Galax GeForce GTX 1060 OC
Pricing shenanigans abound
PRICE $ 397 galax.com Back
in the day, Galax and Palit were known as being the most affordable variants of Nvidia graphics cards on the market, often by a significant margin. Apparently thats not the case anymore – at almost $400, this is around $100 more expensive than the most affordable 1060s. Even worse, it’s far inferior to the Galaxy GeForce GTX 1060 EX PC... yet costs just $2 less. Good luck explaining that.
Galax has gone for a twin fan cooler on this card, as compared to the standard single fan cooler on reference GeForce GTX 1060s. It uses a plastic shroud to keep the price down, while twin copper heatpipes suck the heat away from the GPU. Unlike most GeForce GTX 1060’s, Galax has done away with the metal backplate, which isn’t a big loss since we think it’s a bit of a gimmick anyway.
Given the high price point, Galax can’t be forgiven for offering less outputs than a normal GeForce GTX 1060, with a single full-sized DisplayPort 1.4, single HDMI 2.0b and one DL-DVI-D. Most 1060’s have three DP ports, so you’ll lose two DP ports compared to other cards.
Where this card differs from others is its factory overclock. The default base clock has increased from 1506MHz to 1518MHz, while the boost clock has been given a tiny kick in the pants, up from 1709MHz to 1733Mhz. To be frank, these are so incremental as to be unnoticeable, so we can expect this card to perform identically to a standard GeForce GTX 1060. The memory is identical as well, with all 6GB running at the usual speed of 8GHz (effective).
Galax hasn’t seemed to up the power either, sticking with the 120W TDP of the reference design, fed via a single six-pin connector. The specs claim the exact same 3+1 phase power solution of the reference design, so don’t expect to go around making any Earth-shattering world record attempts.
You’ll probably squeeze another 5% out of this card given the specs, but don’t expect much more. The beauty of the small overclock and simple cooling though is relative silence, with the fan recording a mere 44dB during our 3DMark tests. With other cards hitting levels near 50dB, the Galax GeForce GTX 1060 OC is basically (though not completely) silent during operation.
The GTX 1060, much like the GTX 1050 doesn’t feature SLi capacity. While this is understandable from a pricing
Galax has the GeForce GTX 1060 EX OC on the market for just $2 more, and it’s much better constructed
standpoint it is still quite disappointing from a performance standpoint. While we obviously don’t have any real benchmarks we can give, two 1060 cards in SLi should be able to equal or outperform a 1070.
It’s here that things get weird though. Galax has the GeForce GTX 1060 EX OC on the market for just $2 more, and it’s much better constructed. It has a metal fan shroud, better backing plate and higher overclocks. However, we expect the basic OC version’s price to drop by $50 in the first month, which will make it a much better buy. BENNETT RING
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