MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X PLUS Review - Introduction

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X PLUS 
Going into 6th gear with 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory 

We review the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X PLUS, aimed at the mainstream segment with a 279 USD price tag comes factory overclocked on that custom PCB fitted with a TwiNFrozr VI cooler, Back-plate and even some RGB lighting options. The PLUS model is a 6GB card with the new faster memory, bumping it from 8 Gbps towards 9 Gbps at default clocks.

This GeForce GTX 1060 is once again based on Pascal, fabbed at a 16 nm node with fins baby. As it turns out, the smaller 16 nm FinFET fabrication process works out really well for Nvidia. it is an MSI gaming X model, that means high clocks, again nice memory configurations (9 GHz effective) and again a product series that will be massively interesting for the masses. The GeForce GTX 1060 might have the GP106 GPU housed on it's PCB. Where the GeForce GTX 1080 has 2,560 shader processors and the GeForce GTX 1070 with its 1,920 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1060 has 1,280 of them. This means it is has 10 SMs active (10 streaming multi-processors x (2x64) 128 shader cores). The cards will be equipped with properly fast memory as well, you can choose either a 3 GB or 6 GB model, though we strongly recommend the 6 GB models to be a bit more future proof. That memory is tied towards a 192-bit wide bus locked in at 2,250 MHz which is 9 GHz (GDDR5-effective) at a memory bandwidth of 217 GB/s. 

MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X PLUS edition with the Nvidia GP106-A1 GPU ( 1,569 MHz core / 1,785 MHz boost / 9.0 GHz memory )