GTX 1060 or RX 480?

[othertomperson]

41 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

GCN is a compute architecture, considering the clock speed increases AMD has done very well for themselves with Polaris. A 480 consumes around 20-30 watts more than a 1060 which is impressive for the nature of GCN. With the 1080, it has massive clock speed increases, that's why it's faster, nothing more. It's pretty much a die shrunk 980 with SMP stuck in.

 

Edit: I have no idea where you're getting the 1060 being faster in DX12 and Vulkan, you need to check your sources. In DX11 the 1060 is around 7% faster on average.

I'm getting it from benchmarks. You should look at some. They're pretty.

 

You say a "massive clock speed increase" like it's inconsequential and means nothing. In reality it's enough to double performance. I don't really see what you're complaining about. If the increase in performance from Skylake to Broadwell was this extreme I'd be ecstatic, not ranting about how it's not a real upgrade or some other such bs.

 

Polaris is definitely not a compute architecture. AMD have slashed the FP64 capabilities of GCN compared to previous generations, just like Nvidia did with Maxwell. The fact is that last gen 28nm cards dominate AMD here. Comparing them to the (still bigger) 16nm Pascal is just embarrassing given how much AMD's prior marketing was about ignoring performance and lauding efficiency.

[Citadelen]

13 hours ago, othertomperson said:

-snip-

Get new benchmarks because 4/5 times the RX 480 is a superior card in DX12. I'm not complaining an out a massive clock speed increase, I was merely stating what it was. I said GCN as a whole, not just Polaris. The point is it still has proper compute schedulers in it, for what it is, Polaris is very efficient. Yes Paxwell is more efficient, it would be embarrassing on Nvidia's part if it wasn't more efficient, due to the nature of the architecture.

[SCHISCHKA]

if you do get the 1060 get the 6GB dual fan versions. I have the EVGA 3GB single fan SC model and I'm not impressed with its temperatures. You might need more than 3GB for modern games; I just upgraded from a 512mb 9800GTX+ so the 3GB is more than enough for me.

[othertomperson]

12 hours ago, Citadelen said:

Get new benchmarks because 4/5 times the RX 480 is a superior card in DX12. I'm not complaining an out a massive clock speed increase, I was merely stating what it was. I said GCN as a whole, not just Polaris. The point is it still has proper compute schedulers in it, for what it is, Polaris is very efficient. Yes Paxwell is more efficient, it would be embarrassing on Nvidia's part if it wasn't more efficient, due to the nature of the architecture.

None of this is true though. Even when the 480 does pull ahead, it's never by more than 2 fps which puts it well within the margin of error, and Polaris doesn't have all of this "proper compute" built in -- it was all taken out just like in Maxwell for the sake of power efficient gaming. What might have been true for Hawaii or Fiji is not true any more for Polaris.

[Miguel Batista]

1 hour ago, othertomperson said:

None of this is true though. Even when the 480 does pull ahead, it's never by more than 2 fps which puts it well within the margin of error, and Polaris doesn't have all of this "proper compute" built in -- it was all taken out just like in Maxwell for the sake of power efficient gaming. What might have been true for Hawaii or Fiji is not true any more for Polaris

Actually, most games on dx12 include a loss of fps for nvidia cards with and cards gaining Fps. 

 

Second of all, he explained in his post that he is talking about gcn as a whole and not just polaris, and that the 480 still has compute schedulers in it. 

 

Thirdly, the difference between the 480 and the 1060 is tit for tat in their preferred APIs and you will get served well regardless. AMD has a history of providing longer support, Nvidia has a history of having the best overclocks  which makes a big difference. 

 

So why don't we all chill and eat some member berries?

[NuclearKing]

I bought the GTX 1060 for my first build. The power efficiency (and therefore silence) was a major consideration. Also, GeForce Experience.

[othertomperson]

40 minutes ago, Miguel Batista said:

Actually, most games on dx12 include a loss of fps for nvidia cards with and cards gaining Fps. 

