NVIDIA's GTX 1060 brings VR gaming to the masses for $249

NVIDIA has taken the wraps off of the GTX 1060, the successor to the GTX 960. This $249 card is aimed at the mainstream gaming audience, which should allow those with competent builds to enjoy some VR games. For the price, you get an advanced card with the power of the GTX 980 and 6GB of VRAM, plus support for virtual reality.

While more expensive than AMD's own RX 480 offering, NVIDIA states you are getting more power for your investment. If you wish to take advantage of the Founders Edition when the card is made available, you'll need to shell out $299, which is far and beyond the $239 tag on the 8GB RX 480. The GTX 1060 will launch on July 16.

Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds was formerly a Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

78 Comments
  • AMD is dead. Lol (Don't argue NVidia vs AMD under this comment)
  • You are ignorant.  (Don't argue the fact that you are ignorant under this comment)
  • Don't feel threatened
  • Do you know what the word ignorant means?  
  • I'd rather buy AMD, that go with this overpriced junk. I don't care if it's just a little better. Just like I don't care if the Jets suck in football. I will still root for them.
  • I don't think $10 more constitutes being overpriced.
  • $60 more
  • That's the founders edition. Regular is $249.
  • I guess we should wait till benchmarks arrive
  • I don't think there are any 1080's or 1070's that cost less than the founders editions so it would be more accurate to say the price is ≥$300 not 250. Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
  • Look at the GTX1070 on newegg. Do you see any of them price at $379 lol.
  • Go ahead and buy AMD which doesn't have good working drivers to save its life. NVidia might be pricey but drivers actually work making me able to use my GPU :O
  • like the ones that BSOD the whole system a few months back and had to be put down after 2 days by Nvidia ? Stop with this "drivers are bad" crap.
  • NVidia released one small batch of driver and pulled it right away and you're going to act like AMD doesn't release none working drivers that break something every time?! Stop with this defense sh*t with AMD
  • Do you even understand what you are saying ? I`m talking from the perspective of a guy who owns both. Have my R9-290 OC Vapor-x since launch and never had a driver hickup till now. But on the other hand Nvidia managed to make me go bananas with an all system BSOD from a driver update.
    Both companies have good drivers now, there are some ocasions that they make a bad one but usually fixed very fast, but from this to acutally trashing one of them like you said it`s a big difference. So keep your fan-boy statements at home if you don`t know what you are talking. Also mind your language, no need to rage about any of the brands.
  • Bullsh*t all those people on the forums posting problems with AMD and you think they release working drivers? No.. The forums don't lie.. They almost never work properly with new games.
  • Have you took a look on Nvidia`s forums ? Problems are on both camps. And ever since Windows 10 for example the Battlefield 4 forums were plagued by Nvidia users experiencing lots of performance issues, most of the with low FPS on cards like 970 / 980 / 980Ti. Now I`m not going to generalize that Nvidia is crap, these things happen, but from personal problems of some individuals to generalize that the whole product line is crap ... Fan-boys and their hate comments on forums lead to this 80(NVidia)-20(AMD) market share, and yet AMD still forces Nvidia to bring products at decent prices. PS: i`m still posting as a user of both products from both companies on the other hand you just spread hate comments based on biased reasons. PS2: on forums you`ll never see the people who will say thank you, your product works great. And both Nvidia and AMD forums are filled with people that have issues, with your logic we shouldn`t buy any of them.
  • Oh god, next you're going to say their CPU's are good haha.. I'm done with your fanboyism
  • I`m not going to say their CPUs are the best, they are still at the level of the 2nd 3rd gen i7. Had in the past FX 8350 that was just as fast as my brother`s i7 2600k. Now i`m using an i7 4790k. No fan-boy rage, just buying what serves the best my needs. Again, i`m talking as a guy who used both products. You just can`t come up with arguments to hold your statements, and also you`re talking from the perspective of a guy who doesn`t have the products that you`re bashing. PS: as you can see i don`t bash Nvidia, i`m just countering your statements that say AMD drivers are crap. If i was to go all out fanboy i would be doing what you are doing :)
  • Oh so now you know I didn't own a 380? Which I then had to drop $400 on a 970 because i gave AMD a chance and they failed? Oh okay I must be part of the 1% with problems then..
  • I have a 380, runs everything on max at around 50-60 FPS, running a FX8350, 16gb RAM. PRETTY good for $500 machine.
