MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Gaming X

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Maybe its just me ... graphics debate always seems excessively anal and you imagine that the best friend of the debaters is of the blow up kind. ;-)

Well nobody is forcing you to post on a TECH DISCUSSION FORUM,where we are actually discussing about something we like and just because your own blow up mate sprung a leak,and you are sad about it,no need to try and insult people just to get through the day!

[Tunnah]

Maybe its just me ... graphics debate always seems excessively anal and you imagine that the best friend of the debaters is of the blow up kind. ;-)

Nah you've just been unfortunate mate to be put in that situation with an immature git who gets all emotional about being right, and stuck up too, it's a god-awful combination.

IRL I'm my mates' go-to guy for PC advice (only 1 or 2 of my mates are into-into computers, and they're game devs so they don't keep up on hardware) so I can't even recall ever having a debate at all, I'm usually just doling out advice.

That whole blowing up polava is more for younger folks

[jigger]

I'm not seeing that at least not as a general rule. The RX 470 is just a better card than the GTX 1060 IMO, and the performance drop off for the 780Ti against the R9 290 is probably as much down to the fact that after a year or so Nvidia cards fall in to the driver dead pool.

To test this theory Hexus should put a 4Gb R9 290x up against the 8Gb version. The GTX780Ti is faster than a GTX1060 and both have 3Gb of VRAM. Many of the GTX 980's are a lot faster than the GTX1060 6Gb CAT.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...e-gtx-980-hof/

But the problem you are ignoring all the cards like the 8800GT 256MB. Within a year a 9600GT with half the shaders and double the VRAM was thrashing it. They were both the same generation of GPU.

ROTR is a Nvidia biased title,so when a GTX970 or RX470 is showing massively better minimums on ultra settings you know there is a problem. This is because devs are targetting 1GB,2GB or 4GB of VRAM and this is seen in the Steam statistics. Any game which runs well on 3GB of VRAM is most likely to be optimised towards the performance of cards with 2GB of VRAM.

I am sorry but it is somewhat optimistic to say the GTX1060 3GB will be OK for new titles for the next year when a GTX970 can beat it. Yet the GTX1060 6GB is way ahead.

These was some testing done back in September:

Plus some other testing from other sites has shown issues with the card.

Actually as DF said,get the GTX1060 6GB,which chimes in exactly with what I said. Guru3D said the same. In Hitman the GTX1060 6GB is 14% faster overall it appears,and it gets bigger as the resolution increases too. Remember,Nvidia says it should be a 5% difference.

Both DF and Guru3D show it drops down to slightly below a GTX970 in the game too.

The same problem with Rise of the Tombraider:

http://images.eurogamer.net/2015/art.../80/format/jpg





DF said there was stuttering for the 3GB card.











Guru3D is testing a pre-overclocked card with better cooling against the FE GTX1060 6GB.

The 3GB card is pointless for such a small saving - it will get worse and worse. Games are going to push even more VRAM over the next couple of years. In fact Deus Ex,seems to also push VRAM usage.

History is not on the side of VRAM gimped performance cards.

Personally it won't affect me(or people I know in real life as I will tell them why spending that extra is worth it),but it makes me feel sorry for people who get the impression it will be fine,as its their money which is being wasted as time progresses.

So I am not sure what the point of the GTX1060 3GB card:
1.)Not enough VRAM as it can get pushed even at 1080P in very intensive games(both 2016 games)
2.)Not enough VRAM meaning it limits your monitor upgrade choices if you want to get a higher resolution monitor
3.)Less cores
4.)Only £30 to £40 difference
5.)Probably less resale value and less re-use value for a secondary rig

The same goes with the RX470 which is now more like £190 to £200 too. You might as well get an RX480 8GB.

At least the 8800GT 512MB was 40% more expensive than a 8800GT 256MB.

The GTX1060 3GB is not massively cheaper than a GTX1060 6GB.

£30 to £40(or even £50) on a £200 card over two to three years is nothing.

Its even more hilarious that the GTX1050 will be a 4GB card too - millions of GTX970 and GTX980 cards have over 3GB of VRAM and on Steam its either 1GB,2GB or 4GB of VRAM too.