 

Second of all, he explained in his post that he is talking about gcn as a whole and not just polaris, and that the 480 still has compute schedulers in it. 

 

Thirdly, the difference between the 480 and the 1060 is tit for tat in their preferred APIs and you will get served well regardless. AMD has a history of providing longer support, Nvidia has a history of having the best overclocks  which makes a big difference. 

 

So why don't we all chill and eat some member berries?

Honey, just because you or someone else says something that is utter bs and I contradict it, it doesn't mean I am not "chill". It just means you are wrong. If you cannot handle someone correcting you without having a cry over it, maybe you should stick to things you actually know something about.

 

Most games do not perform worse on Nvidia than AMD. They also do not perform worse on Nvidia in Dx12 compared to in Dx11. There is still an improvement boost, just a smaller one than for AMD, because Nvidia cards tend to see much higher Dx11 performance to begin with than AMD cards. As I have already explained, which you would know if you bothered to read more than one page of comments, AMD sees more of a jump moving from Dx11 to Dx12 because their DX11 drivers are really bad. Dx11 has a large driver overhead, making performance much more dependant on the quality of these drivers. Nvidia's Dx11 drivers tend to be better out of the gate, while AMD's take some time to reach the same level of quality.

 

This is why AMD cards have historically aged better than Nvidia cards. A combination of AMD re-releasing the same GPUs upto four years after initial release, combined with Nvidia's resource management prioritising drivers for their current generation cards have caused the quality of Nvidia's Dx11 drivers to diminish for cards that are no longer current.

 

Both this problem of Nvidia's, and AMD's problem of initial drivers not being fantastic are both no longer valid -- partly because AMD doesn't have a single re-brand in its current lineup (and has even less resources than Nvidia on maintaining driver support for legacy products), and also because in Dx12 the driver overhead which causes this whole issue isn't even there to begin with.

 

I know I've said this multiple times already, but the fact that your third point hinges on Directx 12 and Vulkan keeping the same driver overhead as Directx 11 when the performance boost the RX 480 has when moving from the older to the newer API clearly demonstrates that it doesn't means that it warrants explaining to you again.

 

About your second point, I am waiting with baited breath to hear how the compute performance of Fiji and Hawaii is raising the power requirements of Polaris. As much as he may claim otherwise, @Citadelen 's post only has any logical structure to it if he is talking specifically about Polaris since the whole argument is about why Polaris's (and specifically Polaris's) power consumption is as high as it is when compared to Maxwell and Pascal which are both on larger manufacturing processes.

[gundamMC]

The 1060 is better with most dx11 games and some dx12 games, while 480 is better w/ vulcan and dx12 and stuff...

Personally, I would wait a bit to see if the 1060 is getting any driver improvements. (I'm a Nvidia fan.. so... XDDDDD)

But for now, stick w/ 480.

[WhiteSkyMage]

I am personally quite hyped for the Vega 10, and also mate, have in mind that Vega 11 will be sucessor to Polaris. Now, that does not mean that your card wont be supported anymore if you happen to buy RX480, in fact all the cards from 2010 and perhaps earlier are supported, as long as they got the GCN architecture. Most past cards beat their nvidia counter parts in old and new games on average in dx11 (benchmarks from back then will show otherwise, look at recent ones if you can find any, AdoredTV shows some in his videos). I am not sure if that will be the case with dx12 games but it was with dx11.

 

Anyway, what I do not like about Pascal is really that "brute force", i have the feeling that those cards will be the ones to age much quicker and be outperformed easily by next upcoming generation - Volta and in the future, when drivers mature for Polaris, RX480 will likely take 1060 and clean the floor with it.

 

Nvidia is not going to make Volta on the 10nm node, instead they left it to the 16nm, and also Pascal cards are rumored to get 14nm variants next year. Anyway, it is likely that they will be building a brand new architecture, as Volta, on that node. Remember the async shaders? Well perhaps this time nvidia will bring them in. Just speculating, dont qoute me on that.

