Conclusion
Conclusion
I love testing enthusiast class cards, but mainstream is always so much more fun for some reason. The GTX 1060 series will be a hit, no doubt. Over the 960 the performance nearly doubled and a card like shown today with it's perf, cool temps, low noise and excellent power consumption at roughly 279 USD, well that's just terrific + you get to play your games with 6GB of graphics memory. Performance is a bit all over the place though, but seen in broader lines spot on with and/or above or on the GTX 980 performance level or the Radeon RX 480, which this product obviously is targeted against. And therein is a danger to be found. See at 1080P or even 1440P theat Radeon RX 480 with 4 GB can be spotted for 199 USD already, and that definitely is a more attractive price for roughly similar performance (with exceptions here and there of course). Overall though we have to call both cards what they are, excellent value mainstream performance products. If for example you take the preceding GeForce GTX 960, well the 1060 in a lot of scenarios is almost twice as fast. So yeah, I really do like the price performance ratio of the GTX 1060 much better then what the GTX 1070 and 1080 offers at their sales prices. This GPU with GDDR5 memory at 8 Gbps still offers plenty of horsepower but also does that at low Wattage, we maxed out at roughly 135~140 Watts measured, and for this kind of game performance that is peachy-perfect my man (or women).
Aesthetics
The Palit Super Jetstream we feel makes a little more sense opposed to the gamerock series, which might be a bit busy on its design for western based countries (but terrific for the Asia region). The one downside of course would be the triple slot design. Considering you can't do SLI anyway, this should not be an issue. Looks always are trivial, but we do like the clean looks of this one. At default the LED color however is green and is temperature based, e.g. if the GPU gets hot it'll color to red. Thing is, this GPU does not get hot. So if you like another color of disable the LED, you will need to run Palits proprietary software. Overall it's just a good looking and sturdy product, lovely is the included back-plate albeit we would have liked to see some venting holes at the VRM area..
Cooling & Noise Levels
As you guys know, the reference design (founder editions) of all GTX 1070/1080 are set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C. Once the GPU gets warmer the card will clock down / lower its voltage etc to try and keep the card cooler, that's throttling and it part of the design. This is not the case with the GeForce GTX 1060. The low power draw already spilled the beans, and means it's not running extremely hot and certainly not oozes out heat in massive amounts. Hence the cooler can deal with the GPU really well. The GPU simply does not reach the 80 Degrees C thermal marker, instead hovers at roughly 70 Degrees C. The noise levels are incredible though as you cannot hear the card, yes it is silent as well. We did not hear an coil whine.
Power Consumption
GP106-400-A1 Pascal GPUs are rated as having a 120 Watt TDP under full stress, our measurements show it to be a tiny bit higher at 135~140 Watts, that still remains to be a very low value. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and/or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve.
Gaming Performance
A GeForce GTX 1060 is a near perfect product for Full HD gamers at 1920x1080/1200. However given the nature of it's performance this actually is a pretty darn good WQHD (2560x1440) card as well. Not everybody requires or demands 100+ FPS and many people find that 40~60 average FPSes good enough, especially with a GSYNC monitor. For that last category the GeForce GTX 1060 is going to offer a tremendous amount of value as at WQHD you are indeed in the 40 to 60 FPS marker. For example DX12 Rise of the Tomb Raider at proper image quality settings is doing a 50+ FPS here. Total War Warhammer in DX12 also hovers at that same framerate marker. Tom Clancy's The Division still offers roughly 40 FPS there with wicked quality settings, so these I consider to be good numbers at 2560x1440 for a product that sits in the mid-range aka mainstream category. In short, for the money this is an excellent 1080P and a proper 1440P card that will often offer a nice 40~60 FPS experience at WQHD and proper image quality settings. It has plenty of muscle and has the graphics memory to deal with it (6 GB model), even with the best quality settings and some niche AA levels. Resolutions after 2560x1440 will obviously be more complicated.
Last Words
If pricing remains a little under control and the GTX 1060 cards can sell as much as they can close to the 250 USD marker then they are going to be a hit. Excellent performance for you money. You'll play your games up-to 2560x1440 with nice framerates and proper image quality settings. Obviously that 6 GB framebuffer helps out quite a bit and does make your graphics card a little more future proof. The new architecture proves its agility and the die shrink to 16 nm FinFET shows low power consumption due to lower voltages and obviously the high clock-speeds and that 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory offer the product that the GTX 1060 is. The GeForce GTX 1060 is a terrific choice for the ones that game in the 1920x1080 up-to 2560x1440 resolution domain. The card will tweak quite well, we however predict (once again) that any and all cards can achieve a 2.0~2.1 GHz boost clock frequency and for the memory you should be reaching 9 Gbps (effective data-rate) quite easily as well. Here again I predict that all cards from any vendor are going to hover in the 2.0~2.1 GHz range max due to the limiters that Nvidia applies these days. For the bigger part they are in control of your tweak, not you. Still anno 2016 we have 120 Watt GPUs now passing the 2 GHz marker quite easily, and that is impressive at any level. Palit offers a strong product with th Super Jetstream, it offers a very nice factory tweak right out of the box and comes with a phat cooler. The three slots might be one to many for some of you, but it's not like you'll need that space for SLI. In return you'll receive a card that is very silent and runs at very okay temperatures. All things combined we can highly recommend the Palit GeForce GTX 1060 Super Jetstream edition as it offers value and a great deal of gaming performance in a nice silent package.
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