KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X Review

Name: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X
Brand: KFA²

W1zzard

on Dec 17th, 2018,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: KFA²

(56 Comments) »

Introduction

The GeForce GTX 1060 launched way back in the Summer of 2016, as part of NVIDIA's bid to extend its then squeaky new "Pascal" GPU architecture to the value-conscious sub-$300 market. Since then, it has become one of the company's best selling graphics cards targeting the vast majority of PC gamers who just want to play at Full HD (1080p) resolution with high-to-ultra details. NVIDIA has refreshed the 6 GB variant of GTX 1060 from time to time. When AMD introduced the Radeon RX 580 in Spring 2017, NVIDIA responded with the GTX 1060 6 GB 9 Gbps, a limited-edition SKU with faster memory. AMD's recent introduction of the Radeon RX 590 to rake in Holiday 2018 sales has triggered another response from NVIDIA.

If you've been keeping up with our tech news surrounding NVIDIA's inventories post the crypto-mining craze and "Turing" launch, you'll know that the company has been grappling with a pile of unsold 16 nm "GP104" inventories. With the introduction of GDDR6, there could be a similar impact on the slightly older GDDR5X memory chip inventories, and as the sole implementer of GDDR5X, it's natural to imagine the company must have landed itself vast quantities of unsold memory chips. The combination of the two results in a less publicized new SKU, the GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB G5X.

NVIDIA carved the GTX 1060 6 GB G5X by cutting down the "GP104" silicon. Half of its 20 streaming multiprocessors are disabled, resulting in a CUDA core count of 1,280, which is unchanged from the "GP106" based original. The memory bus width, too, is unchanged at 192-bit. What's more, while the GDDR5X memory controllers of the "GP104" are capable of stock memory frequencies as high as 11 Gbps (as seen on the GTX 1080 11 Gbps, another oddball SKU), NVIDIA decided to clock the memory at just 8 Gbps, lower than even last year's GTX 1060 6 GB 9 Gbps. On paper, the GTX 1060 6 GB G5X has the same specifications as the standard GTX 1060 6 GB, with the exception of GDDR5X memory. In theory, it should also have the same exact performance.

So what's the X-factor, you ask? NVIDIA probably gambles that "GDDR5X" looks nice on a box, particularly for the X-mas gift/upgrade buyer, and the company gets to dump its "GP104" and GDDR5X chip inventories in one fell swoop. Buyers who know a thing or two about the underlying technology (eg: you, our esteemed reader), probably imagine that since NVIDIA is using 10 Gbps-rated GDDR5X memory chips, the memory can be overclocked to kingdom come, as well as the GPU, to achieve more performance than an overclocked RX 590 would ever achieve. In this review, we put both theories to test.

We talked to several board vendors, requesting samples of the GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X, but none were willing to provide any, probably because this SKU isn't that sexy nowadays. So, we just went out and bought the first GTX 1060 GDDR5X that became available, which is the KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X.

The KFA2 card comes with a small overclock out of the box, giving it a base clock of 1518 MHz and a rated boost clock of 1733 MHz, which is just 33 MHz higher than the NVIDIA reference clocks for the GTX 1060 6 GB GDDR5X.

We paid around €250 for our card, which should roughly be equal to US$250 without taxes.

GTX 1060 GDDR5X Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
GTX 970	$235	1664	56	1051 MHz	1178 MHz	1750 MHz	GM204	5200M	4 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 480	$230	2304	32	1120 MHz	1266 MHz	2000 MHz	Ellesmere	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 580	$200	2304	32	1257 MHz	1340 MHz	2000 MHz	Ellesmere	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 590	$280	2304	32	1469 MHz	1545 MHz	2000 MHz	Polaris 30	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1060 3 GB	$200	1152	48	1506 MHz	1708 MHz	2002 MHz	GP106	4400M	3 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1060	$230	1280	48	1506 MHz	1708 MHz	2002 MHz	GP106	4400M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1060 GDDR5X	$250	1280	48	1506 MHz	1708 MHz	1001 MHz	GP104	7200M	6 GB, GDDR5X, 192-bit
KFA2 GTX 1060 GDDR5X OC	$250	1280	48	1518 MHz	1733 MHz	1001 MHz	GP104	7200M	6 GB, GDDR5X, 192-bit
GTX 980 Ti	$390	2816	96	1000 MHz	1075 MHz	1750 MHz	GM200	8000M	6 GB, GDDR5, 384-bit
R9 Fury X	$380	4096	64	1050 MHz	N/A	500 MHz	Fiji	8900M	4 GB, HBM, 4096-bit
GTX 1070	$360	1920	64	1506 MHz	1683 MHz	2002 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56	$350	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1070 Ti	$380	2432	64	1607 MHz	1683 MHz	2000 MHz	GP104	7200M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit

Packaging and Contents

You will receive:

Graphics card
Documentation
PCIe power adapter

The Card

The KFA2 card comes with a nice shroud that imitates a high-quality metal look very well even though the shroud is made out of plastic. A backplate is not available. Dimensions of the card are 23.5 x 12.0 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include a DisplayPort, an HDMI port, and a DVI port.

Compared to other GTX 1060 cards, the number of outputs is quite low, probably due to cost cutting by KFA2 and not lesser capability of the GP104 GPU. Other GTX 1060 GDDR5X cards do have more outputs.