  • Oh right, a "small batch". A "small batch" that sent who knows how many Windows 10 PCs into a blue screen-reboot-blue screen-reboot loop until, and only if you were lucky, eventually Windows gave up and went into recovery mode. That was a fun evening!
  • If you can't go into recovery mode by pressing single a key when booting you shouldn't b*tch and moan about something.
  • Where is the single key for Windows 10? 
  • F8 or some systems like the Shift+F8
  • F8 doesn`t work with Fast Boot enabled.
  • Im coming from a Sapphire 7950 OC and just bought myself a 1070. I used mutliple AMD and nvidia cards over the last decade and I have never had any driver issues with either card. The 7950 was a good card, but after using it, I dont think I will ever by buying AMD again. Just the small things you dont get like phys-x, which was irritating while I was putting in hundreds of hours into borderlands 2. nvidia might be pricier, but honstly, in my experience, you get what you pay for.
  • @pikkon38 I had only Nvidia GPUs and never used PhysX, always too much of a fps hit and prefered to play without it. So i felt that i`ve lost nothing when i got my first AMD GPU.
  • My drivers do not even update properly. Maybe Nvidia has better drivers, but not my much. At least my experience was miserable and my next card will definitely be a AMD card.
  • Nvidia drivers crashed every system during the windows 10 update because they refused to partner with Microsoft until problems arose.  that was a huge middle finger to users.  AMD drivers worked on day one because AMD had partnered with MS the whole development cycle and were testing them with Windows Insiders..
  • Had no issues with Windows 10 since day one and I have a GTX 680. So yeah...BS.
  • This is about the oldest, and most innaccurate, arguement I keep seeing Nvidia fanboys spit out. I've been on my latest AMD card (7950) for 4 years now and never once had a driver issue that kept me from playing a game. Guess I must be "lucky" huh?
  • AMD is a better buy. Not only is it roughly the same performance it also is cheaper and expandable with crossfire support. This card is not sli ready...
  • if you have time to deal with power and heat issues, then yea go ahead.All the AMD card i have used, had driver, HEAT, POWER issues etc. i live in hot climate region and AMD card started to crash the whole system after a year or so, never had these issues with the Nvidia, they're way too cool to be considered overpriced, 
  • I ran a AMD 7770 for 3 years, never had a problem with power or heat issues, and it gets over 100 degrees where I live. Now I have a R9-380 works great!
  • This is what you literally just said:
    AMD is dead. Lol (don't tell me otherwise because my opinion is the only one that matters) Why would you even bother making a comment if you aren't willing to discuss the product(s). Ok rant over.
  • No, he literally said "AMD is dead. Lol (Don't argue NVidia vs AMD under this comment)" Whether or not he figuratively implied something else is up for discussion.
  • Ok, let's get picky about semantics. I officially change the word "literally" to "figuratively". happy? My general point still stands re making a specific comment about a product/company on an article that talks about both Nvidia and AMD and then telling people to not comment about it... it just irked me a lot.
  • Picky? You literally used a completely incorrect word, to the point of choosing a word that has, literally, the opposite meaning of the word you meant.
  • Lol guys, made my day, thanks xD
  • AMD is dead!!! you are right :/ ... so dead you will have to bury them twice ... but wait ... they have a APU in every PS4 and Xbox One  ... yeah ... that doesn't sound dead to me.
  • I wish I could afford even this.
  • Good pricing
  • Still not gonna buy NVIDIA cards as long as they keep this cringe 10-year old 1337 gamer look. RX480 is a professional looking card that fits in any rig.
  • Lolwut! Shut up that was the dumbest statement ever said.
  • I care what components inside my case that are in no way visible look like.
  • My case happens to have an acrylic panel
  • Acrylic panels are cringe 10-year old 1337 gamer look.
  • What kind of childish comment is that?
  • AMD happens to be trading well and is a good value.  For the fanboi argument, one might say NV is catching up to where AMD already is in this space. However, having invested in the '3d Vision' stuff a while back and still very pleased with its performance, I'd be more likely to go NVidia again if upgrading my 760.  That said, I'd do it only if I can simultaneously either pick up triple monitors or a Rift/Vive kit, or, in other words, not yet. Compared to the other NV 10xx series cards, I see this as the very likely sweet spot -- the 'founders edition' less so.
  • Yeah, I have a 760 atm, may very well upgrade to this. Toying over this or the 1070 now.
