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AMD Radeon RX 590 vs GeForce GTX 1060

Radeon RX 590
VS
GeForce GTX 1060
AMD Radeon RX 590
Polaris 30
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060
GP106

We compared two discrete desktop gaming GPUs: the Radeon RX 590 8 GB with 2304 shaders against the 2 years and 4 months older GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB that utilizes 10 pipelines and 1280 shaders. Here you will find complete details about specs, efficiency, performance tests, and more.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Gaming performance
  4. Benchmarks
  5. AI
  6. Specs
  7. Comments

Review

General comparison of performance in games, applications, power efficiency, and other metrics
Gaming
Performance in DirectX, OpenCL, and Vulkan games
Workstation
Perf. in 3D modeling, video editing and rendering apps
AI/ML
Capabilities for machine learning and AI-related tasks
Energy Efficiency
Power consumption efficiency in different scenarios
NanoReview Final Score
Overall video card score

Value for money (Beta)

We use average GPU prices from all manufacturers by default. Enter the current price of a specific card for better accuracy.
Currency
8 GB GDDR5
VS
6 GB GDDR5
36.2
(Mediocre)
Value Index
9.9
(Bad)

Key differences

Key distinctions and advantages of GTX 1060 over RX 590
Reasons to consider the Radeon RX 590
  • Performs slightly better (up to 13%) in 3DMark Steel Nomad Lite
  • 61% higher maximum theoretical performance (7.1 vs 4.4 TFLOPS)
  • Manufactured using a more efficient 12 nm process technology
  • Includes 2 GB more video memory
  • Has 33% higher memory bandwidth: 256 vs 192.2 GB/s
  • Has 80% more shading units (2304 vs 1280)

Gaming Performance

Frame rate comparison across popular AAA titles at different resolutions
GPU
RX 590
vs
GTX 1060

Games

FPS Table
Forza Horizon 5
80
42
33
20
68
37
29
16
The Witcher 3
58
46
29
15
54
40
26
13
Counter-Strike 2
92
66
42
20
96
63
42
18
Far Cry 6
61
53
38
19
50
45
33
15
Hogwarts Legacy
37
29
22
10
32
22
18
9
CoD: Modern Warfare III
51
43
31
16
38
32
22
13
Ghost of Tsushima
36
26
18
9
29
20
16
9
Cyberpunk 2077
33
33
18
-
30
26
19
-
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
65
56
35
16
57
49
34
18
Average FPS by Resolution
1080p High 57 50
1080p Ultra 44 37
1440p Ultra 30 27
4K Ultra 15 13
Margin of Error Low Low

Benchmarks

Graphics cards’ performance in recent benchmarking apps

3D Mark

Multiplatform graphics benchmark suite that directly correlates with performance in modern games
Steel Nomad Lite Score
RX 590 +13%
4613
GTX 1060
4085
Time Spy 4778 4203
Solar Bay - 11278
Port Royal - 844
Fire Strike 16527 13132
Wild Life Extreme 9737 8510
Night Raid 62043 54686
Sources: 3DMark [1], [2]

GeekBench 6 OpenCL

GPU test for computational tasks (image processing, photography, computer vision, and ML)
GB6 Compute Score
RX 590 +17%
45783
GTX 1060
39230
Background Blur 69 img/sec 100.2 img/sec
Face Detection 38.2 img/sec 48.1 img/sec
Horizon Detection 1.75 Gpixels/sec 1.54 Gpixels/sec
Edge Detection 3.31 Gpixels/sec 2.25 Gpixels/sec
Gaussian Blur 3.31 Gpixels/sec 2.58 Gpixels/sec
Feature Matching 0.38 Gpixels/sec 0.25 Gpixels/sec
Stereo Matching 180.5 Gpixels/sec 136.9 Gpixels/sec
Particle Physics 6238 FPS 4220.5 FPS
API OpenCL OpenCL
Sources: Geekbench [3], [4]

Cinebench 2024 GPU

Hardware benchmark using Maxon's Cinema 4D rendering engine
Cinebench 2024 GPU
RX 590
n/a
GTX 1060
2586

