EVGA GTX 1060 3GB Gaming: Is 3GB Enough?

Deus Ex Mankind Divided PC Performance AMD & Nvidia Benchmarks

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 Benchmarks and Review

Nvidia Titan X Pascal: 1080p 144hz Benchmarks and Review

The Nvidia Titan X Pascal is without a doubt the “fastest” consumer graphics card currently available on the market. The branding causes confusion not only in the name but also in it visual similarity to not only the previous Titan X but to the founder’s edition GTX 1080. The price to performance is confusing as well for gamers. Even though Nvidia has placed it in the GeForce GTX line, which implies gaming, they have stated that it is aimed towards machine learning. But don’t worry I am looking at this card from the PC gaming perspective.

The Titan X Pascal features a black shroud over the reference designed cooler. At this point, while the cooler design is visually appealing, it’s performance has not improved over the previous generations and still hits serious thermal limitations.

The back of the card is graced with a black backplate identical to the Founder’s Edition line. While it gives the card a nice visual effect it is unfortunately cheap materials.

Nvidia advertises that the temperature limit is 94 degrees Celsius, but the card begins throttling at 84 degrees Celsius unless you manually adjust it in software like Afterburner. To keep temps down and clocks stable you will have to run the fans on a more aggressive fan profile that overpowers the sound coming from my rack mounted server. That’s not in a rack, just on the floor, it’s a good foot rest.

Display adapters include 3 display port 1.4 ports, a single hdmi 2.0b port, and a single DVI. Next we have a 6pin power adapter sporting a 7+2 Power Phase, drawing a maximum of 250 watts. While the low power requirements for this amount of power is impressive, at this price point the enthusiast that buys this card is less concerned with power consumption and personally I would prefer not having the limitations that are caused by a relatively weak power phase for a card in this price range. It is also very obviously the second largest limitation to stable boost clocks for the card.  

Under the hood the card sports a 1531mhz boost clock, which we were able to overclock to +200MHz resulting in the card boosting to 2025MHz if you remove the power and thermal limitations with Afterburner. The boost clock communicates over a 384bit bus with 8gb of gddr5x at a 10000Mhz effective clock, which I found no fps gain when overclocking.

All games were benchmarked in 1080p at highest available settings, unless those settings are specific to either AMD or NVIDIA; for example, Pure Hair. I am specifically testing in 1080p because my own personal goal is to be able to play every game at 144 frames per second with max settings.

In Rise of the Tomb raider the Titan hit 106.7 frames per second. So unfortunately twelve hundred dollars later and we still aren’t meeting my goal in every game.

Forza Motorsport 6: Apex Beta almost hit the magic number pushing 138 frames per second, unfortunately this wasn’t very consistent with frequent drops closer to 100.

Time Spy Graphics test 1 scored 100.99, sorry not .69 frames per second and Time Spy graphics test two scored 82.66 frames per second.

Hitman, did not get the typical 30 percent boost over the GTX 1080 like the rest of the games and fell short of my magical number pulling in 133 frames per second.

Doom seems to have hit it’s limit with the Titan X hitting a consistent and locked 200 frames per second.

I was hitting a wall with Gears of War Ultimate Edition after attempting to perform the upgrade to Windows 10 Anniversary edition. For whatever reason it was capping the framerate at 60 fps. After a fresh install of windows and clean drivers from the “Anniversary” option on the Nvidia website the Titan X hit a massive 211 frames per second.

Total War: Warhammer was giving me the same issues as Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, therefore we know it’s a windows issue and not a game or hardware problem. Once this was cleared up it stayed above my magical number with a consistent 151.6 frames per second.

While the industrial design choices of the Titan XP  are incredibly disappointing, the overall performance for gaming (even at 1080p) shows enough improvement to qualify as bleeding edge. Since we are finally at the point of incredibly high framerates in the latest triple A titles in 1080p it may justify a resolution upgrade for some. Personally, I would look at the 1440p range as 4k still seems to be hit or miss. It’s for this same reason I don’t recommend SLI. Let me be clear that this card is not for the masses, the price point makes it unattainable for most and highly impractical for the rest. Thanks for watching. This is blindrun with Son of a Tech, and I will see you next Tuesday.  

Asus ROG STRIX RX460 Benchmarks an Review

The Asus Strix RX460 4GB is packed with features I’ve never seen before at the sub $200 price point. Hell, this card is less than $150, and comes with custom cooler design, RGB, and a fan header.

