Test Setup and Methodology
All the guts and the glory!
Our testing setup for this review includes the Intel 6600K Skylake processor, GIGABYTE Z170X Ultra Gaming (LGA 1151) Motherboard, 16GB (2x8gb kit) of Crucial Ballistix Elite 2666MHz DDR4 memory (provided by Crucial), GIGABYTE Xtreme Gaming GTX 1060 (also provided by GIGABYTE), Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD, as well as a Corsair RX850 power supply. The NVIDIA drivers that were used were version 375.70. The latest BIOS available at the time of testing for the motherboard was also used (F4). We will be testing the CPU, Memory, and 3D performance using the latest benchmarking suites widely available to everyone.
Take a look at some additional information about the testbed, obtained with CPU-ID’s system information and monitoring utility, CPU-Z (v1.77).
Take a look at some additional information about the graphics setup in this testing platform obtained with TechPowerUp’s graphics card information and monitoring utility, GPU-Z (v1.12.0).
3DMark Professional Edition
We would like to thank Futuremark for providing the 3DMark software for use in this testing.
3DMark is arguably the most popular graphics card benchmarking software known to the world. For more than a decade, users have been using the software made by Futuremark to make and break world records and to also test overclocks. The latest version simply known as 3DMark includes several tests for DirectX 9, 10, 11 and 12 hardware. This version also supports cross-platform benchmarking including smartphones and tablets (Android and iOS) this time around. We used the Fire Strike Ultra, and Time Spy benchmarks (all at default settings). I will let the numbers do the talking.
In the Fire Strike test, our GIGABYTE GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6G graphics card came in above the AMD based GIGABYTE RX 470 and just under the GTX 1060 older sibling the GTX 1070. These numbers look great!
In the Timespy test, our GIGABYTE GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6G graphics card came in above the AMD based GIGABYTE RX 470 and just under the GTX 1060 older sibling the GTX 1070. These numbers look great!
In the Unigine Valley test, our GIGABYTE GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6G graphics card came in above the AMD based GIGABYTE RX 470 and just under the GTX 1060 older sibling the GTX 1070. These numbers look great!
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Final Fantasy has been around for a very, very long time. The beloved RPG franchise has been seen as the most successful video game RPG series of all time. The latest MMO flavor, Final Fantasy XIV, has some unprecedented visual quality, a full range of character variety, as well as some pretty special magical effects. We tested this game using the free downloadable benchmark with the default Maximum preset. The result is a beautiful game with an ultra-smooth frame rate and an Extremely High branded score.
In the Heavensward test, our GIGABYTE GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6G graphics card came in above the AMD based GIGABYTE RX 470 and just under the GTX 1060 older sibling the GTX 1070. These numbers look great!
Here are the results from ADIA64 GPGPU benchmark with the CPU included for comparison.
Now let us take a look at the software for the GTX 1060 Xtreme Gaming 6G graphics card!
