Synthetic Benchmarks
As always I started off my testing of the GTX 1060 AMP! Edition by running it through our synthetic benchmark tests. Most of these tests don’t give us direct numbers to be able to see in-game performance but because they are consistent they are a great way to compare cards. My main focus re was to see if the overclock from 1506 base/1708 boost to 1556 base/1771 Boost gave the Zotac card a good edge over the Founders Edition GTX 1060 and I also wanted to see how the card compares to the RX 480 with 4GB of vRAM that I recently tested.
So my first tests were in 3DMark using their Fire Strike benchmark as well as the new Time Spy benchmark for DX12. In Fire Strike the overclock on the Zotac gave us a bump of 300 points over the Founders Edition, this put is almost dead even with the GTX 980. The RX 480 4GB was much farther behind, even the 8GB RX 480 was almost 900 points behind. In Time Spy the difference was even less but once again the Zotac was slightly faster than the Founders Edition card as well as the RX 480’s. Hopefully, we get another RX 480 in soon to get a better look at how aftermarket GTX 1060’s compare to aftermarket RX 480’s.
Next, I tested with Unigine’s Valley Benchmark. This test actually gives a real FPS and is based on a popular game engine so it really is more like an in-game test, but because it isn’t a real game it goes in this section. Here things are similar to 3DMark but in this test the two RX 480’s fall back a little more. That said the Zotac has an edge on the Founders Edition by one FPS.
In Catzilla I test at 1080p, 1440p, and 4k to get a wide look at performance. The Zotac once again performed just above the Founders Edition and this put the Zotac 1060 AMP! Edition close to the GTX 980, but what I found interesting is the gap between the Founders Edition and the AMP! Edition is wider in the two higher resolutions.
My last test is just a quick peak at Virtual Reality performance using the SteamVR benchmark. It is once again more of the same only the GTX 980 performs a little worse in this one. We get .1 of a performance increase compared to the Founders Edition, it’s not much but it is consistent.
