Well that didn't take long.
AMD just recently announced its new Radeon RX 480 4GB graphics card for around $200, a card on par with the GeForce GTX 970 and capable of bringing VR to the gaming masses for a decent price. Not one to let the competition get a leg up, Nvidia today revealed its new GTX 1060 6GB for about $250, which it says offers the power of its GTX 980.
The new card will go on sale July 19, with an aluminum clad Founder's Edition for about $50 more. Keep in mind the GTX 980 launched in 2014, but at around $550. While the new card is not as powerful as the newer GTX 1070 ($379) and 1080 ($599), the 1060 will support rendering techniques of its brethren giving rise to better performance for VR games.
Here are the specs for the 1060:
- 1280NVIDIA CUDA® Cores
- 1506Base Clock (MHz)
-
1708Boost Clock (MHz)
- 8 Gbps Memory Speed
- 6 GB GDDR5 Standard Memory Config
- 192-bit Memory Interface Width
- 192 GB/Sec Memory Bandwidth
- Multi-Projection
- VR Ready
-
DirectX 12, with API with feature level 12-1
-
Vulkan API
-
4.5 OpenGL
-
PCIe 3.0 Bus Support
-
OS Certification for Windows 7-10, Linux, Free BSDx86
-
(Note: It is not NVIDIA SLI Ready)
- 7680x4320@60Hz Maximum Digital Resolution
- DP 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVI Display Connectors
- Multi Monitor Support
- HDCP 2.2
- 4.378" Height
- 9.823" Length
- 2-Slot Width
- 94 degree C Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)
- 120 W Graphics Card Power
- 400 W Recommended System Power
Both cards are compatible with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and early reports indicate the specs for both GTX and Radeon cards should handle the VR games with few issues.
I'm no tech whiz, so I'll leave it to you to choose which is better for the price. There is a Radeon RX 480 8GB version for about $240.
I agree with you on that. I'd suggest going 1070, or waiting for better parts, and prices to be lowered.
You should tell him he got the right card, and suggest he upgrade his monitor too. Maybe one of those nice 1440p ultraw...
Don't you ever monitor shame me or my fellow crappy monitor owners ever again