Gainward GTX 1060 GS

Just as I was wrapping up my GTX 1060 launch 24-hour interval coverage, Gainward's GTX 1060 Phoenix GS landed on my doorstep. We weren't expecting a partner card in time for the official GTX 1060 release so nosotros were happy to have the Gainward bill of fare on hand.

Due to the menu'due south belatedly arrival, nosotros're just going to update three games with the GTX 1060 Phoenix GS results and we will also include custom overclocking equally well as a note on thermals.

Before nosotros go to that let'due south take a closer wait at the carte du jour itself. Like the Founders Edition, the Phoenix GS measures 250mm long. Whereas Nvidia'due south design stands 110mm alpine the Gainward card is 123mm tall thank you to the oversized cooler.

Speaking of which, the cooler has been constructed primarily from plastic just does feature anodized aluminium trimmings. Moving air over the heatsink below are a pair of 90mm fans featuring Gainward'southward new blade fin design. These fans are extremely quiet, even when the card has been placed under load for an extended period.

In total there'southward 210mm by 73mm at 28mm thick worth of heatsink. Improving efficiency are four 6mm copper heatpipes which connect to a large base plate that as well covers the six GDDR5 memory chips also as the VRMs.

The PCB design has been changed and at present nosotros detect a 4+1 power phase blueprint, a slight upgrade. The PCB also stretches the total length of the menu then once more we discover the 6-pin PCIe power connector at the end of the graphics card. That beingness the example, no upgrades to the power input have been made so at that place's goose egg hither that really suggests the Phoenix GS will overclock any better than the Founders Edition graphics card.

Out of the box the Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix GS comes with a mill overclock. The base of operations clock has been set at 1620MHz which results in a boost clock of 1848MHz. The retentiveness has been left at 2002MHz resulting in a data charge per unit of 8Gbps. That's an 8% core overclock and cypher on the memory.

Around the dorsum we observe a huge full size back plate protecting the card, though the aluminum plate is pretty boring in terms of pattern. The I/O configuration remains standard with a single dual-link DVI output, HDMI 2.0b and 3 DisplayPorts.

When it came to overclocking the menu we were able to push the retentivity upwardly to 2302MHz while the core reached 1745MHz resulting in a boost clock of 1973MHz. However, due to the fashion GPU Boost 3.0 technology works, the GTX 1060 Phoenix GS spent nigh of its time operating at effectually two.1GHz, but like the Founders Edition. Again, we weren't able to increase the voltage but the power target was maxed out at 119%.

Interestingly, despite its larger cooler, Gainward's card operated quite a few degrees hotter than the Founders Edition menu. Function of this was down to the power consumption which was quite a scrap higher than the Iron card, every bit you'll see in a moment. First allow's take a quick look at a few benchmark results…

Out of the box the Gainward GTX 1060 Phoenix GS was just slightly ameliorate than the Founders Edition graphics card. In one case overclocked the Phoenix GS was merely able to match the Founders Editions 47fps boilerplate so not a terribly heady outcome.

Again the Gainward bill of fare was just a frame faster with the factory overclock and even with the maximum custom overclock applied the Phoenix GS pulled just a single frame ahead of the Founders Edition.

The last game we checked out was Ascent of the Tomb Raider and here the Phoenix GS was over again simply a frame or two faster than the Founders Edition. This was true when comparing the ii out of the box as well as with the maximum stable overclock practical.

As expected, the Gainward GTX Phoenix GS consumed a similar level of power as the Founders Edition carte with the total organization consumption reaching simply 194 watts in Phone call of Duty Black Ops III.

Considering the cooler is so much larger and that dual fans typically outperform blower style cooler, we were surprised by the thermals. The Phoenix GS ran at 67 degrees, 3 degrees hotter than the Founders Edition card. In Gainward's defense force nosotros volition say that the GTX 1060 Phoenix GS was almost silent, even under total load and then that was a huge plus.