When Galax first announced their custom GTX 10-series graphics card, they looked quite ugly and I thought they were not planning to bring back nice looking designs. Thankfully the nice looking Galax cards are still around, such as the GTX 1060 model here.
First off you’ll see that the Galax GTX 1060 EX OC here runs with a twin-fan design, below is a brief of the cooler design as seen on the official product page
What we have then is a beautiful card that looks like carries a huge potential when it comes to modding, I’m planning to mod this baby already.
The GTX 1060 EX OC requires only a 6-pin PCI-E power connector so rest assured it won’t be a power hungry card that goes beyond 150W.
As for the other side, the card does not come with any backplate.
Below is the GPU-Z screen capture.
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Core i7-5960X @ 4.5Ghz |
| RAM | Apacer Blade Fire 2x 8GB DDR4 3000Mhz |
| Motherboard | ASRock X99 OC Formula |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master V850 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 64bit |
Overclocking
Overclocking on the Galax GTX 1060 EX OC is excellent, I managed to push the core by an additional 200Mhz while the memory is limited to 150Mhz for it to pass all benchmarks. Some benchmarks do get away with 175Mhz or even 200Mhz increase in memory speed.
Benchmarks
Unigine Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 63 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 68 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 67 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 62 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 54 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 65 |
Metro Last Light
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 92 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 98 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 95 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 85 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 80 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 88 |
Shadow of Mordor
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 97 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 98 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 99 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 89 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 71 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 92 |
Bioshock Infinite
Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 123 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 129 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 124 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 114 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 112 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 123 |
Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 46 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 49 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 48 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 45 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 37 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Reference | 50 |
The Division
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync OFF.
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 60 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 64 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 61 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 58 |
| Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 Reference | 61 |
Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)
Settings : Set to CRAZY
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 37 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 39 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 37 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 36 |
Hitman (DX12)
Settings : Maximum
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 66 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC Overclocked | 73 |
| Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming | 70 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP | 69 |
| Zotac GTX 1060 AMP OC | 66 |
Temperature
Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.
| Card | Idle(°C) | Load (°C) |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC | 40 | 74 |
| Galax GTX 1060 EX OC (Full RPM) | 35 | 63 |
The fan hovers at around 56% on AUTO settings when on high load, having the fans being dual 80mm means the system generates more noise than some other models.
Power Consumption
The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an Cooler Master V850 with around 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 90w.
| Card | Galax GTX 1060 EX OC |
| Furmark Burn-in | 244 |
| Estimated Actual System Draw | 220 |
| Estimated Card Power Draw | 130 |
The Verdict
The Galax GTX 1060 EX OC retails at $259.99 – it’s not the best looker and neither is it the most silent in operation but what you get is better than usual performance out of the box with great overclocking potential, and not forgetting that the cooler shroud is one that’s begging to be modified.
