Gadgetory

the times come to review that massive extreme gaming version of the geforce gtx 1060 that i unboxed a few weeks ago already we've checked out the gigabyte extreme gaming 1070 and 1080 graphics cards both of which were most impressive despite coming at a slight price premium paying a little extra for a 1070 or 1080 graphics card that runs cool and quiet isn't a big deal the 1060 on the other hand could be a different story for starters the 1060 already runs very cool and quiet thanks to its less complex design the 1060 is also somewhat of a budget GPU priced at $250 for the 6 gigabyte model perhaps the most important factor though is that it has real competition unlike the upper tier Pascal cards the 1060 has to deal with a slightly cheaper RX 480 so inflating the price doesn't exactly help to improve the 1060 s position that being said let's get the ugly business out of the way now the 1060 extreme cost $300 this is obviously quite a lot more than the $250 windforce version so what are you getting by paying 20% more well let's find out compared to your typical gtx 1060 the extreme gaming model is huge in fact it's virtually the same size as the much more expensive 1070 and 1080 models unless there's some sort of unexpected overclocking potential waiting to be tapped making a gtx 1060 this big doesn't really make a heap of sense still it does look impressive but is there more to this graphics card than a big fan shroud and a pair of 100 millimeter fans removing the cooler reveals that there is indeed something under that lid as was the case with the 1070 and 1080 extreme gaming models we find two large arrays of aluminium fins connected to a large copper base via a series of copper heat pipes in total the cooler way 707 grams which isn't much lighter than the 791 grams cooler of the 1070 model this is also a good bit heavier than 658 gram cooler asu's users on the 1070 Strix model when compared to the 1070 extreme gaming cooler there really isn't much of a difference which isn't surprising given this roughly attempts and difference in total weight without question this massive cooler won't have any trouble keeping the gtx 1060 cool I can't imagine the fans will be required to spin up much even under heavy load moving to the PCB itself which has been given the same aerospace coding of the more costly extreme gaming models we find a number of upgrades along with the Titan Xcode chokes and capacitors we find an upgraded 6+1 power phase design which should help to lower temperatures and maximize the cards of a clocking potential gigabyte is also upgraded to an 8-pin PCIe power connector that's said I should point out that these exact same upgrades are made to the cheaper g1 gaming model as well for those of you unaware the Nvidia founders edition model only features a 3+1 power phase design along with a single 6-pin connector something the g1 gaming model doesn't include are the rear mounted internal HDMI outputs for more convenient front mounted VR support keep I call this feature extreme VR link unfortunately the VR link Bay isn't included in the package and unlike the 1070 and 1080 models there isn't a premium pack edition honestly I'd hoped given the price this gear would have been included in the package still you're getting that massive cooler an impressive looking full-length backplate and some fancy igb lighting the sixteen point eight million color customizable lighting is a fun novelty edition but will for some help justify the price premium another area where the extreme gaming upsets game is in the factory overclocking Department out of the box the g1 gaming operates at eighteen hundred and nine megahertz boost frequency the extreme gaming goes a bit further at eighteen hundred and forty seven megahertz that's still only an 8% increase over the fans Edition model but as far as a factory overclock goes that's a pretty decent one given how variable the boost clock frequency is with GPU boost 3.0 will be interesting to see how much if any difference is extra factory overclock makes that being said let's jump into the benchmarks first up we have ARMA 3 sadly the extreme gaming doesn't stand out as the superior 1060 here only matching the g1 gaming out of the box and overclocked hmm not much else to say here either despite that big factory overclock the extreme gaming is just 1 FPS faster out of the box when compared to the g1 gaming well I'm starting to detect the trend here out of the box the extreme gaming not only match the g1 gaming but it was also unable pull away from the palette super Jetstream again nothing to see here in the division the extreme gaming isn't able to distance itself from the more affordable 1060 graphics cards even when overclocked what do we have here more of the same it seems no surprises in Far Cry primal alright time to wrap this up it's pretty evident now that slapping a massive cooler on the gtx 1060 doesn't help improve performance or customer clocking power consumption for the extreme game is on par with the g1 gaming along with pallid super jet stream okay so finally we see our first real evidence that massive cooler paying off out of the box the extreme game you never exceeded 59 degrees in our gaming stress tests making it 5 degrees cooler than the g1 gaming model even overclocked the card only reached 60 degrees and ran virtually silent temperatures aside there really isn't any tallying the extreme gaming apart from models such as the g1 gaming this is a shame but given how GPU boost 3.0 technology works it isn't entirely surprising either the extreme gaming obviously isn't cheaper $300 but the g1 gaming isn't much better at 290 dollars those after a $250 MSRP card from gigabyte will need to invest in the windforce d5 six gigabyte model interestingly that model features the same six plus one power phase design and 8 p.m. power input as far as we can tell the only real difference is the cut-down cooler so there's every chance you'll see the same frame rate performance from this model as well for me the gtx 1060 extreme gaming seems to be a graphics card designed for games who wish they could afford the 1080 but a happy paying a premium to pretend they've got one gigabyte eventually end up selling this beefy 1064 and 270 dollars then we can probably justify the purchase but at 300 bucks is just too pricey given there's no extra performance to be had what do you guys think let me know in the comments I'm your host man as always and I'll see you guys next time cheers guys for joining me for another episode of hardware unbox so those of you that already support the channel thank you so much it's truly appreciated and to those of you that would like to support the channel directly I do have Amazon links and a patreon link in the video description below thanks a lot and I'll see you guys next time