My prediction is people will argue on how 3GB is "enough" and then it will be forgotten about when the next cards are launched.

Now its got worse - some more tests have shown the card is hitting much lower framerates in Forza Horizon 3. Deus Ex is another one. That is like 4 to 5 major 2016 titles showing the 3GB is being saturated. Even with game modding,even many of the modders say 4GB of VRAM is useful and that is huge in many games.

So within two months of release,it is showing performance losses in games more than 10% which is not a good sign.

So what happens in one years time?? Two years time?

I wasn't wrong about the 8800GT 256MB either.

Even Digital Foundry said to basically spend the extra on a GTX1060 6GB.

Its one thing if you might want to play a Blizzard title since they don't tend to push VRAM massively and Nvidia does better in that(or maybe PS2) but for most of the cutting edge titles,they are obviously designed with the GTX970 and R9 290 4GB cards as a minimum in mind.

Remember,the GTX960 2GB itself was replaced in a short time by the 4GB version,so even the GTX960 is more likely to be a 4GB card.

If the cheaper GTX1060 was a 4GB card we would not be having this discussion - the reason the RX470 is competitive is probably the fact it has 33% percent more VRAM. The GTX1060 3GB is probably more like a RX480 in core speed.

I can't recommend any the GXT1050TI 4GB or GTX1060 3GB to anybody as everybody I know keeps cards for at least two years.

The GTX1050TI is not massively faster than my GTX960 which is already starting to struggle and the GTX1060 has an abnormal amount of VRAM no dev is going to really care about.

To be fair thats a very mixed bag of results CAT. The 2GB R9 285 is beating the 6gb Titan and the third fastest in the hitman test is a 4GB Fury.

I'm not getting onboard with the 6GB minimum requirement because it's clearly not that simple.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

To be fair thats a very mixed bag of results CAT. The 2GB R9 285 is beating the 6gb Titan and the third fastest in the hitman test is a 4GB Fury.

I'm not getting onboard with the 6GB minimum requirement because it's clearly not that simple.

The GTX1060 3GB is struggling. In all those situations the 6GB is faster and the RX470 is faster and the GTX970 is not slower.

You need at least 4GB of VRAM with a modern card with a decent speed core.

Also,Kepler performance has fallen away due to lack of driver optimisations. AMD said that they were optimising on a game by game basis for Fury,ie,they have to actively managed VRAM usage manually via drivers.

You are starting to sound like the 8800GT 256MB defenders,who were in denial about the lack of VRAM,right until the point a year later it was being between in almost every game by a 9600GT.

Your the one who says 3GB is fine - yet in those games the RX470 and GTX970 hold their own against a faster card(GTX1060 3GB) and the 6GB demolishes it.

The 3GB looks OK in isolation for those just comparing a slower card to it,ie,a GTX960 or something but when compared to its brethren it shows some massive performance gaps.

So,can you guarantee in 12 months time the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of every game(according to Nvidia it should be only 5%) at every playable setting(above 30FPS) when compared to the GTX1060 6GB??

Because if not you are on purpose mis-selling this card to potential buyers and wasting their money.

Edit!!

It gets better,in some of those links the minimums are much lower for the 3GB version too. Lets look at ROTR again:

http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2016...4e69ef49d5.png

There are three sections to this bench: in the first, the three gig GTX 1060 keeps up with its more expensive sibling, but as we move into the second and third areas, we hit a short period of stutter followed by sustained, lower frame-rates.

That shows the GTX1060 3GB is being VRAM saturated.

In a NV sponsored game the RX470 4GB have better minimums. It is seen with other reviews.

ROTR,Hitman,AC:U,Forza,Deus Ex:Mankind Divided and so on are some of the most graphical taxing games this year and the GTX1060 6GB does far better than 10% over the 3GB version and in many of those games the RX470 4GB and GTX970 4GB with slower cores are holding their own.

Plus plenty of people mod games too - a number of the mod creators advise over 3GB of VRAM for the highest quality texture mods too.

3GB is not enough if you want a card which lasts on a core as fast as that in a GTX1060,you need at least 4GB for longevity in a card.

