Zotac GTX 1060 Mini for Oculus Rift?

[Arubeto]

Hi there fellow VR Commanders!

I recently - about one month ago - finally got my Oculus Rift and am still blown away by the experience! I expected the additional immersion of VR to improve the way ED plays, but I wasn't prepared for how completely different it feels compared to playing on a traditional screen. ED feels like a totally different game and frankly, playing it in VR seems like the way it was always meant to be experienced! So I am one happy consumer right now!

However, there is one little bump in the otherwise - quite literally - smooth ride: on general, I get a very smooth gameplay, perhaps not quite hitting the magical 90 FPS, but the 70-80 FPS I normally get in space are absolutely sufficient for not making me feel sick. My recently ordered i7 6700, 16 GB RAM and my trusty GTX 970 do a decent job here. The story differs a little on planet surfaces and within stations, though, where I get much lower frame rates (generally 35 - 50 FPS). It's still playable and especially inside stations its not a problem, but driving fast around planet surfaces doens't feel as smooth as I'd like. [knocked out]

Finally coming to my question: I am considering to upgrade my - still quite new - GTX 970 to a GTX 1060 that just got released. Reviews and benchmarks say it delivers quite a performance boost compared to the GTX 970 and often comes close or even surpasses the GTX 980 in performance. This, compared Nvidias "multi-projection" feature, which I hope will be used to further improve the ED VR performance in the future, have made it a very appealing card to me.

Before someone suggests "got for a 1070 or even 1080, its the only way!" I'd also like to state that I already spend more than enough money on my rig and ED in recent times and am not willing to spend another 400-500 € for a performance upgrade in VR. I'd rather live with my current setup then.
The 1060, on the other hand, is so cheap that I will likely be able to sell my current 970 on ebay for nearly the same price I would have to pay for the 1060, which would be 279 €. This, of course, is the most basic variant of the 1060, in this case the "Zotac GTX 1060 Mini" (https://www.zotac.com/us/product/graphics_card/zotac-geforce-gtx-1060-mini#spec).

My question(s):
- does the "Mini" in the card mean any kind of performance loss compared to other "non-mini" cards? (specs imply otherwise) I am not talking about a comparison with overclocked cards, but with standard GTX 1060 base clock cards with larger form factor. If not, which trade-off do I have to pay for the reduced form factor? If there is no such trade-off, it really looks like a pretty good deal to me

- do the 1060 support multi-projection in the same way as their big brothers (1070, 1080)? Is this just a marketing thing from Nvidia, or do you expect it to really have an impact on the performance of VR?

- has anyone played ED in VR with a 1060, yet? I'd really like to read you experience and if you'd consider it up to the task of hitting the 90 FPS barrier in ED VR!

Thanks in advance for any answers! [yesnod]

 

[Thoemse]

970 GTX to 1060 GTX is no upgrade, it's a sidegrade. Anything below a 1070 GTX is not worth it for you.
If you spent as much as you wanted just keep the 970 unless you really get the amount the 1060 costs. It really is not worth the hassle.

Edit: If you find someone stupid enough to pay you 250+ for the 970 go for it. It ain't worth 200 as it is.

 

[Arubeto]

970 GTX to 1060 GTX is no upgrade, it's a sidegrade. Anything below a 1070 GTX is not worth it for you.
If you spent as much as you wanted just keep the 970 unless you really get the amount the 1060 costs. It really is not worth the hassle.

If that's true, I wonder why all reviews praise the 1060 as substantially faster than the 970, en par with the 980, which has been Frontiers official recommendation for playing ED: Horizons in Virtual Reality.

Edit: examples for such review: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/nvidia-gtx-1060-review/

 

[Chaz]

I don't know how it is where you are but in the UK on eBay right now there are so many used 970's up for sale, I seems the top price they are fetching is about £180, probably less on average. So to be honest I'd just stick with what you've got.

On the other hand for anyone who's been holding off on an upgrade for some time now, well there's plenty of cheap 970's on the market now and they're still good cards to own if you don't have anything better in your machine.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

The main benefit I guess from the 970 and the 1060 is the addition of more ram.
And that I guess it doesn't have the 3.5GB-0.5GB segmentation problem the 970 suffer from.

I haven't tested in vr but just playing but on my 3440x1440@60 screen I saw elite easily breaking into at least 5GB on vram use. Filling vram is one of the sure fire ways of adding latency and that triggers time warp or reprojection.

It might very well be an upgrade for vr but I would consider waiting for more benchmarking focusing on vr to determine that.

I honestly think you should rather be looking at the 1070 if you really want an upgrade.
Or even just wait another gen, but yeah 45 in vr on surfaces is a little low.

 

[Beavis Tingleball]

yes, a 1070 at a minimum if you expect to see any real improvement.

 

[Arubeto]

The main benefit I guess from the 970 and the 1060 is the addition of more ram.
And that I guess it doesn't have the 3.5GB-0.5GB segmentation problem the 970 suffer from.

I haven't tested in vr but just playing but on my 3440x1440@60 screen I saw elite easily breaking into at least 5GB on vram use. Filling vram is one of the sure fire ways of adding latency and that triggers time warp or reprojection.

