The GTX 1060 still refuses to die.
An Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, taken on July 6, 2016.
NVIDIA's former mid-range king, which was released for $249 back in mid-2016 according to PCGamer, remains the world's most popular graphics card as per the latest Steam hardware survey covering February 2022. It has maintained a roughly 8% market share over far more modern entry-level cards, likely due to how the GPU market has been in absolute shambles for the past couple of years.
As such, anybody who got the card for its MSRP or close to it six years ago got their money's worth-bar none. It just seems like this card refuses to die, like the now iconic GTX 1050 Ti before it.
Down the ladder, NVIDIA's graphics cards are still lording it over AMD's. The second placer after the GTX 1060 is the GTX 1650, which tallied a 6.3% market share in the survey. The 1050 Ti occupies the third place with a 5.79% market share.
The first relatively modern card on the list is NVIDIA's entry-level Turing card, the RTX 2060, which has a 5.38% share for February 2022-slightly up from its January number of 5.17%. As for the world's least popular GPU (barring laptop or integrated graphics chips), that not-so-good title goes to the AMD RX 5700 non-XT with a tiny 0.15% market share.
Aside from that, the 1060 is also the leader in DirectX 12 GPUs with an 8.43% market share. Considering how many games right now are using the new graphics API, this means that the now six-year-old card is still punching way above its weight class-going up against the latest and greatest while still delivering respectable visuals and frame rates to boot.
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How Does The GTX 1060 Perform In Games This Year?
Simply put: it's still kicking. If you've been stuck with the 1060 for the better part of six years, you can still play most modern games at decent frame rates. But that depends whether you own the original 6GB variant, or the weaker 3GB variant.
Here is a video testing the GTX 1060 6GB in 20 games as of January 2022, from the YouTube channel Play for the Game:
Among the games that were tested include massively popular multiplayer titles like "Fortnite," "CS: GO," and "PUBG" to name a few. As you can see, the 1060 GB was able to play "CS: GO" at well over 200-300 FPS; "Fortnite" at 60-70 FPS, and "PUBG" at almost a locked 60 FPS. This is excellent performance in multiplayer games overall, which allows you to have a smooth, responsive experience.
As for AAA single-player games, the 1060 6GB can definitely still hang in there. For one, it was shown running "Cyberpunk 2077" (one of the most demanding PC games out there) at medium settings on 1080p, with around 40-45 FPS on average. And if it can run "Cyberpunk" as well as that, it can run almost anything right now.
It's still tough to get new GPUs at this point. So if you're stuck with your old 1060, you're still fine. Don't worry about it too much.
An MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6GB graphics card, taken on November 23, 2017.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
