The wait is finally over for Nvidia’s Pascal-architecture based GeForce 10-series graphics cards which promise gamers up to 3X boost in performance with less power consumption low thermal footprint. Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 is a part of this series and the base price of this graphics card is Rs 22,999. Recently Galax has announced the availability of their Nvidia GTX 1060 Geforce EXOC graphics card, and the following is our review of this much awaited GPU technology.
The Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card comes with an “EXOC” tag which stands for “extreme overclock”, therefore, this card is already overclocked to its maximum limit, meaning you do not have to be a geek to squeeze the maximum performance juice out of this card.
GALAX NVIDIA GTX 1060 REVIEW
Build Quality
Inside the box, we get a user manual , installation CD and setup guide to begin with and also a Molex to 6 pin connector, just in case you don’t own a fancy PSU. This graphics card is not the smallest of all the 1060 cards out in the market so do check if this card would fit in your case before buying it. The build quality is excellent and the card looks elegant with dark gray and black color combination.
The actual graphics card chip is sandwiched between large heat sink over which sits big 90mm fans for heat dissipation, which keeps the GPU cool in all conditions. The back plate provided is a great design choice that not only helps protect the circuit board but makes it easier to hold the card.
Specifications
The Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 EXOC graphics card has a base GPU clock speed of 1506 MHz which can be boosted up to 1708 MHz. It has 6 GB VRAM, memory speed of 8 GBPS and 192-bit Memory Interface Width. Added features include OpenGL 4.5, Bus Support PCI-E 3.0, Nvidia Ansel , G-SYNC™ , GameStream™, Nvidia GPU Boost™ 3.0, Support for DirectX 12, Vulkan API and Simultaneous Multi-Projection.
Sadly, the GTX 1060 misses out on SLI support which means that we cannot use two GTX 1060 cards alongside to maximize the output.
It needs 400 Watts system power and has a power draw of 120 Watts. Therefore, the power requirement of GTX 1060 is similar to GTX 960 but performance is superior compared to the latter. hence, we can say that the GTX 1060 is much more power efficient than older generation graphics card.
Installation
Installing this card is quite easy, as we just removed our GTX 750 TI and replaced it with this card using the 6-pin connector provided in the box. The Nvidia GeForce experience software can be installed from the CD, although, there were no Nvidia drivers to be installed from the disk, therefore, we had to download them first after installing the graphics card.
Nvidia claims that the new Gen graphics card consume less power and therefore produce less heat. So, I am quite happy that we won’t need any external cooling when we overclock it. The Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 EXOC graphics card fit in perfectly in our mini ITX case and after that being done, we begin our gaming session.
Performance
As I stated before, this graphics card is already overclocked to its maximum limit. Therefore, we got mind boggling results as expected. From the start, the GPU clock speed was above 1900 MHz, which is more than its claimed boost clock speed of 1708 MHz and way above its base clock speed of 1506 MHz. This is quite exciting. When under no load, the temperature of the graphics card was around 40 degrees, which is good as compared to our earlier graphics card, which constantly operated at 37 degrees.
No OC settings were touched during our gameplay for the first time and still the Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card gave its maximum performance available.
We played games like The Witcher:3, Far Cry 4, Counter-Strike:GO, Crysis 3 and results were amazing.
As you can see here clearly, all the games were easily maxed out on Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 even when playing on High and Ultra-High settings.
Benchmarks
We used 3D Mark benchmark tool for synthetic benchmark tests. And following are the results.
As you can see, these are some pretty amazing numbers for a graphics card that costs so less. (Our score was bottlenecked as we used this card with 6th generation Core i3, which generally goes very much above the 11,000 marks in above benchmark.) This card is not meant for rendering or using 3D tools, but we experienced 30-40% faster speeds compared to our existing graphics card with the 6th generation Intel core series hardware.
Overclocking
When you overclock a GOU, CPU or any other computer hardware, then it generates a lot of heat. Therefore, you need to have a great cooling system to protect your PC from heat damage. The Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 EXOC graphics card is already overclocked, so make sure you have a good cooling system in place. You can either install 3-4 large fans or use a liquid cooling system and always keep your PC in well-ventilated space. We personally have extra 3 large fans installed in our case which keeps our system temperature low.
You can either install 3-4 large fans or use a liquid cooling system and always keep your PC in well-ventilated space. We personally have extra 3 large fans installed in our case which keeps our system temperature low.
Verdict Of Galax Nvidia GTX 1060
The Galax Nvidia GTX 1060 EXOC graphics card is priced at Rs 23,600 in India. With pre-overclocked GPU the performance is top notch, build quality is great and large heat dissipation hardware make sure you can enjoy prolonged gaming sessions without overheating. The AMD’s RX 480 is priced more than the Nvidia 1060 which makes this graphics card a great buy here in India.
Being VR ready GPU, and a part of NVIDIAs latest architecture, you can build a future-proof gaming system with Galax GTX 1060, just make sure you choose from latest Core i5 or higher series processor if you are just buying this for VR gaming.
