MSI GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING X Review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase

Let's start with our photo-shoot. A few pages that show the ins and outs with photos, all taken with an in-house photo-shoot of course.

So the MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X is quite a feast for the eyes with its familiar looks. You will spot a nice matte black PCB, this board has 5 power phases + 1 for memory and actually even a 8-pin power connector, for that little more overclocking headroom. The PCB is as mentioned matte black in color, and of course the new revision TwinFrozr VI cooler is being used. These cards will look just terrific in a dark themed PC. The card looks fairly (aside from the GPU and memory ICs) identical to the Gaming X 1070/1080.

As board partners are allowed to release the 1060 model cards in their own configurations you will see many versions, mostly based on customized PCB/component and the obviously mandatory different cooling solutions. This GAMING X edition of the series has higher clocks on both the GPU and memory sub-system, RGB LEDs and a back-plate, all quite impressive. 

The card has default clock frequencies of 1810 MHz (boost) / 1595 MHz (base) MHz and a proper 6GB GDDR5 tweaked as well at 8100MHz (effective data-rate) on the memory. This clock frequency matches what is called the OC mode, which will give the GPU an extra 26 MHz boost. The card in default mode is clocked at 1569 MHz with a reference 8 GHz on the memory.

Each 1060 will have a maximum power design of roughly 120 Watts. Fear not, these are made to overclock as well. The card is using just one 150 Watts 8-pin PEG (PCI Express Graphics) connector. Another 75 Watts is delivered though the PCIe slot and thus motherboard. 

The card itself is a dual-slot solution, it is composite heat-pipe based, the GPU is cooled by a nickel-plated copper base plate connected to Super Pipes (8mm heat pipes) on this MSI GAMING series graphics card. A SU heat pipe layout increases efficiency by reducing the length of unused heat pipe and a special SU-form design. Zero Frozr technology eliminates fan noise in low-load situations by stopping the fans when they are not needed. Up-to roughly 60 Degrees C, the fans will not  spin. The LEDs embedded in this graphics card can be controlled with the MSI Gaming APP and is RGB configurable with a few animations as well. Also, check out that backside where there is a thick sturdy metal back-plate with plenty of venting spaces applied as well. A proper one as well with lots of ventilation gaps.

The GeForce GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 are DisplayPort 1.2 certified and DP 1.3/1.4 Ready, enabling support for 4K displays at 120 Hz, 5K displays at 60 Hz, and 8K displays at 60 Hz (using two cables). HDMI 2.0 is supported so that you can drive Ultra HD monitors at 60 Hz (if compatible).