 

CF vs SLI scaling is another thing. One part of AMD's master plan is to increase the optimization of multi gpu support, and recently Sony also mentioned that PS4 Pro will have 2 GPUs of the same....you see where I am getting at? If the developers have to now support dual gpus on a console, then we will also see an improved scaling and support for CrossFire in ported games. I don't know how this will go for Nvidia...I don't really see it going too well tbh. Let me just mention why this is happening - the large die gpus like Vega 10, cost very high. It would be much more cost effective, if AMD sticks a couple of smaller dies on one graphics card than have one large costly chip. Yields are quite a big issue when you are making large dies....

 

Well in conclution, buy an RX480, Freesync comes free on newer monitors, you get better support for VR and new APIs...Don't be fooled by the GameWorks from nvidia, cuz this is dead and gone with dx11. 

[kokakolia]

I wanted to go for the RX 480, but in Canada it's stupidly overpriced. You'd think it would cost less than the Nvidia competitor, far from it! 

 

I got the Zotac mini 6gb for $340 CAD + tax, I can't find a non-reference RX 480 under $350. And it used to be worse, months ago you couldn't find an RX 480 under $400 CAD. Meanwhile, the Zotac mini 6gb has always been $340 CAD since launch. 

[System Error Message]

if you're looking for a gpu that'd last 2 years before it gets outdated go with nvidia. If you're looking for a gpu that'd last longer go with AMD. Thats how it is right now because GCN is compute focused. Not sure what catogery to put maxwell or pascal in but the 600 series were definitely graphics orientated. It seems very much like either brand will use opposing architectures so when nvidia goes compute focused amd goes for the more graphics efficient approach.

 

Theres a whole lot more to a GPU than just clocks and shaders but for the purpose of graphics you also have the other stuff in the GPU too such as ROPs and texture units for instance. You also have to take into account memory bandwidth which is something the 1060 lacks compared to the 480. This makes the comparison interesting as its dependent on the game you play, the resolution and what graphical features you use. Some games are more bandwidth hungry while some are more shader intensive. Games that are more shader intensive favour nvidia and use more processing power, less bandwidth such as the batman game series. I played batman arkham asylum on a gtx 580 attach to a laptop via expresscard. It worked well because the game didnt demand much bandwidth so the only transfers over PCIe were just maps and minimal things.

 

In my opinion the rx 480 will be better in the long run than the 1060. Dont assume that dx12 isnt a factor, in 1 year you are going to see more games adopt it. As more and more games use common game engines when these game engines update to dx12 (likely in a year or 2) you are going to see many games with dx12/vulcan.

 

As for driver optimisation the features that GPUs have are very different. Nvidia GPUs are capable of communicating across the PCIe bus to other devices without the need of the CPU. AMD GPUs arent capable of this and i was surprised they did not include this feature with GCN. This has been one advantage nvidia has over amd but in other fields amd currently has the advantage.

[mapegl]

I guess if I would just want raw performance overall, I would most likely get the 1060. Even when it is worse in dx12, in some of those games it has higher fps in dx11 than the rx480 in dx12. I follow benchmarks closely and I really am not impressed with dx12 on any gpu. Especially, after watching the last video from gamer's Nexus, where they pointed out how bad the low dips in fps are when using dx12 compared to dx11. 

Also power efficiency is higher, on the 1060, yes, although at TDPs this low I stopped to care that much. I went from 275watts to 150, so all good.

For me the decision to go with the RX480 was easy, because I can get adaptive sync for cheap. This is actually pretty great and I wouldn't want to miss it. Imho this is extra value, because there are few if any affordable g-sync displays. And in my special case, there is no 29" ultrawide with g-sync for 300€. 

 

Just my cup of tea. If you are consider the 1060 3GB vs 480 4GB, take the 480, 

If you are considering 1060 6GB vs 480 8GB, I would take which ever one is cheaper and/or has the feature(s) you care about and if it is only performance....well than I (as a loyal AMD buyer for the last 10years) would go with the 1060, because it is more consistent at the moment.