Since this is the reference variant, we should also just call it the GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition. According to Forbes, tech experts expect that Nvidia will launch the baseline GTX 1060 for $249 or less and aggressively compete with AMD at the sub-$250 price point. This means we will likely see one GtX 1060 with 6GB of VRAM and one with 3GB.
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In a post on WCCFtech – again pinches of salt at the ready – they have the GTX 1060 running on a 192-bit bus, putting it below the 256-bit memory bus the new AMD cards are sporting. The GTX 1060, assuming it’s based on the GP106 chip, is estimated to measure in at somewhere between 170 square millimeters and 200 square millimeters on TSMC’s newer 16-nanometer FinFET process (this estimate comes from VideoCardz.com as well). The GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 came rocking slightly different versions of the GP104 core.
Starting off with the specifications, the GeForce GTX 1060 would feature 1280 CUDA cores and 80 TMUs.
In addition, the GTX 1060 will have a TDP of 120W, a memory speed of 2000MHz, and a memory bandwidth of 192 GB/s. The graphics card will have a 6-pin power connector and a standard array comprised of an HDMI 2.0B, three DisplayPort 1.4s, and a DL-DVI connector.
The final interesting tidbit from Benchlife is their claims there will be no SLI capabilities for these new mid-rangers. What’s important to note, though, is that the GeForce GTX 1060 should be cheaper to produce than the GTX 970/980, so NVIDIA should be better off bringing this part to market than selling dramatically price reduced GTX 980s into this market.
Though I would always recommend a single GPU over an oft-awkward multi-GPU setup if you can possibly help it.
However, the reason that the Steam hardware survey still has a lot of users using AMD would also be because the 480 is geared more towards people with a budget, rather than the high-end Nvidia cards.
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Of course, it is possible that the GTX 1060 moves its data around over the PCI Express port without requiring a dedicated SLI bridge, just like newer AMD cards.
