GeForce GTX 1060 Vs Radeon RX 580: Which Is Best For 1080p ...

While high-end graphics cards like the AMD Radeon 7 and RTX 2080 Ti capture the lion's share of the headlines, most PC gaming is still done at good old-fashioned 1080p. Here, you can spend just a few hundred bucks on a graphics card to get console-quality visuals at 60 frames per second, even in some of the most recent games. Two of the best graphics cards for 1080p gaming are the focus of our article today: the AMD Radeon RX 580 and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

These two mainstream GPUs are often close in terms of price, but which offers better performance? To find out, we'll show you how each of these cards perform in a selection of popular games, including Ghost Recon Wildlands, Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3. While 1080p performance will be the focus, we'll also look at how these cards can handle stretching to 1440p. Before we get into the frame-rate charts, we'll take a brief look at how these two popular cards are different in terms of features and pricing. Let's get started.

Thinking about upgrading your gaming PC? Take a look at our recommendations for the best graphics cards on the market. Pairing your graphics card with one of the best gaming monitors is also important, so check out our latest picks!

While benchmarks are helpful, they're not the full story either. We'll also cover how the cards compare in terms of software and hardware features, plus what you can expect to pay for each of these two cards. Let's get started!

GTX 1060 vs RX 580 features

Before we get into the benchmarks, how do these cards compare in terms of features?

Well, both support the most important technologies: DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs, DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b monitors and 4K / HDR content. That means you'll be able to play modern games and use recent monitors without worrying about compatibility issues.

As a member of Nvidia's Pascal generation, the GTX 1060 comes with a nice selection of modern features, including support for G-Sync monitors, Ansel game photography, Nvidia Shield streaming, ShadowPlay recording and so on. Nvidia have also recently added support for FreeSync monitors, allowing GTX 1060 owners to buy cheaper monitors without giving up variable refresh rate support - and if you're interested, we've recommended the best FreeSync monitors for Nvidia GPUs.

Meanwhile, the RX 580 is part of the Polaris line of graphics cards, which has been since superceded by AMD's later Vega GPUs. However, Polaris still supports helpful features such as FreeSync monitor support, the AMD Link system monitoring mobile app, Eyefinity multi-display gaming and more.

Ultimately, it's hard to choose a winner here, as most features that appear on one card will appear on the other, often under a different name. Nvidia may have a few technologies that have yet to be matched by AMD, such as Ansel, but FreeSync monitors supported by the RX 580 are significantly less expensive than the G-Sync alternatives supported by the GTX 1060 - so if you're planning on a new gaming monitor to go with your new graphics card, that should shift things rather radically in AMD's favour.

GTX 1060 vs RX 580 prices and models

The GTX 1060 6GB and RX 580 8GB occupy a similar mid-range space in the graphics card market, although the ongoing cryptocurrency bubble has meant that prices for both cards are likely to vary. Most of the time, we usually see the cheapest GTX 1060 6GB models around $210 (£200) and the RX 580 8GB a little lower, normally around $190 (£180). You might also pick up a free game or two with your graphics card: At the time of writing, AMD are offering any two of The Division 2, Resident Evil 2 or Devil May Cry 5, while Nvidia are saving their promotions for the newer GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti, giving the overall lead to the AMD card.

Of course, prices can vary by manufacturer, clock speed, cooling solution, form factor and a laundry list of other characteristics. Searching for bargains, you may find prices substantially below those that we've quoted above - but be aware that you may be looking at a cut-down model with half of the usual assortment of VRAM, which works out as 3GB for the GTX 1060 and 4GB for the RX 580. These budget cards are significantly worse in terms of performance, so we recommend sticking with the full-fat models. For an idea as to why, check out our 3GB vs 6GB GTX 1060 comparison. There's even a Chinese-only RX 580 model that ships with fewer compute units, 2048 compared to the standard 2304, which is similarly not worthwhile in our books.

Brands we recommend you look out for (in alphabetical order) include Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI and Zotac. Of course, this isn't an exhaustive list of manufacturers you should trust, and other brands can produce great cards too.

GTX 1060 vs RX 580 benchmarks

For each benchmark, you'll see a YouTube video depicting the game in question and a special in-house benchmarking widget. Once you start the video, you can see in real time how each card handles the game. You can select and deselect different benchmarks as you please; you might want to see how the same card varies between 1080p and 1440p resolution, or see how both cards handle the same resolution. If you scroll down a little more, you can also find a handy graph of the results from the entire run, presented in barchart form. You can click on this to swap between frame-rate and percentage differentials, the latter of which may be more illuminating.

Our tests were conducted with a reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and a Sapphire Nitro AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB. It's worth noting that no reference model exists for the RX 580, so we went with what was (at the time of testing) the fastest RX 580 available that we're aware of, to the point where stable overclocking only adds another 20MHz to the core (!). That means you should expect slightly worse performance from other RX 580 models that operate at a lower clock speed; your mileage may vary.