down 1080, or an i5 because it's a cut-down i7 cpu...

From a price / performance they both make total sense.

How is this even a logical and coherent argument?

[Schyken]

I'm still questioning the point of this thread. As you mentioned earlier, about just wanting FPS power, you should have specified that. Many replies are considering REAL, VALID arguments to buying a card, not aware that all you want is FPS. That's like asking why a MacBook pro is any more worth it than a MacBook air, and then saying "Oh, I just use Word and Safari".

[Evann]

i havent read everything through here, but to shorten in up:

 

wrong.

 

3GB is not enough for all 1080p games this day, i had a 970, and came to the limit of 3.5GB on multiple games (tomb raider, division etc.).

The 3GB model is fine, until you reach the limit. Low fps, stuttering and texture bugs will be result.

I am sure once you have this problem, you would've wished to spent the 30 or what € more on the card..

 

but in the end its your decision..

[i_build_nanosuits]

On 2016-10-24 at 6:50 AM, farzher said:

I realize it's 5-10% slower than 6GB, but it's 30% cheaper!

My math says it's by far the best value card that exists

People here say "get RX 480 or 1060 6GB. never 1060 3GB"
Why...1060 3GB is way cheaper than both, and it's even slightly faster than RX 480
(If you don't know what I'm talking about just search "1060 3gb" on here)
 

because people are complete ignorant morons they see 5GB of Vram ADRESSED in a few games on their 8GB card and they think ''ohh well yeah that game require at least 5GB otherwise it'll run like poop'' they don't realise that games will tend to adress more VRAM when it's THERE but the game actually REQUIRE less than HALF of that to work properly...

[i_build_nanosuits]

16 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

 The 290 shredded the 970 on memory bandwidth too but the 970 got better framerates in games until a few months ago. 

The GTX 970 still outperform the R9 390 in the latest AAA game...by a long shot...listen to this video from Joker Production:

 

 

[Jovidah]

6 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

How is this even a logical and coherent argument?

It wasn't... that's my point. The fact that something is a cut-down version of something else really isn't a valid argument unless it is priced equally. Whether it's good value depends on how large the price difference is compared to the features cut.

 

And quite frankly... most of you are simply talking out of your ass about all the VRAM. Just look at real benchmarks and see how small the difference is. It really barely shows unless you go out of your way to for example crank settings to 'hyperultimate with extra bacon' instead of ultra (in Mirrors Edge). In Doom? No difference in OpenGL.

In fact I'm pretty sure they cut the amount of CUDA cores (by 10%) mostly to make sure there'd be any difference at all...

 

Now on the argument of 'why get the cheaper card'. I agree it wouldn't make sense if the difference is just 20 euros... The issue is that over here at current prices the difference is more like 80 bucks. So at least a third more. If you're just playing 1080p that doesn't really make much sense. If you're playing much 1440p or higher getting any 1060 doesn't make much sense either; get the 1070 or 1080.

 

Another review to show how close they are: http://www.techspot.com/review/1237-msi-geforce-gtx-1060-3gb/

[farzher]

It's unreal how powerful this 1060 3GB card is for 150$ (140$ if you wanna send in the 10$ rebate) (I got it on sale)
I got it overclocked like this to 2,126 core clock, 4708 memory clock:






And it gives so many fps:

[ivan134]

15 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

The GTX 970 still outperform the R9 390 in the latest AAA game...by a long shot...listen to this video from Joker Production:

 

 

The 970 loses in Doom, deus ex mankind divided, gears of war 4, Forza horizon 3 and mirrors edge catalyst. Round of applause to the 970 for finally winning one after getting destroyed for a year. Oh wait, it didn't even win this one?

 

 

[Ryujin2003]

10 hours ago, farzher said:

It's unreal how powerful this 1060 3GB card is for 150$ (140$ if you wanna send in the 10$ rebate) (I got it on sale)
I got it overclocked like this to 2,126 core clock, 4708 memory clock:

And it gives so many fps:
 

I would turn on Vertical Sync just to force the refresh to match. Hope you enjoy it! What temps are you getting in game play OC vs stock?

 

Edit: also make a custom fan profile. It will help keep the heat down proactively, and will also help with the fan fluctuating. Many of the new GPUS don't kick the fan on until a certain point, but then they kick in pretty high. Fan profiles help to keep the heat down and let it rise slower than when the fan is off.

[farzher]

9 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I would turn on Vertical Sync just to force the refresh to match. Hope you enjoy it! What temps are you getting in game play OC vs stock?

 

Edit: also make a custom fan profile. It will help keep the heat down proactively, and will also help with the fan fluctuating. Many of the new GPUS don't kick the fan on until a certain point, but then they kick in pretty high. Fan profiles help to keep the heat down and let it rise slower than when the fan is off.

You can see in the screenshot my temps don't go above 62c at load overclocked (but I do have an aggressive custom fan curve). I'm not sure what it was at stock, but I'm happy where it is overclocked

[Mr.Meerkat]

Why do people not recommend the 1060 3GB?

Basically, someone proved that once it hits it's 3GB memory limit, it starts downclocking itself to prevent stuttering so yes, when you're using less than 3GB of vRAM then it's "just" faster than a RX480 but when when you go past it's 3GB vRAM limit, it's slower than a RX470 for the simple reason of prevention of stuttering to give the user a better experience.

 

On a side note, 3GB really isn't enough for a ultra 1080p card. Just playing R6S at mixed high/ultra settings (so I can get at least 100fps with my RX470) resulted in 3.4GB of vRAM usage. 

 

On a side note, the prices depends on the country, RX470s are cheaper than 1060 3GB and are basically equally priced to 4GB RX480s here in the UK  (also just to say, I got my RX470 for 120 pounds which is $120 converted in the land of GPU prices ). 

[Andrew Sh]

On 10/25/2016 at 3:21 AM, YongKang said:

I love that OP don't realize why the 970 3.5 gb+0.5 slower VRAM fiasco was such a big problem. This directly correlates with the 1060 3gb. A lot of games use more than 3 gb of VRAM. 4GB should be the minimum. Even the RX460, a much lower end card dedicated to esports games, have a 4 gb version. 

Plus, the 1060 3gb version isn't just cutting on the VRAM. They cut almost everything. At that point, you might be better with a RX470 4GB.

Well since you were so sure about "A lot of games", list 5-10 games that use more than 3gb vram at 1080p, which is the resolution the gtx 1060 3gb is made for.
Lets just exclude Shadow of Mordor since that's old and terribly optimised to this day. 

[Ekst4zy]

I'm getting 80-120 fps in doom on ultra (AA x8) in 1080p. I didn't even check how much vram is used. . . Because I didn't have to. I'm not saying that 3gb vram is optimal . Just wanted to point out that it's still doing fine . In my opinion 3gb will be fine for another year or two because of console peasants