MSI GeForce GTX 1060

MSI GTX1060-6Gb Gaming X Plus wins! – After the sudden, sad demise of my beloved GTX780 Phantom I found myself in the market for an upgraded replacement to run 1080p games on my Haswell i5 Rig. What a rude shock to find that Graphic card prices had gone through the roof just when I needed one! After much researching and 'financial soul searching' I narrowed the choice down to either a RX580-8Gb or GTX1060-6Gb card. As I'm still happily running Win 8.1, I was a little dismayed to find AMD no longer supported drivers for it, so unfortunately that ruled out any Radeon card unless I 'upgraded' to Win10 or back to Win7?

So now the hunt was on for a GTX1060-6Gb with - Great Cooling - Quiet Running, and a - Factory Overclock that I could afford to buy without selling a Kidney. The MSI GTX1060-6Gb Gaming X Plus ticked all the boxes, although I have to admit to being 'over' Red/Black components for PCs but anyway... Two months down the track I have no regrets with my purchase. Temps are great,(64`C is the Max' it has reached in any game/benchmark). The whole card feels high quality, and the huge 3 heat piped cooler really cools very quietly. I'm still not wrapped in the colour scheme or even care that much about the LED lighting, but I am sold on all the features I was looking for in a GPU.

Great job MSI, and thanks for the 3 year warranty too!

Good looking but mediocre mining performance – Got the gaming X version with 6GB ram. I was expecting Samsung memory after reading a few reviews about but it came with micron memory instead. Hence 1pt down. With the crypto mining craze at the moment, prices of graphics cards are being ridiculously inflated at the moment. Paid $447 each, whereas a month ago would have been $50 less. Had problems installing the driver's but I think that's more a windows 10 issue. Uses 8pin pcie power connectors and uses 10% more power than smaller Gtx 1060s. On the plus side, the big cooling unit with twin fans, wide heatsink keeps it relatively cool at no more than 64C after a few hours of continuous operation.

i hate it – it can't load any games is super slow and heavy all it is is a glorified paper weight yesterday it gave up so i upgraded to my GeForce FX 5800 Ultra don't buy unless you like paper weights

Excellent 1920x1080 performance – I recently built my first gaming pc and went with a modest set of hardware including a gtx 960 4G by gigabyte which was great. When the 1060 pascal cards came out though I decided to upgrade. I purchased the MSI gtx 1060 with the twin frozr cooler as it had the aesthetic I wanted for my build and the twin frozr cooler is among the best in the graphics card world along with the fact tat the 1060 was comparable to the GTX 980 of the previous generation which was the top tier card with the exception of the GTX 980Ti.

Whats good -

- Amazing 1080p performance and reliable 1440p performance

- Low TDP (power consumption) which means it runs cool

- Great look for black and red builds

- Very easily overclockable using MSI afterburner

Whats not so good -

- No SLI compatibility (cannot connect another 1060 for more power) though for most people this should not be an issue as the card is powerful enough on its own.

- MSI 1060 card is more expensive than other GTX 1060 offerings from competitors such as EVGA SC 1060 which you can find for around $100 to $150 less. Though stocks seem to be low for those cards a lot of the time so you may have to wait

Conclusion -

The GTX 1060 graphics card is a fantastic choice for any new builds or for anyone looking to upgrade from the gtx 960 series and below. If you are looking at 4k resolution gaming though do not purchase this card as you cannot SLI them and it will not handle 4k reliably. At 1440 resolution though it is acceptable performance though it truly shines in the 1920x1080 resolution area. If you can find the EVGA SC 1060 for around $350 AUD that would be a fantastic purchase as you can still overclock the card to 2100mhz no problems and the low power draw means it is never at risk of overheating unless you have a very small form factor case with poor ventilation. The MSI card is particular nice due to its look and amazing cooler, I personally think it is the best 1060 card on offer though for an extra $100 or more compared to other cards I can see why people may opt for the cheaper options.

FYI -

If you have this MSI 6G card and want to push it a bit further using MSI after burner I was able to get rock solid performance using the following -

- Power limit = 108%

- Core clock + 137 (with gpu boost 3.0 this will push the clock speed up to exactly 2100Mhz)

- Memory clock + 500

My current set up -

- Intel Core i5 6500 (stock cooler)

- MSI GTX 1060 6G

- 16 g DDR4 2133 ram

- MSI PRO VDH h170 mobo

- Thermaltake Core V21 case

- Corsair 650 PSU