This is why ignored all the people who said 2GB was fine on a GTX960/R9 380 since 4GB was OTT. Yeah,right:

https://www.computerbase.de/2015-12/...380-vram-test/

The 2GB versions are doing much worse in many games in terms of frametimes and even minimums.

So if that is with a slower set of cards,what happens with faster cards,as you want to turn even more settings up?

As the DigitalFoundry said - get a GTX1060 6GB.

Second Edit!!

Some more games having abnormal performance drops for the 3GB version:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1263-...-4-benchmarks/

Something I noticed when testing many GPUs was the difference in image quality, despite the settings remaining the same. Forcing the settings to ultra, there were still distinct differences between the 3GB and 6GB versions of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 for example.

The character resolution seemed lower at times on the 3GB model. It was almost like a different anti-aliasing method was being used. The characters would appear blurrier and feature lower textures. The environments would often feature lower quality textures as well, less lighting and lower quality shadows.

Here are a few examples between the 3GB and 6GB 1060 models:

I admit the close up of this screen doesn't make the difference super obvious, but the GTX 1060 6GB is showing a slight shadow over the green support while there is no shadow at all for the 3GB card. This is easier to spot when looking at the screenshot in its entirety.

Here you can see that the character is clearly softer/blurrier on the 3GB 1060.

Trying to compare to slower cards is not relevant as the GTX1060 3GB is a fast core more like a GTX970 or RX480. So compared to its competitors things start get worrying.

Also,another game:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-09/...-radeon-rx-480

https://pics.computerbase.de/7/4/5/5...1473672149.png

Latest Deus Ex:

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-09/...force-gtx-1060



Large frametime spikes.

At Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in Full HD, the GeForce GTX 1060 with 3 GB does not make it possible to play the game fluently. To do this, you have to go back to the fourth level of detail "Medium". From four gigabytes runs the Schleichtitel in "high" however impeccably.

If you look at the benchmarks for the 4GB cards in those games(with fast enough cores) they tend to do relatively better.

Forza Horizon 3 seems to do much worse on the GTX1060 3GB too.


All of these issues you see are down to the fact the GTX1060 3GB has less VRAM and it has a fast core.

Sure a GTX1060 3GB is a better choice than a GTX1050TI 4GB as core speed is important,but the problem is the GTX1060 6GB can be had for as low as £30 more on special offer and the RX470 4GB is cheaper on offer too.

It will be great for certain games like WoW like Planetside 2 which are not VRAM heavy AFAIK but at the same time more and more newer graphical intensive titles are using more VRAM. It is a decent card - but the problem its in a very crowded market.

In isolation,ie,there was no RX470 4GB,no RX480 4GB or even no price reduced GTX970 4GB cards,it would look impressive in its own right.

However,it isn't so you can't just ignore the cards around it and those just above it.

Anyway,we are going around in circles here,so will leave it at that.

[jigger]

But you sound like one of those people saying that doubling the VRAM on GTX1060's cards will add performance in the future, but it won't. Clearly crap driver support is an Nvidia engineered problem, but maybe your argument applies to Nvidia cards to some extent. However lets keep in mind that the 3GB and 6GB GTX1060 use different GPU's so you cant point the finger at memory alone, and looking at how cards like the 6GB Titan and Titan black are performing today, I don't think any of the Pascal cards have much of a future past 12 months regardless.

The 256MB 8800 was a very strange card. It would be like releasing a 1GB GTX 1070 now.

[Tunnah]

But you sound like one of those people saying that doubling the VRAM on GTX1060's cards will add performance in the future, but it won't. Clearly crap driver support is an Nvidia engineered problem, but maybe your argument applies to Nvidia cards to some extent. However lets keep in mind that the 3GB and 6GB GTX1060 use different GPU's so you cant point the finger at memory alone, and looking at how cards like the 6GB Titan and Titan black are performing today, I don't think any of the Pascal cards have much of a future past 12 months regardless.

The 256MB 8800 was a very strange card. It would be like releasing a 1GB GTX 1070 now.

It doesn't add performance, it reduces swapping, and swapping reduces performance. Basically more VRAM stops an otherwise unnecessary bottleneck from happening.

