Founded in 1986, GIGABYTE is committed to providing top-notch solutions that “upgrade your life”. Gigabyte is regarded as a pioneer in innovation with groundbreaking excitements such as Ultra Durable™ a revolutionary technology that redefines the industry, WINDFORCE™ exclusive heat dissipation design that builds for extreme performance.
They have also invented a premium gaming brand, AORUS a full spectrum of gaming products for gamers and enthusiasts. GIGABYTE has continuously brought unique new ways of the digital world and created marvelous products that empower you with meaningful and charming experiences.
Gigabyte GTX 1060 Mini Review
GIGABYTE is always consumer-oriented from the very beginning of product design to the end of value chain. With the focus on consumer needs, the delivery of customer experiences has been transformed into tangible and understood customer cares.Gigabyte sent us for GTX 1060 Mini Review.
Therefore, GIGABYTE has integrated the best quality of components to ensure outstanding stability and reliability and also built up a complete service network with hundreds of customer service centers around the globe. Behind everything they do is a clear focus on what our customers value. GIGABYTE has kept staying one step ahead of consumer desires to create unique connections and pursue every gamer or entrepreneur’s desire.
About the GPU
The GIGABYTE GeForce® GTX 1060 Mini Review(GV-N1060IXOC-3GD) is surprisingly the most valuable yet cheapest upgrade to get immense gaming experience with fully loaded Game Works by Nvidia itself, latest DirectX 12 API support that came right up with Microsoft Windows 10, Pascal architecture with a tremendous escalation in power to performance ratio, 3GB of GDDR5 memory and 192bit of bus width. Detailed specifications are as below
This mini beast wields some real potential that can’t even be imagined by its price tag and fine looking physical design!
GTX 1060 Mini Packaging and Unboxing:
As it yields the most compact (mini ITX) design so its package is not that much huge as full (2x fan) version of Gigabyte Geforce 1060. The box is made of cardboard having Gigabyte’s signature “Eye” and Nvidia’s Pascal series features including VR Works, Nvidia GameWorks, G-Sync & DirectX 12.
Other vendor’s feature including OC edition mono and most notable 90mm fan design tag is also printed on fore-side of the box. There is a warranty sticker on the opening spot of the box. The GPU is nicely tucked inside the box packed in a radioresistant wrap. There is another seal on the radio resistant wrap.
When taking out the GPU, there is a cap on the PCI-e bottom to protect it from rusting. It is literally recommended to insert the GPU in your motherboard’s PCI-e slot after taking of that cap!. There are seals on each of the HMDI, DVI & Display port. Well, I first put off the DP cap as I plugged in the DP cable for the display. On a plastic armor/carved-coating, There is a 90mm slick and uniquely designed fan with uniform curvy and pricky edges, hoping for a lower noise when it comes to turbo cooling mode!
GTX 1060 Mini Accessories:
Following goodies are provided with the box:
- Quick Guide
- A Driver disk
- A 6-pin PEG cable with two Molex connectors in case PSU does not have a PEG cable.
GTX 1060 I/O Ports:
The I/O shield has a typical vented design. Following connectivity options are available on this card:
- 1x DisplayPort 1.4
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 2x DVI-D Dual Link
1060 Mini Siz:
The GPU’s I/O shield yields two slots of your chassis. Entitled as “Mini/Mini ITX” means it only takes 17cm of room due to its compact design.
Recommended System Requirements:
- CPU: Core i5 6600K
- RAM: 8GB
- Motherboard: Any PCI-E 3.0 supported motherboard
- Power Supply: 400 watts or greater with one 1x 6pin PEG connector
- Power: 120 Watts
- Casing: Any Mid or mini tower case
- OS: Windows 10 any build
Gigabyte GTX 1060 Mini Testing:
Following test bench setup was used to test the performance of the graphics card:
- Intel Core i5 6600k @ 4.1Ghz
- Gigabyte Z170-HD3 DDR4
- Corsair Vengeance LPX LED 8GB @ 3000MHz
- Antec ToughPower 650 Watts
- Samsung 840 120GB SSD for OS
- Samsung 2TB HDD
- Samsung 23″ @1920×1080 60hz
These games are personally tested on the time of review and results are post followed by them:
- Call of Duty Black Ops 3
- Grand Theft Auto V Redux + MVGA
- Call of Duty: WW2
- Doom
- Gears of war 4
- Forza Horizon 3
- Just Cause 3
- Need for Speed Rivals
- Need for Speed Payback
- Mortal Kombat XL
- Tekken 7
- Sniper Elite 4
- Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
- Vampyr
Call of Duty Black Ops 3
Call of Duty Black Ops 3 was played on Ultra presets @1080P, Resultant average FPS are 80 and 74 as a minimum
Grand Theft Auto V Redux + MVGA
Grand Theft Auto V Redux + MVGA was played on Ultra presets with Advanced settings at medium and MSAA X2 @1080P, Resultant average FPS are 53.