  • Have a 760 as well, either going 1070 or 480X (if the latest driver update worked). While we don't have benchmarks on the 1060 yet, I don't see the point in that 3Gb version. Considering even at 1080P some games will use over 4Gb. Which makes this basically a $300 card...might as well either wait an pony up for the 1070 or save money and get the 480X.
  • I went from a 760 to 1070 and have no regrets. It's a great card and its nice to finally run my newer games maxed out. Trying to decide if I want to use evgas step-up program for a 1080. I've never had over the top high end so I may give it a go.
  • The card will come well over 350$ in Europe, maybe even hit 400$ mark.
  • Don't forget that in the UK for example, we have 20% VAT to add on top of the US price. Sometimes a bit more is added on top as well, but the RX480 was priced at the same as the US, but with an extra 20% VAT added on top going to the lovely government, so instead of £150 you pay a little over £180. I'd expect this to be around £230 approximately the price of the 8GB RX480 from what I've looked at, but this *should* be more powerful if they are claiming GTX 980 performance
  • Looks like a good replacement for my 970...
  • That's my thought too. Will wait and see what the benchmarks are, but if it's a reasonable jump (and since it's supposed to be one even from a 980, I'm guessing it will be), I'm in.
  • The 1070 would be not this but wait until the next gen.. The 970 can handle 1080p with almost max settings. I was tempted but last thing I want is to get f'ed over in a year
  • .
  • But but AMD is 8gb while nvidia is 6gb
  • I doubt a single RX480 has the raw power to truly make use of the extra 2GB RAM - If this performs as well as a 980 like they say then I think it will be the best price:performance card available. EDIT: I'm guessing the power draw will be really low too - AMD made big improvements here but Nvidia with the 1070 and 1080 made bigger ones overall, which hopefully we'd see replicated here. Imagine if this has GTX980 performance but draws the power of a GTX 960 for example.
  • I'm not sure that claim will hold up in real world testing, at least for the 3Gb version. NVidia did also say that the 1080 was a doubling in performance, which it wasn't in most cases.
  • True, and thinking about it they always referred to it as relative performance gains in VR, so that's no guarantee it would match a 980 overall. Is the $249 the 6GB or 3GB version? 3GB seems like an odd number tbh
  • Amd cards are plastic -suckers Nvidia Cards are Steel and Gold -KING
  • AMD reference - cheaper Nvidia Fart Edition - more expensive Nvidiot still fall for the same sh*t =))
  • Only idiots spend money on the Founders Edition, but people who care about performance still buy NVIDIA. Just look at the benchmarks.
  • Yayyyyyyyy, just look at the benchmark (390 vs 970)
  • You just proved my point by using the 970 instead of the 980. I said nothing about price, only performance. I'm not claiming that no one should buy AMD, just that if you want the best performance (regardless of price), you're going with NVIDIA.
  • And suddenly this site is WCCFTech.
  • BOSS, you forgot the BOSS comment!
  • Wonder how the GTX 1060 compares to the GTX970 that I have now. For $250, not a bad deal, and I have another machine I could use a 970 on..... TIme to read some reviews... AS for AMD, would not touch another AMD card with a 50 foot pole....Had 2 of them in the past, New games came out, waited a moth or more for drivers to hit, never mind buggy software that takes up mega resources on Windows.... Spent good money on AMD cards and was disapointed big time.  NVIDIA ? Never an issue, new games have drivers available before the games are released (98% of the time), driver issues are normally fixed pretty quick. It's one of those things when spending $400+ on a product, burn me 2 times, never will use again...
  • Talking from a nvdiot view? I owning a AMD card and never have an issue.
  • My nvidia driver with GTX850M on laptop is crashing more often than my 280x CF setup on my PC which actually rarely crashes. I don't really get the point sometimes when someone says AMD drivers suck....
  • Waiting for 1050... Currently have 650
  • Things just got interesting. Maybe someone will do some comparisons between this and the 8GB RX 480.
  • Would like to see the directX12 tests, because nVidia has been sucking hard on that. Never owned an AMD card but their directX12 support is fantastic.
  • Why does Windows Central run advertisements for Nvidia like this?
  • Why do these things also turn into fanboy fights lol. I got an rx480 as when I built was best for the money. Great card and so far no issues. Gtx 1060 looks good but will be interesting to see if they hit the claimed $249. To the fanboys, be glad there is competition keeping nvidia honest. I doubt the 1060 would be priced as is without amd there