It might very well be an upgrade for vr but I would consider waiting for more benchmarking focusing on vr to determine that.

I honestly think you should rather be looking at the 1070 if you really want an upgrade.
Or even just wait another gen, but yeah 45 in vr on surfaces is a little low.

Thanks for your response. The upgrade in VRAM is one reason why I consider the 1060. As you mentioned, lots of VRAM is important for VR, so, I hope to somewhat close the gap towards the magical 90 FPS goal in VR by replacing the 970 with the 1060.

yes, a 1070 at a minimum if you expect to see any real improvement.

If I'd want to see some "real improvement", than yes, I'd need to at least buy a 1070, I guess. But my intention is not to get a phenomenal improvement over the current 970 performance. A slide boost is all I want. I don't need 1070/1080 levels of performance, I just need 980 levels of performance.

So it might be just a small upgrade from my current 970, but one that might indeed close the gap to what I want to achieve and one that - if I really can sell my 970 for around 230€-250€ - will cost me just a couple of bucks to get from 970 to 980 levels of performance.

I just don't want to burn hundreds of Euros just get the newest card every year even though I know I won't need it.

My goal is clear: I want to be able to play ED in VR with decent performance and without getting sick from stuttering on planet surfaces. Given that even my current setup almost reaches this goal, it's just logical to take a little step (that, again, will presumably cost me little more than 20€-30€ in the end) instead of a giant leap to buy some oversized card I don't need.

 

[Kevris]

Hey OP:

The 1060 does about the same performance as the 980 (no TI).

I use a 980 (non TI) with a 5930 at 4.4 and 32GB ram (I use this box for more than gaming) and am able to run at ultra quality without using super sampling.

If you're looking for 980ish performance, the 1060 is a great option.

 

[Xebec]

My question(s):
- does the "Mini" in the card mean any kind of performance loss compared to other "non-mini" cards? (specs imply otherwise) I am not talking about a comparison with overclocked cards, but with standard GTX 1060 base clock cards with larger form factor. If not, which trade-off do I have to pay for the reduced form factor? If there is no such trade-off, it really looks like a pretty good deal to me

- do the 1060 support multi-projection in the same way as their big brothers (1070, 1080)? Is this just a marketing thing from Nvidia, or do you expect it to really have an impact on the performance of VR?

TL;DR - If money is burning a hole in your pocket, Get a full cooler / aftermarket OC model GTX 1060. But I'd recommend against it. +1 for GTX 1070. Here's why:

Mini card *may* hamper performance against a bigger brother because the card will be more thermally constrained from running at boost clocks. Boost on the 1060 is substantial -- ~ 13% (1506 to 1708 mhz).

970 vs 1060 - NVIDIA review guidelines *require* that they run stock cards* vs stock cards. The GTX 970 stock nvidia clocks are 1050/1178. Some of the cards from third parties like the MSI Gaming 970 boost to about 1400 mhz out of the box -- a very sizeable ~20% increase in performance. In fact, many aftermarket 970s are as fast as a stock 980 out of the box.

The GTX 1060 OTOH clocks at 1700 boost by default and has a lot less headroom for clocking higher. Especially in a mini card form factor.

......

* The GTX 1070 vs 980 Ti comparisons are even worse; aftermarket 980 Ti's run 40% over stock nvidia spec, https://www.computerbase.de/2016-06/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-test/4/ Tested a max OC'd 1070 vs a Max OC'd 980Ti, and guess what.. The 980Ti is several percent faster.

 

[Arubeto]

Thanks again for the answers.

TL;DR - If money is burning a hole in your pocket, Get a full cooler / aftermarket OC model GTX 1060. But I'd recommend against it. +1 for GTX 1070. Here's why:

Mini card *may* hamper performance against a bigger brother because the card will be more thermally constrained from running at boost clocks. Boost on the 1060 is substantial -- ~ 13% (1506 to 1708 mhz).

970 vs 1060 - NVIDIA review guidelines *require* that they run stock cards* vs stock cards. The GTX 970 stock nvidia clocks are 1050/1178. Some of the cards from third parties like the MSI Gaming 970 boost to about 1400 mhz out of the box -- a very sizeable ~20% increase in performance. In fact, many aftermarket 970s are as fast as a stock 980 out of the box.

The GTX 1060 OTOH clocks at 1700 boost by default and has a lot less headroom for clocking higher. Especially in a mini card form factor.

......

* The GTX 1070 vs 980 Ti comparisons are even worse; aftermarket 980 Ti's run 40% over stock nvidia spec, https://www.computerbase.de/2016-06/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-test/4/ Tested a max OC'd 1070 vs a Max OC'd 980Ti, and guess what.. The 980Ti is several percent faster.

That's quite informative, thanks. However, I wasn't overclocking my MSI 970, and I don't plan to overclock the 1060, so rather than comparing potential OC limits, I would rather compare the performance of the base clock cards. After all, I don't think the GPUs performance is what makes ED struggle to reach high FPS on planet surfaces in VR, but rather the limited amount of VRAM on the 970, where I expect the 1060 to indeed deliver the small boost I am hoping for.

