Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 Gaming Graphics Card Review

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 G1 Gaming appears as the latest member in Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming range, a factory overclocked GTX 1060 model that’s long, with dual fan, backplate and RGB light effects.

I think I pretty much described everything about the card already. The GTX 1060 G1 Gaming uses 8-pin PCI-E connector and that indicates higher than the expected power draw from a GTX 1060 card, capable of drawing up to 225W.

Here’s a view of the I/O panel and also another view of the cooler shroud, the shroud comes with red accents. Admittedly I was hoping that part of the unit would be RGB colored as well but it isn’t. The RGB light is limited to that tiny GIGABYTE text on the shroud which I think is disappointing.

RGB LEG aside, the cooler is very impressive, featuring Gigabyte’s WINDFORCE 2X cooling system features two 90mm unique blade fans, 2 pure copper composite heat-pipes, alternate spinning fan design, and heat pipes direct touch technology, together delivering an effective heat dissipation capacity for higher performance at lower temperatures.

Below is the GPU-Z screen capture.

More details at the official product page.

Test Setup

Overclocking

I wasn’t expecting the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming to be a card that I can overclock further but to my surprise I was able to add 125Mhz to the core and 250Mhz to memory and pass all benchmarks. It wasn’t stable with 150Mhz core boost.

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.

Metro Last Light

Shadow of Mordor

Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.

Bioshock Infinite

Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K

Grand Theft Auto V

Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.

The Division

Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync OFF.

Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)

Settings : Set to CRAZY

Hitman (DX12)

Settings : Maximum

Temperature

Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.

The fan hovers at around 45% on AUTO settings when on high load but what’s great about it is that it’s still pretty quite, even at 100% RPM it sounds like the noise level of Founders Edition cooler at 50% – 60% RPM.

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 107w.

Well what do you know, it’s not surprised that it scored to well in the benchmarks. The Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming comes pre-overclocked and this includes increased power draw when compared to the 76 Watt draw from Zotac’s GTX 1060 AMP.

The long cooler provides more surface area for cooling, not forgetting the amount of effort Gigabyte placed in making improvements over their Windforce cooling system. The cooling system on the GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is able to cool the unit well despite the added power draw.

The Verdict

The Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming retails at RM 1,459 and comes with 3-years warranty – what it offers is 10% boost in performance compared to other cards, it has a backplate, and it has RGB lighting for the text. The only down side of this card is that it’s quite long so it’s not the card of choice for when the casing is space constraint.

I think the most impressive part of the Gigabyte GTX 1060 G1 Gaming is that it can be overclocked further. Awesome stuff from Gigabyte!