TBH I don't get why folks don't get it. If a game requires 4GB of VRAM, a card with less than that will suffer slowdown due to swapping. It's such an incredibly simple thing to understand.

Then there's going past that and giving yourself headroom for higher quality textures - why limit yourself to the lowest resolution textures ? A lot of times the texture quality you can have is strictly limited to the VRAM you have. Sure it used to be that cards were so weak that they couldn't render the higher resolution textures that were in their memory but those days are fading fast

[jigger]

It doesn't add performance, it reduces swapping, and swapping reduces performance. Basically more VRAM stops an otherwise unnecessary bottleneck from happening.

TBH I don't get why folks don't get it. If a game requires 4GB of VRAM, a card with less than that will suffer slowdown due to swapping. It's such an incredibly simple thing to understand.

Then there's going past that and giving yourself headroom for higher quality textures - why limit yourself to the lowest resolution textures ? A lot of times the texture quality you can have is strictly limited to the VRAM you have. Sure it used to be that cards were so weak that they couldn't render the higher resolution textures that were in their memory but those days are fading fast

I understand what you're trying to say, I simply disagree with the blanket statement you made because it's wrong in most cases. If a game requires more memory fair enough, but what we're talking about is why and under what circumstances. When Nvidia drop driver support thats one reason, but it effects all cards even with 6GB of VRAM, but that just the case for Nvidia. AMD cards on the other hand are holding up very well even with 2GB of memory. Crappy development and lack of optimisations on the developers side is probably another reason.

In short you're saying the R9 390, RX 480/470 8GB are the only cards worth buying and anything else has no future. That might be right, but it's got very little to do with VRAM, as far as I can tell.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But you sound like one of those people saying that doubling the VRAM on GTX1060's cards will add performance in the future, but it won't. Clearly crap driver support is an Nvidia engineered problem, but maybe your argument applies to Nvidia cards to some extent. However lets keep in mind that the 3GB and 6GB GTX1060 use different GPU's so you cant point the finger at memory alone, and looking at how cards like the 6GB Titan and Titan black are performing today, I don't think any of the Pascal cards have much of a future past 12 months regardless.

The 256MB 8800 was a very strange card. It would be like releasing a 1GB GTX 1070 now.

It isn't a driver issue - the GPU excuse is absurd. It uses the same GPU,yet the GTX1060 has 10% less shaders. Nvidia themselves stated at most a 5% difference in performance. Plus look at the frametime issues and minimums issues. The GTX970 is a slower card yet has better minimums and the RX470 is a slower card too. Yet in those games,they don't exhibit the same issue. The difference is far greater than 10% too. 4GB is the minimum for a fast card now - you don't understand that literally every £150+ GPU for the last 18 months has 4GB of VRAM as a minimum. Steam has peakes at 1GB,2GB and 4GB. No dev is going to care about some weird frakencard when most of the cards they are targetting for performance have 4GB of VRAM.

Plus at the time the 8800GT 256MB was released,so was the HD3850 256MB. 512MB and above cards were only limited to the high end at that point,ie,8800GTS 640MB and above.

Yet,the 8800GT 256MB,HD3850 256MB and 8800GTS 320MB all had problems as time progressed. Fast forward to the HD4870 512MB and 1GB,and even the HD7850 1GB and HD6950 1GB against their 2GB versions.



So that is loads of games with frametime issues,lower minimums and even texture issues(due to more swapping)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Never seen it from any of my cards and most are faster than a GTX 1060 yet have less memory. The 3GB 1060 has enough memory, adding another 3Gb would do zero for the cards performance.

I understand what you're trying to say, I simply disagree with the blanket statement you made because it's wrong in most cases. If a game requires more memory fair enough, but what we're talking about is why and under what circumstances. When Nvidia drop driver support thats one reason, but it effects all cards even with 6GB of VRAM, but that just the case for Nvidia. AMD cards on the other hand are holding up very well even with 2GB of memory. Crappy development and lack of optimisations on the developers side is probably another reason.

In short you're saying the R9 390, RX 480/470 8GB are the only cards worth buying and anything else has no future. That might be right, but it's got very little to do with VRAM, as far as I can tell.

