NVIDIA brings Pascal-power to the masses with the US$249 GeForce GTX 1060

Launching on 19th July and with a price tag that’s clearly aimed for the mass markets, NVIDIA’s Pascal-powered GTX 1060 will deliver power comparable to the company’s former flagship GTX 980 and twice the energy efficiency in VR (virtual reality).

The GTX 1060 complements its siblings, the GTX 1080 and 1070, which have set records for speed and power efficiency following their launch two months ago. While the GTX 1080 and GTX 10870 are targeted at the high-end and mid-range markets respectively, the GTX 1060 is aimed at the massive entry-level market, where consumers are a little more price-sensitive.

While built with a different Pascal chip than its more expensive brothers (GP106 to their GP104), the GTX 1060 still offers all the benefits of NVIDIA’s FinFET 16nm process. Its single power connector only draws 120 watts of power, making it ridiculously efficient. It also comes with 6GB of GDDR5, and its 1.7GHz boost clock should be easily overclocked into the 2.0GHz range.

In fact, it would appear to be going head to head with AMD’s top Polaris card, the Radeon RX 480, which is priced at US$249 (for the 8GB version). Just as the latter wants to make VR-ready hardware more accessible, so does the GeForce GTX 1060. It even features the same Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) technology as the higher end Pascal cards, which allows it to project a single image simultaneously to both eyes. The GTX 1060 also supports NVIDIA’s Ansel in-game photography tech, allowing players to take high-fidelity images in supported games—including 360 degree VR-ready shots. Players of Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and The Witcher III will be able to start playing about with Ansel later this month.

Custom versions of the card from NVIDIA’s partners will be available starting 19 July from brands including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Palit. These will be cheaper than the Founders Edition cards with a starting price of just US$249.

Having said that, NVIDIA appears to be taking a slightly different strategy with the GeForce GTX 1060. While Founders Edition versions of the 1070 and 1080 are available from add-in board partners, the GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition will only be available to buy direct from NVIDIA itself.

Stay tuned to our review.