Passmark Graphics

Videocard test that focuses on compute shaders, multi-texturing, tessellation, and other features
G3D Mark Score
RX 590
9277
GTX 1060 +8%
10026
G2D Mark 789 737
DirectX 11 65 FPS 72 FPS
DirectX 12 45 FPS 37 FPS
GPU Compute 3732 Ops/s 4246 Ops/s
Sources: PassMark [5], [6] – 4365 & 48280 samples

Blender

Rendering performance test for 3D modeling
Blender GPU
RX 590 +30%
487.92
GTX 1060
375.66
Sources: Blender [9], [10] – 1 & 943 samples
Add your GPU benchmark result

Artificial Intelligence Tests

Performance in machine learning and artificial intelligence tasks

GeekBench 6 ML

Tests throughput of AI operations in single, half, and quantized precision
GB6 ML Single Precision
RX 590 +38%
9064
GTX 1060
6580
GB6 ML Half Precision
RX 590 +50%
9971
GTX 1060
6649
GB6 ML Quantized
RX 590 +31%
6293
GTX 1060
4804
Image Classification (SP) 3307 1462
Image Segmentation (HP) 4895 3872
Image Super Resolution (Q) 9072 8136
Face Detection (HP) 12467 6356
Pose Estimation (Q) 43468 33181
Text Classification (SP) 1547 1806
Machine Translation (HP) 2504 3149
Object Detection (SP) 3746 2096
Depth Estimation (Q) 15075 10515
Style Transfer (SP) 96813 67831
Framework ONNX ONNX
Backend DirectML DirectML
Sources: Geekbench [9], [10]

Specifications

Technical specifications of Radeon RX 590 and GeForce GTX 1060

General

Vendor Amd Nvidia
Build Discrete Discrete
Released November 15, 2018 July 19, 2016
Launch price (MSRP) $279 $299
Case Desktop Desktop
Purpose Gaming Gaming
Segment High-end Mid-range
Architecture GCN 4.0 Pascal
GPU Codename Polaris 30 GP106
Rival Equivalent - GeForce GTX 1060 -
Successor - - GeForce RTX 5060
Recommended CPU - Intel Core i5 8500 or above - Intel Core i7 7700 or above
Desktop GPU rating (80th and 84th place)

Graphics Processing Unit

Base Clock 1469 MHz 1506 MHz
Boost Clock 1545 MHz 1709 MHz
Shading Units 2304 1280
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) 144 80
Render Output Units (ROPs) 32 48
Compute Units (Pipelines) - 10
Tensor Cores No No
Ray-tracing Cores No No
L1 Cache 16KB per cluster 48KB per cluster
L2 Cache 2MB shared 1536KB shared
Instructions Per Cycle 2 IPC 2 IPC

Raw Performance

Pixel Fill Rate 49 GPixel/s 82 GPixel/s
Texture Fill Rate 222 GTexel/s 137 GTexel/s
FLOPS (FP32)
RX 590 +61%
7.1 TFLOPS
GTX 1060
4.4 TFLOPS

Physical

Interface PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
TGP 175 W 120 W
Manufacturing GlobalFoundries TSMC
Fabrication Process 12 nm 16 nm
Die Size 232 mm² 200 mm²
Transistor Count 5 billion 4 billion
Transistor Density 21.55 MTr/mm² 20 MTr/mm²

Memory

Memory Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Memory Size 8 GB 6 GB
Memory Clock 2000 MHz 2002 MHz
Effective Memory Speed 8000 Mbps 8000 Mbps
Bus 256-bit 192-bit
ECC No No
Memory Bandwidth
RX 590 +33%
256 GB/s
GTX 1060
192.2 GB/s

API

DirectX 12 12
Vulkan 1.3 1.3
OpenGL 4.6 4.6
OpenCL 2.1 3.0
CUDA - 6.1
Ray Tracing No No
DLSS No No
DisplayPort 1.4a 1.4a
Further details
Notes on GTX 1060:
    - There is also 3GB memory version, which is about 10% slower.

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Total votes: 6

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