MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G Review

Performance Analysis

The average frame rates across all the games give the MSI card a four percent lead over the Founders Edition overall. Meanwhile, the Asus GTX 1060 Strix OC card has a lead on MSI, but the difference is even smaller – less than two percent on average. MSI's card also manages to be five percent faster than an AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB, or six percent compared to the 4GB version. Clearly, real-world differences between the majority of GTX 1060 and RX 480 cards are going to be slim.

In terms of what this card offers, ultimately it's the same as any GTX 1060. As the minimum frame rates show, it has excellent 1080p performance and at this resolution you're guaranteed a console-beating experience and frequent >60fps gameplay even with the settings dialled to 11. At 1440p, it's still a solid card, but as games like The Division show, sometimes ultra settings will prove to be too much. It's also still worth pointing out that AMD seems to have the lead in DX12 performance, as its cards fare much better here, but there's little MSI can do about this.


Under load, this card stayed consistently at its peak boost speed, which is always a good sign. This speed was 1,974MHz in the fastest OC Mode, which is what was used for the game results. This drops to 1,949MHz in Gaming Mode and 1,886MHz in Silent Mode – in each case it's about 50MHz behind the Asus Strix model. Unsurprisingly, there is very little performance difference between the three modes – less than three percent, according to the Unigine Valley results. One thing to note is that while Silent Mode is reference clock speeds, the card in this state still does three percent better in Valley than the Founders Edition thanks to better boosting.

Power consumption is right where we expected it – in between the slower Founders Edition and the faster Asus card, with it dropping slightly as you drop the clocks. Thermal performance is also great, with the GPU typically hovering at just over 60°C, which is fine since below this the fans don't even turn on. The Asus card managed a delta T 4°C below this MSI one, but it comes at the cost of noise. This is an area where MSI excels, and the Twin Frozr VI cooler remained inaudible in our testing – even with all system fans off and only the CPU cooler's pump running, we couldn't here it in the chassis next to us. The fans peaked at 39 percent, staying at just under 1,000 RPM.


In its overclocked state, the actual boost speed of the card jump from 1,974MHz to an impressive 2,126MHz, a new high for the Pascal GPUs we've seen and a seven percent improvement. Coupled with the 12 percent memory speed increase, we saw performance improve by similar amounts, but the card wasn't able to attain a significant real-world lead on other GTX 1060s or the RX 480 when they were also overclocked. Power consumption did creep up by almost 30W, and temperature and fan speed also climbed slightly in the overclocked state. That said, the card was still nearly impossible to hear in a quiet environment.

Conclusion

The asking price of £300 for this card is undoubtedly steep given that GTX 1060 pricing starts at £230 – that's a 30 percent increase. Clearly, MSI is asking a lot of its customers and the GTX 1060 Gaming X, much like the GTX 1060 Strix OC, is not positioned as a bang per buck card. Still, that doesn't mean that price becomes irrelevant – whether it's the psychological satisfaction of technically keeping below £300, or the fact that there's just about enough difference between this price and that of GTX 1070 cards to keep the two well enough separated, we'd say £300 is the maximum anyone should pay for a GTX 1060, and looking at the current prices it seems all the board partners, excluding Asus, agree.


The MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X is clearly a great upgrade over the Founders Edition. You get a solid core overclock and a small but appreciated bump in memory speed as well. The card is well built, good looking and the RGB lights add aesthetic flair. An 8-pin power input and upgraded power phase components are there too, and the card, or at least our sample, demonstrates solid overclocking potential. All of this can be said of the Asus GTX 1060 Strix OC as well, and that has a few extra features under its belt too, but one key difference we feel is in the out-of-box cooling. MSI's one runs inaudibly even under load, whereas the Asus one is somehow a touch noisier than its GTX 1070 counterpart. The difference, we reckon, is the contact plate here, helping to spread the heat from the densely packed GP106 GPU more effectively than Asus's direct contact heat pipes, more than half of which make no contact at all. That said, realistically both are cool and quiet, and you can easily tweak the fan profiles on both for more performance or less noise.

Still, the silent out-of-box operation coupled with the lower price tag means the card is able to snag our top award. Such products are rarely for everyone, and this is no different – price-conscious buyers might consider more basic SKUs or even the RX 480 4GB, which is the best bang for buck card in this segment, but for enthusiasts set on a GTX 1060 and willing to spend a bit more for a premium experience, the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X is a fine card to opt for.