So stop deflecting and promise everybody on Hexus the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GXT1060 6GB in every game the latter can run over 30FPS for the next three years,and in no game will the GTX1060 6GB will show better significantly better frametimes than the 3GB version.

I have shown to you multiple games,and examples that have disproven your original claims WHICH YOU MADE.

I find your stance incredibly disgenuous when you are trying to fool people by lying and trying to sell the GTX1060 3GB as no different to the GTX1060 6GB.

You sound exactly the same as the 8800GT 256MB defence league who then ran away a year later. The 9600GT 512MB destroyed the 8800GT 256MB. All went silent then.

Plus I loved how you are making this an AMD vs Nvidia thing by on purpose ignoring the GTX1060 6GB which I mentioned too.

The low VRAM crew also said the same that the 4GB GTX960 was pointless too,since AMD pushed earlier on the 4GB R9 380 - now all of a sudden silence when indeed the 4GB versions of those cards did better.

I should know - I had both a GTX960 2GB and 4GB.

Plus this is what the Digital Foundry said:

n the here and now, the three gig GTX 1060 is a good card with excellent performance at its £189/$199 price-point, but its VRAM allocation may well hit its limits more quickly than the four gigs found in the RX 470/480. None of the new wave of sub-£200/$200 graphics cards should be entirely ruled out, and this pared back GTX 1060 still packs plenty of punch - but investing just a little extra in the GTX 1060 6GB would be our recommendation. With certain six gig versions retailing under the initial suggested price-point, grabbing the more capable model needn't break the bank.

They are a gaming site - they pretty much said the VRAM will be a concern for them and to buy the 6GB version and that the RX470 4GB had more life.

The GTX1060 3GB and 8800GT 256MB were both franken cards rushed out to try and dent AMD cards like the RX480 4GB and HD3850 512MB which offered decent price/performance. The GTX1050TI 4GB is a tarted up mobile card like the RX460. That is why they are both meh.

Headline getters with none of them having any real longevity.

[jigger]

[QUOTE=CAT-THE-FIFTH;3724417]

Never seen it from any of my cards and most are faster than a GTX 1060 yet have less memory. The 3GB 1060 has enough memory, adding another 3Gb would do zero for the cards performance. [/.QUOTE]




So stop deflecting and promise everybody on Hexus the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GXT1060 6GB in every game the latter can run over 30FPS for the next three years,and in no game will the GTX1060 6GB will show better frametimes than the 3GB version.

I have shown to you multiple games,and examples that have disproven your original WHICH YOU MADE.

I find your stance incredibly disgenuous when you are trying to fool people by lying and trying to sell the GTX1060 3GB as no different to the GTX1060 6GB.

I find your tone very distasteful. Why don't you stop turning this into a strawman and actually read what I've wrote. Fooling pople and lying really CAT. Your own links prove this is not a simple case of will and won't.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I find your tone very distasteful. Why don't you stop turning this into a strawman and actually read what I've wrote. Fooling pople and lying really CAT. Your own links prove this is not a simple case of will and won't.

You find my tone distasteful - I find your repeated twisting of objective data showing issues with the 3GB entirely dishonest and VERY distasteful indeed,and you are now desperately deflecting and backtracking from this statement YOU MADE:

Never seen it from any of my cards and most are faster than a GTX 1060 yet have less memory. The 3GB 1060 has enough memory, adding another 3Gb would do zero for the cards performance.

Now when confronted with enough evidence you are so desperate to ignore ,now you play the victim.

This is EXACTLY what happened when the 8800GT 256MB came out. People showed evidence and as the evidence mounted they went into denial,and then started accusing people of victimising them,as a way to deflect acknowledging things and then silence.

I predict it will be the same with you - no problem! no problem! Stop victimising me! No problem! Then silence. I bet your next card will have more than 3GB of VRAM too!

So stop deflecting and promise everybody on Hexus the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GXT1060 6GB in every game the latter can run over 30FPS for the next three years,and in no game will the GTX1060 6GB will show better significantly better frametimes than the 3GB version.

