GTX 1060 VS. RX 480: WHICH ONE - SAME PRICE (UK)

[RUNitsArkain]

I can get the standard Gigabyte RX 480 SINGLE FAN for the same price as the Palit GTX 1060 DUAL FAN and for 10 pound less I can get the ZOTAC model also with DUAL FANS what should I do? I'm heavily favouring NVIDIAs offering right now and I will upgrade my GPU in 3 years time from now! What would you guys do?

 

Thanks - Arkain

[Tom Hanks]

ZOTAC.

[HKZeroFive]

The ZOTAC GTX 1060 because it's cheaper, performs better, has better cooling and is more energy efficient. I'm assuming the single-fan Gigabyte RX 480 is the reference model which runs hot.

[Elliott Game]

are you running primarily on windows or possibly linux in the future? if windows: Nvidia, if both windows and linux: AMD

[RUNitsArkain]

I'll be using windows for the foreseeable future

[Hunter-97-G]

The ZOTAC one is the AMP! Edition? Definitely get that.

[Enderman]

Definitely the 1060, preferably zotac.

 

2 minutes ago, Elliott Game said:

are you running primarily on windows or possibly linux in the future? if windows: Nvidia, if both windows and linux: AMD

Uh, why? If he is running windows, the 1060 is better.

If he is running linux, the 1060 is even better.

There is pretty much 0 reason why he should buy a 480 for that price.

[RUNitsArkain]

The AMP version of the ZOTAC card costs 10 more than the RX 480

 

Seems one sided with everyone saying ZOTAC thanks for the help guys, I'll wait for a few more replies!

[Elliott Game]

4 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Definitely the 1060, preferably zotac.

 

Uh, why? If he is running windows, the 1060 is better.

If he is running linux, the 1060 is even better.

There is pretty much 0 reason why he should buy a 480 for that price.

AMD has better driver support for Linux than Nvidia

[Elliott Game]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Definitely the 1060, preferably zotac.

 

Uh, why? If he is running windows, the 1060 is better.

If he is running linux, the 1060 is even better.

There is pretty much 0 reason why he should buy a 480 for that price.

and they support open source platforms better in general

[Elliott Game]

6 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Definitely the 1060, preferably zotac.

 

Uh, why? If he is running windows, the 1060 is better.

If he is running linux, the 1060 is even better.

There is pretty much 0 reason why he should buy a 480 for that price.

actually, I'm wrong

[Simon771]

If it's the same price, GTX 1060 seems like no brainer for me.

90% of the cases, it will be faster.

 

Those 10% is where Ashes of Singularity is hiding. And other benchmarks like that.

 

I would get GTX 1060 if I were you

[AlTech]

43 minutes ago, RUNitsArkain said:

I can get the standard Gigabyte RX 480 SINGLE FAN for the same price as the Palit GTX 1060 DUAL FAN and for 10 pound less I can get the ZOTAC model also with DUAL FANS what should I do? I'm heavily favouring NVIDIAs offering right now and I will upgrade my GPU in 3 years time from now! What would you guys do?

 

Thanks - Arkain

the GTX 1060 is better at Direct X 11 stuff and the RX 480 is better at Direct X 12 stuff.

 

I'd go for the RX 480 since more DX12 games will come out in the future.

[LordLeewee]

1060. seems better than the rx in most of the benchmarks ive looked at. my housemate is building a pc for 1080p gaming and i think we're going for the 1060 for him too, as were also in the uk and the prices are more or less the same for both

[Vode]

1 hour ago, Elliott Game said:

AMD has better driver support for Linux than Nvidia

Not really. Where did you get that from? Nvidia is ahead with their Linux drivers.

[Tom Hanks]

1060 blows RX 480 out of the water in DX11, and matches the RX 480 in DX12, since it has lower power consumption and more feature,s 1060 wins in this case.

[Enderman]

8 hours ago, Elliott Game said:

AMD has better driver support for Linux than Nvidia

You're joking, right?

Everyone knows how crap AMD's linux drivers are.

People who have AMD cards need to use third party drivers if they want stuff to even work properly because AMD still has to get their act together.

 

It's only fairly recent that AMD said they were going to start focusing on linux support.

[demonaii]

Right now I'm kinda dissapointed from the 3rd party vendors . Maybe in future something better will come out.

If you don't have the patience, go for Nvidia.

[grayperview]

None yet, wait for 480 AIB's....bare in mind AMD historically improve their cards perfomance substantially over time, in 3 to 6 month the 480 will probably match the 1060 in dx11 too (except in gameworks).

[Briggsy]

11 minutes ago, super_skank said:

None yet, wait for 480 AIB's....bare in mind AMD historically improve their cards perfomance substantially over time, in 3 to 6 month the 480 will probably match the 1060 in dx11 too (except in gameworks).

Historically true, although GCN has been out for 5+ years. The improvements generally aren't linear over time, and developers have had 5 years to optimize better for GCN, making driver optimizations less impactful these days for AMD. Gameworks titles have recently been doing very well on AMD, sometimes better, like the Division for example.