The Asus Strix RX460 features Wing Blade 0db fan design with visually intrusive heat pipes emerging from beneath the shroud. The RGB is limited to say the least only gracing the logo design at the top of the card. But for the low price these features are impressive. The additional fan header for more system fan control is a nice touch for compact systems, which this card would target.

Display adapters include 1 display port port, a single hdmi 2.0 port, and a single DVI, the only AMD card in the 400 series to include one. At this price point 1080p 60Hz panels often come with DVI as the only option, so it’s nice to see. Next we have a 6pin power adapter sporting a standard 4+1 Power Phase, drawing a 75watt tdp.

Under the hood the card sports a 1234mhz boost clock, which we were able to overclock to 1299MHz. The boost clock communicates over a 128bit bus with 4gb of gddr5 at a 7000Mhz effective clock, which we were able to overclock to 7200MHz.

Even with the overclock enabled the card stayed cool never surpassing 63C, with stock fan profiles.  If you decide to crank the fans to one hundred percent, they stay quiet only rising 15 decibels over ambient room noise.

All games were benchmarked in 1080p at highest available settings, unless those settings are proprietary to a particular manufacturer; for example, Pure Hair. Unless otherwise stated.

In Rise of the Tomb raider the Asus Strix RX 460 hit 17.86 frames per second. Turning some settings down to medium however does provide a playable experience.

Forza Motorsport 6: Apex Beta performed extremely well with a very smooth and constant 45.2 frames per second. Very impressive for this little guy.

Time Spy Graphics test 1 scored 20.3 frames per second and Time Spy graphics test two scored 16.26 frames per second.

Doom performed amazing in ultra settings at a buttery smooth 73.9 Frames Per Second

The Talos Principle was not a playable 31.9 frames per second, but becomes playable at lower settings.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition scored a playable 51 frames per second even with 4k textures and easily stays above 60 if you turn 4k textures off.

Hitman would not boot, I tried everything I could and it refused to get past the loading screen. Even after a fresh windows install in either DX 12 or DX 11.

Total War: Warhammer must be getting some optimization updates as the RX 460 hit 39.5 frames per second beating out my previous test for both the RX470 and RX480. In some further testing Nvidia cards are now performing worse than before. I included this benchmark as more of a PSA on the game developement, more than for comparison sake.

For a little fun, I tested the latest and greatest currently out from Hello Games. The Famous or Infamous No Man’s Sky in their experimental beta. It was playable, however hitching was present. With a min of 33 max of 50 and average of 39.5 frames per second at medium settings in 1080p.

There is a price point that I never recommend going below, while this is a great budget card it still falls below that line. If you are on a ridiculously tight budget the RX 460 will get the job done most of the time. However, it hits walls in some games, there are frankly some games that you won’t even be able to run. For an additional $40 you can jump into the RX 470 which is night and day when you consider performance and compatibility.

No Man's Sky GTX 1060, 1070, & 1080 PC Benchmarks

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming: Best GTX 1070?

The Gigabyte GTX 1070 Gaming G1 features the Windforce x3 cooler, graced with an orange and black color scheme. This is odd as the card does feature a RGB lighting feature, once again throwing off your ability to customize your color scheme like the MSI Gaming X edition.

Display ports include 3 display port 1.4 ports, a single hdmi 2.0b port and single dual link dvi. Next we have a single 8pin power adapter sporting a 6+2 Power Phase, which is an upgrade from the Founder’s Edition 4+1 but short of the 8+1 featured on MSI’s Gaming X. However, the power draw is upped from the founder’s edition to match the Gaming X.  

Under the hood the card sports an advertised 1822mhz, while in the real world it boosts to 1962MHz without touching an overclocking tool. With a little tweaking the card will overclock to 2050MHz. The boost clock communicates over a 256bit bus with 8gb of gddr5 at a clock of 8000Mhz, add 8MHz if you want to be an asshole like their website advertising.

The cooling solution works great. If you are so inclined to crank the fans they reach 20db over ambient room noise (in my case 30db) With stock fan profile set the card hit a max temperature of 67 degrees Celsius.

While the Gigabyte Gaming G1 edition has proven to outpace the reference design, it falls short of other 3rd party non reference designs. However, it is cheaper than the reference designs that beat it out. So it’s up to you where to put that ten dollar bill you save picking this over the competition.