YOU said above 3GB made no difference,no prove it for the next THREE years. Because apparently frametime testing,texture testing and lower minimums greater than the 10% shader deficit are according to a magical voodoo curse AMD must have put on the GTX1060 3GB. Funny the GTX1060 6GB seems to have none of the issues.

I bet you won't - so keep playing the victim defence.

We are done here.

[jigger]

Why don't you promise everyone on Hexus that 3GB cards will fall off a cliff instead of pointing out that the 2006 8800GT 256 was a strange card.

The problem is your data is very objective In that it proves both points. You have a 2GB R9 285 out performing a 6GB Titan. Why do people feel 6GB on a GTX1060 will offer any longevity when your our links show that even a 6GB card isn't safe?

The price gap between the GTX1050ti and GTX1060 6GB is massive. Even with this 1050 being over priced a RX 480 or GTX1060 is not a viable option for most people, so zero point to compare the two.

So stop deflecting and promise everybody on Hexus the GTX1060 3GB will be within 10% of the GXT1060 6GB in every game the latter can run over 30FPS for the next three years,and in no game will the GTX1060 6GB will show better significantly better frametimes than the 3GB version.

The 6GB GTX1060 is a faster card. Even if you disabled half the memory you would still end up with more performance... How much of that is down to memory is very subjective.

[DanceswithUnix]

Out of interest Cat, come the revolution when you get to design Nvidia's cards...

The 1060 needed a cheaper version, clearly product management decreed it and engineering had to provide. What would you have done to the silicon to cut it down to a cheaper product? To make it cheaper you want harvested dies so cut down some shaders, so you expect it to be slower already but this is the choice that I see:

* Make the bus narrower, 128 bit, to make it 4GB. Acceptable amount of vram, tank the memory bandwidth by a third.
* Keep the bus 192 bit, use half size ram chips. Keeps the bandwidth by staying full width, but you drop to just 3GB. What Nvidia actually did.
* Mix the ram chip sizes. Stay with 192 bit, but make it banks of 1GB+1GB+2GB. As long as the game uses 3GB or less you go full speed, after that the memory pressure goes up on the 2GB channel, but you get to market it as a 4GB card because people bought the wonky ram 970 didn't they?

Unless you can think of a cunning plan..


What would I do?
.
.
.
.
(Me, I would have released a 4GB 128 bit bus GTX 1060 to start with, and called the 6GB version we have now a 1060ti released after so it looks like you are adding something rather than taking it away. People seem to like that).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW,jigger not answering you - you can deflect as much as you want,but you said the GTX1060 could not use above 3GB not me.
I expect your next card will only have 3GB of VRAM and will be a GTX1060 3GB,because VRAM is not important. I doubt it.

snip

I find it weird you only want to address me and not Tunnah,since he bought it up first and I supported his argument after jigger was trying his best to say he was wrong.

Anyway back to some history,the GTX660 and GTX660TI which had 192 bit buses,and Nvidia didn't hide the fact?? Oh,you mean the very same GTX660 I bought and used for two years and knew it had one?? Or the fact every review site worth its weight mentioned it:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/t...60-ti-review/2

I got a pre-oveclocked GTX660 slightly cheaper than the cheapest HD7850 2GB at the time IIRC.

The GTX550TI had the same time of arrangement. Fast-slow VRAM. Those cards sold well. The slower RAM was still faster than the system bus,and is still lower latency than having to go over PCI-E bus twice to read textures.

Nvidia got into trouble for hiding the fact on the GTX970 and that is why they had to give the partial refund.

Plus I have criticised plenty of cards,but it seems to be some abnormal love for the GTX1060 3GB,verging on the level of the 8800GT 256MB.

Oh noes,don't criticise Nvidia that's bad ,lets recommend the GTX1060 3GB as it has no flaws and will run the same as the 6GB version(within 10%). Tunnah feels the same as he has seen how it goes too.

Even Digitalfoundry said they thought people should invest in the GTX1060 6GB and the 3GB version would hit issues sooner than the RX470 4GB.

Why do I honest give two-hoots what Nvidia or AMD does?? Hey,lets excuse make for the FX5800 or 2900XT cause' Nvidia or ATI "had reasons". Its like the RX460 was meh since AMD "had reasons",which is all find and dandy but when it comes to me buying a product thats their issue. Remember with the RX460,when I pretty much said AMD had set them up for Nvidia to get one up with them?? Or even the RX480??

