NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 release date, specs news: 3 GB version announced

NVIDIA has officially unveiled a budget-friendly version of the GeForce GTX 1060. The new iteration of the graphics card comes with a 3 GB memory and should allow for admirable gaming performance without breaking the bank.

Priced at $200, the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is meant to compete with the AMD 4 GB Radeon RX 480 as well as the RX 470. However, NVIDIA made it clear that the new graphics card is 10 percent faster than the 8 GB version of the former.

But to cut down the $50 from the usual $250 price tag of the original version, the downscaling started from obviously the memory, which was cut in half.

Because of this, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 will be slower by 5 percent. This means that the 3 GB version dawdles by roughly three frames per second (fps) in a 60 fps render.

More on the subject of frame rates and resolution, the slimmed down NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 might not be as good as the 6 GB version in 1440p games, but could support 1080 gaming.

Despite some downgrades, the base clock on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB stays at 1506 MHz as well as the boost clock at 1709 MHz.

According to PC World, the specs of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB make it seem more like a GTX 1050 rather than GTX 1060 considering the fewer CUDA cores.

But the site believes that this is simply NVIDIA's way to compete with AMD's RX 480, which is why the price point is the same despite the faster performance that the company claims on the GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB.

However, The Country Caller believes that the AMD graphics cards are still the way to go simply because it can handle 1440p gaming or at least support it better than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB.

Meanwhile, a new driver for the 3 GB version should be released anytime now, but NVIDIA says via Eurogamer that the stock will filter through "over the next few weeks."