The GTX 1060 rumors started after the launch of the RX 480. One of the first speculations is that Nvidia is supposedly releasing it early to counter the trend of AMD’s RX 480 price at $200 and $230 for the 4GB nad 8GB models respectively. 2 Days ago the specs for the GTX 1060 was just confirmed thanks to the man who leaked it all the way from HK. One of the interesting leaks is a slide saying “Power of a GTX 980 for every gamer”. If that statement is supposedly true then it will undoubtedly beat the RX 480 because most review benchmarks show that the RX 480 is only between the GTX 970 & GTX 980 and that the GTX 970 beats the RX 480 in some benchmarks.
Specifications
Starting off with the specs, the Nvidia GTX 1060 will sport 1280 cuda cores and will have a boost clock of atleast around 1.7Ghz for the founders edition. We could see higher clock speeds for custom models from AIB partners. Its power connector is only 6-pin and is rated at 120W TDP as opposed to the RX 480’s 6pin and rated at 150W TDP.
Leaked Pictures
The front of the card was leaked about a week before. If you look closely just right below the blower fan you could see that the PCB is short just like the previous x60 reference design and the RX 480.
Looking at the back of the card is one of the 2 disappointments with the RX 480.The GTX 1060 founders edition doesn’t have any backplate. Its understandable that this is a cost saving measure and hopefully we would get backplates slapped in with aftermarket coolers from different AIB partners.
As the leaked specification slide suggest, the GTX 1060 will have 1 Dual-link DVI port, 1 HDMI 2.0b port, and 3 Display Port 1.4. For those with OCD, I feel your cringe as you look at the picture and having to notice the separated Display port.
And here’s the 2nd disappointment I mentioned earlier. It doesn’t have any SLI fingers. While getting the most powerful card your money can buy is the general rule of thumb, this is saddening for gamers who will upgrade into a dual GPU config in the long run. Apart from missing SLI finger, The 6pin power connector is not part of the PCB and is moved all the way at the end of the graphics card, a marvelous job by nvidia. Although I’m worried on how will water blocks fit in for water cooling but we still have a missing picture that can answer that problem, a naked shot of the card ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)