GTX 1060 With GDDR5X

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.techpowerup.com/248983/nvidi...er-192-bit

NVIDIA is rushing in a new variant of its GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB graphics card to counter AMD's Radeon RX 590, in a bid to reinforce the $250 price-point ahead of the crucial Holiday season. According to specifications of the GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X put out by Palit, the GDDR5X version is a little more than a marketing stunt, with something in there for overclockers. The GTX 1060 GamingPro OC+ from Palit is by no means a "baseline" product. It features 6 GB of GDDR5X memory, which ticks at 8800 MHz (GDDR5X effective), and continues to have a 192-bit wide memory interface. At this speed, the GPU ends up with 211.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Of course, this story is incomplete without context. Back in 2017, NVIDIA refreshed the GTX 1060 6 GB with 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory (216 GB/s). That variant, although available in some places, isn't the predominant GTX 1060 6 GB variant, as NVIDIA did not retire the original 8 Gbps GTX 1060 6 GB with its launch. This new GDDR5X variant comes with even lower memory clock and bandwidth than that 9 Gbps refresh. The card still only has 1,280 CUDA cores, and the GPU is factory-overclocked by Palit at 1531 MHz core, and 1746 MHz GPU Boost. At best, GDDR5X could vastly improve overclocking headroom, since NVIDIA's partners could be using 10 Gbps-rated GDDR5X chips, which are known to overclock well beyond 11 Gbps.

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.techpowerup.com/249518/nvidi...force-1060

Instead of reworking a purpose-built memory controller solution compatible with the GP106 GPU, the company has gone and carved the SKU from its existing GP104 silicon - which already supports the GDDR5X memory subsystem due to its implementation on the GTX 1080 and 1080 Ti graphics cards. A smart usage of GP104 inventories (which have been superseded by NVIDIA's new RTX 20-series in the high end) or very defective dies (remember the GTX 1060 has half the Shaders, at 1280, compared to the GTX 1080's 2560). This decision by NVIDIa could also go some way in explaining dwindling inventories and increasing pricing of GTX 1080 graphics cards, as chips that could have been used for that SKU could be used for the new GTX 1060.

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/KFA2...5X/36.html

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 GDDR5X was hailed by many as the AMD Radeon RX 590 killer, but after our review that doesn't seem to be the case. Rather NVIDIA decided to match performance of the existing GTX 1060 6 GB as closely as possible (GTX 1060 3 GB has fewer shaders). All specs and clocks match the original exactly, the only difference is the use of GDDR5X memory, which is clocked at the same effective frequency.

This looks a bit like a lost opportunity to me. Since NVIDIA switched to the GP104 GPU anyway—which has more shaders, it would have been easy to increase the shader count a bit, to make up ground against the AMD RX 590. Setting higher clocks for both GPU and memory would have provided an additional performance boost. The OC potential is there, as our overclocking tests show.
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Overclocking potential of the GP104 GPU was a bit lower than what we've seen from other GP104-based cards, suggesting that the chips used on the GTX 1060 GDDR5X have been harvested for both defects and clocks. Of course the defects will be located in shading units that are disabled anyway, so this has no effect on the quality of the product or its longevity. Idle power draw of the GDDR5X GTX 1060 is a bit increased, due to the bigger GPU, but gaming power is pretty much identical, which is great.

The real highlight of this card is the massive memory overclocking potential. We managed a 44% (!) overclock on memory, which wasn't completely unexpected, since the memory chips are rated for 11 Gbps operation by the manufacturer Micron. Good to see that NVIDIA didn't limit the clocks artificially. Thanks to the large increase in memory clock, the performance of a hand-overclocked GTX 1060 GDDR5X will easily surpass that of a hand-overclocked GDDR5 model. In our testing the OC'd GTX 1060 Founders Edition reached 76.5 FPS whereas the OC'd GDDR5X board reached 82.0 FPS—a 7% difference. This means that when overclocked, GTX 1060 GDDR5X beats Radeon RX 590, which has very little additional overclocking potential on its own, and thanks to Pascal's power efficiency, the 1060 manages that while using less power and running cooler and quieter.

With a price of around $250, the GTX 1060 GDDR5X comes at the same pricing as the GTX 1060 GDDR5, which is great and just fair, considering there is no performance increase out of the box. If you are in the market for a GTX 1060, and can find a GDDR5X model at near identical pricing, then it's worth picking up the GDDR5X variant, because it has much better memory overclocking potential, which will yield some extra performance. If you don't plan on overclocking, then both variants can be considered identical and other factors, like price should take priority over trying to get GDDR5X memory chips.