Call of Duty: WW2
Call of Duty: WW2 was played on High presets with MSAA max and Ambient Occlusion to HBAO+ @1080P, Resultant average FPS are 55 and minimum are 40.
Doom
Doom 2016 was played on ultra presets with Vulcan mode: On @1080p, Resultant average FPS are 70 and 62 as a minimum.
Gears of War 4
Gears of War 4 was played on ultra presets @1080p, Resultant average FPS are straight 60 and 52 as a minimum.
Forza Horizon 3
Forza Horizon 3 was played on High to ultra presets setting, Texture to high, MSAA to X2, Shadows to High @1080p, Resultant average FPS are 56 & minimum are 38
Just Cause 3
Just Cause was played on ultra presets with Max AntiAliasing @1080p, Resultant average FPS are 85 and 74 as a minimum.
Need For Speed Rivals
Need For Speed Rivals was played on ultra presets with @1440p (Upscaled/Nvidia DSR), Resultant average FPS are straight 60! (FPS Cap)
Need For Speed Payback
Need For Speed Payback was played on ultra presets with @1080p, Resultant average FPS are 52 and 46 as a minimum.
Mortal Kombat XL
Mortal Kombat XL was played on ultra presets @1440p (Upscaled/Nvidia DSR), Resultant average FPS are straight 60! (FPS Cap).
Tekken 7
Tekken 7 was played on ultra presets @1080 & Resolution Scale at 200, Resultant average FPS are straight 60! (FPS Cap).
Sniper Elite 4
Sniper Elite 4 was played on ultra presets @1440p, Resultant average FPS are 55 and 52 as a minimum.
Vampyr
Vampyr was played on ultra presets @1080, Resultant average FPS are 61 and 58 as a minimum.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was played on high to ultra presets, Shadows at high and ambient to normal @1080, Resultant average FPS are 57 and 41 as a minimum.
GTX 1060 Mini Overclocking & Temperature
The card boosted to 1746Mhz out of the box. During my overclocking session with this card, it reached 1.97Ghz boost clock and memory clock up to 2025Mhz with +100MHz on the core clock and the +100MHz on the memory clock. The temperature hits 45 at idle, 55 during normal rendering and 65-70 as max during the gaming session. The pure copper heat pipes are shaped to maximize the direct contact area to the GPU.
the copper pipe is only a metallic carrier to keep up the heat flow, but consist of 4 layers starting from external to internal liquid!
Note: Temperature peaks may vary, relying on physical condition and publisher’s region!
Speaking of OC! the driver disk includes Gigabyte Extreme Gaming Engine which lets any newbie get his Gigabyte GPU overclocked to or beyond its limits. With a simple click on XTREME engine utility, gamers can easily tune the card to meet their various gaming requirements without any overclocking knowledge, while saving the hassle of manual adjustment.
It is recommended to not to alter the voltage and power limit if you know nothing about overclocking followed by the instructions given by the product support or overclocking experts.
GTX 1060 Unigine Engine Heaven Benchmark:
Heaven Benchmark is an extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware: video card, power supply, cooling system which checks your rig in stock and overclocking modes with real-life load! Also includes interactive experience in a beautiful, detailed environment.
The Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1060 Mini Review performed beautifully scoring over 63 average FPS! Configurations were as follows:
- MSAA: 8X
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080
- Direct3D: DirectX 11
- Presets: Ultra
- Tesselation: Extreme
- Screen Size: Full-screen
- Unigine Engine version: 4.0 (Basic Edition)
The GPU performed as shown below:
Conclusion:
I personally used this GPU for over a year with satisfaction and recommendations to forward which lead me to write about it. This GPU is for all best GPU seekers Under $200. Probably the best choice over 1050Ti 4GB with a 44% of performance and reliability advantage.
Nowadays people are taking VRAM too seriously that they mistakenly assume that GTX 1050Ti is worth a buy over the 3GB version of GTX 1060, however they rush toward the 1050ti having a price tag of $172 to $180 and skips the bus-width, Clock speeds and Bandwidth advantages of 3GB version of GTX 1060 which worths only $199!. Moving to recommendations, both don’t support SLI thus if you’re looking for expanding with each of these GPUs to get a multiplier, go for GTX 1070 or better.
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Games and technology are my points of interest and I always wished that I spend most of my life practicing my hobby. Being a hardware and gaming enthusiast gave me reason in my professional life to earn and have fun while I am not sleeping.