 

As far as waiting for Add-in Board Partner 480's, silicon lottery may shake your hand or poo on your chest. The Sapphire Nitro 480 has just been confirmed as having two modes: silent mode @ 1266Mhz and Boost Mode at 1342Mhz with a ramped up fan curve. Some of these might hit 1400Mhz, but good luck even finding one for a couple months. Same goes for the rest of the custom 480's - supply will be low for a while when they launch.

[Vikesh]

Cosider this if you want a Cheap upgrade later on get the RX 480 because you can just throw in another one but wait for 3rd party cards if you want just one card get a 1060 

[grayperview]

20 minutes ago, Briggsy said:

Historically true, although GCN has been out for 5+ years. The improvements generally aren't linear over time, and developers have had 5 years to optimize better for GCN, making driver optimizations less impactful these days for AMD. Gameworks titles have recently been doing very well on AMD, sometimes better, like the Division for example.

 

As far as waiting for Add-in Board Partner 480's, silicon lottery may shake your hand or poo on your chest. The Sapphire Nitro 480 has just been confirmed as having two modes: silent mode @ 1266Mhz and Boost Mode at 1342Mhz with a ramped up fan curve. Some of these might hit 1400Mhz, but good luck even finding one for a couple months. Same goes for the rest of the custom 480's - supply will be low for a while when they launch.

The 480 is a more refined version of GCN, i suspect they haven't got anywhere near the maximum out of it yet...Look at the 2nd driver release, a 3% gain over the initial release driver, I am still optomistic for the 480.....The 1060 is a solid 1080p card but with 6gb ram and 192bit bus is nothing more than a £200 card.

 

Long term a 480 will be a better buy i feel.

[Briggsy]

38 minutes ago, super_skank said:

The 480 is a more refined version of GCN, i suspect they haven't got anywhere near the maximum out of it yet...Look at the 2nd driver release, a 3% gain over the initial release driver, I am still optomistic for the 480.....The 1060 is a solid 1080p card but with 6gb ram and 192bit bus is nothing more than a £200 card.

 

Long term a 480 will be a better buy i feel.

The refinements in GCN are an attempt to get more out of the design as general driver improvements have reached their limit. the 192bit bus of the 1060 is a non-issue, as pascal memory compression is better than Polaris.

 

You hit the nail on the head though. people buy based on their feelings.

[BolginNT]

I had the RX480 a day after its release and tested it out for almost two weeks. While the performance in general was really good in 1080p, what let me down was its day-to-day usage characteristics. While playing Witcher 3, the core-temps were sitting somewhere between 84-85C which is definitelly not healthy for any GPU in long term. At those temperatures you could also clearly hear its fan trying really hard to keep it cool, yet without success. Not to mentioned the bigger powerdraw.

Now before we get into some pointless fanboyism, I KNOW that most of these issues will be addressed by AIBs but better cooler can only do so much... Its still gonna be more power-hungry and it still gonna dissipate more heat than GTX1060.

How do I know this? Glad you asked... I got my hands on one of the GTX 1060s from Gainward and mind you, its non-OCed basic model.

As everybody knows from reviews, it performs slightly better in 1080p gaming compared to the RX480.

But what really got me was the OC headroom and its cooling characteristics in general. Without any trial-and-error testing, I just loaded Afterburner and on the first GO managed to get 1700MHz Base / 2GHz+ Boost clock and 9GHz clock on memory. GPU was able to keep the boost clock of 2015MHz - 2050MHz even in Furmark stress test with temperatures hitting 77 - 78C.

Also while working or just sitting idle in desktop, fans dont spin at all, with 33C temp. 

As of now, both GPUs cost the same here in Czech Republic (at least I got mine GTX1060 for 280€) and while AIBs will definitely do good to RX480s I doubt you will get the same consistency in OC and temperatures with the AMD card.

[grayperview]

50 minutes ago, BolginNT said:

I had the RX480 a day after its release and tested it out for almost two weeks. While the performance in general was really good in 1080p, what let me down was its day-to-day usage characteristics. While playing Witcher 3, the core-temps were sitting somewhere between 84-85C which is definitelly not healthy for any GPU in long term. At those temperatures you could also clearly hear its fan trying really hard to keep it cool, yet without success. Not to mentioned the bigger powerdraw.

Now before we get into some pointless fanboyism, I KNOW that most of these issues will be addressed by AIBs but better cooler can only do so much... Its still gonna be more power-hungry and it still gonna dissipate more heat than GTX1060.

How do I know this? Glad you asked... I got my hands on one of the GTX 1060s from Gainward and mind you, its non-OCed basic model.

As everybody knows from reviews, it performs slightly better in 1080p gaming compared to the RX480.

But what really got me was the OC headroom and its cooling characteristics in general. Without any trial-and-error testing, I just loaded Afterburner and on the first GO managed to get 1700MHz Base / 2GHz+ Boost clock and 9GHz clock on memory. GPU was able to keep the boost clock of 2015MHz - 2050MHz even in Furmark stress test with temperatures hitting 77 - 78C.

Also while working or just sitting idle in desktop, fans dont spin at all, with 33C temp. 

As of now, both GPUs cost the same here in Czech Republic (at least I got mine GTX1060 for 280€) and while AIBs will definitely do good to RX480s I doubt you will get the same consistency in OC and temperatures with the AMD card.

The cooler on the reference 480 is pathetic to be fair, The AIB will solve the heat issues along with the sustained boost clock issues.