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#100 of 131
Overall rank

GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB

4 · 1,424 votes
Best for 1080p esports gaming

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VRAM
3 GB
CUDA
1,152
FP32
3.935 TF
Bandwidth
192.2 GB/s
TDP
120W
Boost
1708 MHz
Strengths at a Glance

How it stacks up to the flagship

Each metric is shown as a percentage of the GeForce RTX 5090 D, the strongest card we track.

FP32 compute3.935 TFLOPS4%
vs RTX 5090 D: 104.8 TFLOPS
Memory bandwidth192.2 GB/s11%
vs RTX 5090 D: 1790 GB/s
VRAM capacity3 GB9%
vs RTX 5090 D: 32 GB
Shading units1,1525%
vs RTX 5090 D: 21,760
Power efficiency10/10017%
vs RTX 5090 D: 58/100
Synthetic Benchmarks

Estimated benchmark results

Each result is shown as a share of the RTX 5090 D's score in the same test.

3DMark Time Spy8,640pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 36,000 pts
3DMark Port Royal (RT)4,320pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 18,000 pts
Blender (samples/min)1,248spm
vs RTX 5090 D: 5,200 spm
Geekbench Compute60,000pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 240,000 pts

Performance breakdown

Gaming24
Ray tracing24
AI / Compute25
Creator / 3D24
Power efficiency10
Real-World Gaming

FPS Across Resolutions

1080p · Ultra preset1440p · Ultra preset4K · Ultra preset
Cyberpunk 2077avg 21 fps
1080p
28
1440p
21
4K
13
Call of Duty: MW IIIavg 29 fps
1080p
40
1440p
29
4K
18
Alan Wake 2avg 17 fps
1080p
23
1440p
17
4K
11
Forza Horizon 5avg 30 fps
1080p
41
1440p
31
4K
19
Baldur's Gate 3avg 25 fps
1080p
34
1440p
25
4K
15
Community Feedback

What Owners Say

People say it’s a solid 1080p card for its time, running most games fine. The main complaint is that 3GB of VRAM chokes on newer titles.

Pros
  • Fits smaller cases with ease
  • Sips power, runs cool and quiet
  • Handles 1080p gaming without fuss
  • Rock-solid driver support for years
Cons
  • VRAM too low for modern games
  • Only 192-bit memory bus
  • No hardware ray tracing support

Supported technologies

NVENCAV1 Encode

Full specifications

Graphics processor
Architecture
Pascal
Process node
16 nm
Transistors
4.4 B
SM Count
9
Release date
2016
Launch price
$199
Core configuration
CUDA Cores
1,152
TMUs
72
ROPs
48
L2 cache
1536 MB
Memory
Size
3 GB
Type
GDDR5
Bus width
192-bit
Bandwidth
192.2 GB/s
Memory clock
2002 MHz
Clocks & throughput
Base clock
1506 MHz
Boost clock
1708 MHz
FP32 (float)
3.935 TFLOPS
FP16 (half)
3.935 TFLOPS
Pixel rate
82 GPixel/s
Texture rate
123 GTexel/s
Board & power
TDP
120W
Suggested PSU
250W
Power connectors
1x 6-pin
Bus interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Length
250 mm
Slot width
2-slot
Display & outputs
Max resolution
7680×4320
Outputs
1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

API and SDK support

DirectX
12 (12_1)
Shader Model
6.4
OpenGL
4.6
OpenCL
1.2
Vulkan
+
CUDA
6.1
Verdict

Our verdict on the GTX 1060 3 GB

A Pascal-era card with just enough 3 GB VRAM for 2016 games but now chokes on modern textures.

Get it if you're on a tight budget for 1080p gaming and don't mind lowering texture settings in newer titles. Skip it if you play modern games that need more video memory or want to run high settings.

Buy it if…

  • You want a solid 1080p gaming card on a tight budget.
  • You're building a classic budget esports rig for Fortnite or CS2.
  • You need a cheap GPU upgrade for an older prebuilt PC.
4.0

1,424 votes

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