AMD and another disastrous stock cooler or the fact they tried to sell it as premium?? Sure they "had reasons" but ultimately it made much easier for Nvidia to waltz in and do one on them. It was the same mistake with the R9 290/290X. Ever since then AMD got a reputation for hot and power hungry cards.

Sure,they "had reasons" but ultimately that is not something I honestly care about if I make a purchase. The same as AMD overpricing the Fury X by at least £50(which I said was stupid).

I could have easily spent £40 extra on an HD7870 over my GTX660 or £50 more on a R9 380 4GB over my GTX960 4GB,and I thought the AMD cards were better,but in the end price/performance was better for the Nvidia cards.

Sure I could have said coin miners pushed up the HD7870 price cause' "reasons". Its not my issue.

Just the same with AMD delaying and delaying AM4 and Zen. They have "reasons" too,but in the end if someone has a few hundred to spend on a new CPU and motherboard,etc,how many will wait??

I buy a card to run games,not ponder WHY they did something and then use it to excuse weird design decisions. 3GB is a wonky amount of VRAM,and even the GTX1050TI has 4GB as standard and so did the GTX960 after a few months.

Arguments like I had a 3GB card now or last year,its fine are weird. People spending nearly £200 on a card,are unlikely to be replacing it in a year. Going from my experience two to three years is not uncommon.

ATM,there have been multiple deals on RX470 cards,and those with very good cooling. The Powercolor RX470 Devil in the last week or two has been on offer twice for £165 to £170 with free postage. It has such a decent cooler,its core is around the same speed as a reference RX480. Then you can even get GTX1060 6GB cards for £210 to £230.

So,why should I give two hoots about trying to paint the GTX1060 3GB in a good light,when even a GTX970 4GB or RX470 4GB can beat it in titles like ROTR,etc already??

When the GTX1060 6GB is faster in multiple titles?? The list has just grown since last time we had this discussion.

Personally,Nvidia should have done a 3GB+1GB thing(like they did with the GTX660 and GTX660TI) and been open about it(I said this even before the GTX1060 3GB would be launched),or even lop off 10% more shaders and make it a 6GB card,and have a 20% shade deficit over the GTX1060 6GB. The former is less ideal,but its still better than having a hard 3GB limit.

Made it a GTX1060LE 6GB.

That way,it would look better than the RX470 4GB.

Now even more and more games are showing issues on the GTX1060 3GB,and that is not going to suddenly decrease IMHO despite some hoping it is the case. If people want to stick their head in the sand about it,that's their choice,but at the same time people should also be made aware of the issues,instead of attempts to bury it,for some absolutely weird reason which I am yet to understand.

Unfortunately for the GTX1060 3GB if there was no RX470 4GB/8GB,RX480 4GB/8GB or GTX1060 6GB,or deals on the GTX970 recently then the GTX1060 3GB would have looked better from the point of a GTX960 or R9 380 owner. Sadly,its in a very crowded market now.

[DanceswithUnix]

I find it weird you only want to address me and not Tunnah,since he bought it up first and I supported his argument after jigger was trying his best to say he was wrong.

Just thought you might find the idea interesting. Armchair architecture and even marketing can be fun.

We've been here before with the whole 3GB argument. It seems to get you quite worked up. 3GB really it isn't worth popping a blood vessel over. Yes 3GB should put it into the budget category and nvidia aren't charging budget money, but page after page of graphs is I think just making people glaze over at this point so I don't think you are advancing your cause.

[kalniel]

We also mustn't forget the willingness of a large number of gamers to just turn on geforce experience and have it manage game settings automatically, which you would expect would be doing things with texture sizes to keep mem usage reasonable. There are always going to be the ultra/high settings for games in order to appease titan etc. owners but most people (and despite the price, I think nVidia are targetting the 1050 and 1060 3gb cards at relatively high numbers of people - ditto the 460/470) are going to be fine. Of course, it won't look ultimately as good as someone using a red team card, but they won't be doing back to back comparisons so won't know.