It's also not that money is burning a hole in my pocket, but rather that common sense is slowly kicking in. I don't see the reason for buying a new top end card every other year when the 970 meets nearly all my requirements (the few at least a little demanding games apart from ED in my backlog, like Witcher 3, work perfectly with my current setup) and the one point I want to improve is just the performance on planets when playing ED in VR.

In the end I guess it will all come down to whether my idea of selling the 970 for a reasonable price close to what the 1060 will cost me prove true or not.

 

[Slopey]

In the end I guess it will all come down to whether my idea of selling the 970 for a reasonable price close to what the 1060 will cost me prove true or not.

From a quick look on Amazon/Ebay - you're looking at £240-300 for a GTX 1060 depending which one you go for.

970s are on Ebay for around £150-180, so you're going to have to have a shortfall of between £60-90 to go to the 1060. Or in EUR, 70-100 short.

You can get a *new* 970 for £208 from Amazon, so nobody is going to pay over that, or near that, for a 2nd hand one.

 

[Darkmark07]

I just sold 2 x 970s on eBay - the first one was an unmodified MSI Gaming 4G - got a buy it now price of £175 with free delivery. The second was modified for water-cooling without the original cooler and I got a slightly disappointing £142 for it.

By the time you factor in fees and postage costs, I made about £160 and £130 respectively. Am glad I sold when I did, but on that basis you're looking at a price hike of £80+ to move up.

 

[Thegrover]

My oculus is on the way, I currently have an i5 4770 (I think) and a gtx 970.

By no means will I worry about it being unplayable when it rocks up, but I might look at upgrading later. So my question is:

Do I do a straight upgrade to a 10 series card, or buy another 970 and try to SLI (or crossfire, whichever one) them. I've never tried using more than one card, so I'd be jumping in blind

 

[TorTorden_VR]

My oculus is on the way, I currently have an i5 4770 (I think) and a gtx 970.

By no means will I worry about it being unplayable when it rocks up, but I might look at upgrading later. So my question is:

Do I do a straight upgrade to a 10 series card, or buy another 970 and try to SLI (or crossfire, whichever one) them. I've never tried using more than one card, so I'd be jumping in blind

SLI is still not supported in general for vr.
Even though nvidia has released some api's for it this need to be implemented by the developers of the actual game.
It will be a couple of years for SLI to have somewhat mainstream support in vr at least.
For ED that might be never.

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From a quick look on Amazon/Ebay - you're looking at £240-300 for a GTX 1060 depending which one you go for.

970s are on Ebay for around £150-180, so you're going to have to have a shortfall of between £60-90 to go to the 1060. Or in EUR, 70-100 short.

You can get a *new* 970 for £208 from Amazon, so nobody is going to pay over that, or near that, for a 2nd hand one.

My general rule of thumb for pricing used goods is to take the last sale price and not expect more than half that, seller can try for 2/3 but I wouldn't expect to get it.

 

[Thegrover]

Thanks

And have you seen what CV1s are selling for on fleabay? I was bidding on one the other day that went for just 1 quod less than you can buy one from Oculus for, with the added bonus of having a warranty, games and Xbox controller thrown in... Madnesss

 

[Darkmark07]

I went from 2 x 970s in SLI to a 1080FE. SLI had little-to-no-benefit as the Oculus runtimes and ED were updated, although it did have some slight benefits earlier on.

As TorTorden pointed out SLI is still not properly supported in VR at the moment.

If you want to spend some money, my 2c would be to take whatever you're planning on spending for a second 970 + whatever you can get for your current card on ebay and upgrade. Adding a second 970 won't get you much, if anything.

If you don't want to spend the money, ED is still perfectly playable on a CV1 with a 970 with some tweaks to reduce the GPU load, especially if you don't find it too off-putting when ATW kicks in.

 

[Xebec]

Thanks again for the answers.

That's quite informative, thanks. However, I wasn't overclocking my MSI 970, and I don't plan to overclock the 1060, so rather than comparing potential OC limits,

Which model MSI card do you have? Almost all MSI cards are factory overclocked out of the box, meaning they'll be faster than the reference 970's shown on the reviews.

 

[Arubeto]

Which model MSI card do you have? Almost all MSI cards are factory overclocked out of the box, meaning they'll be faster than the reference 970's shown on the reviews.

I got the "MSI 4GB D5 X GTX970 Gaming 4G R" (its what it says on the box). Don't know if its overclocked, but I don't think so, because it doesn't have an "OC" in its name.

 

[Xebec]

I got the "MSI 4GB D5 X GTX970 Gaming 4G R" (its what it says on the box). Don't know if its overclocked, but I don't think so, because it doesn't have an "OC" in its name.

The Gaming 4G is a little faster than stock -- it is rated to boost 1253 mhz in "gaming mode" (default) vs. 1178 mhz of the 'factory spec' GTX 970. HardOCP.com found this card actually runs at 1366 MHz in games, so that's about 15% over stock. Just FYI.

I don't think you'll notice see any difference in performance between the MSI Gaming 970 and the Zotac 1060 mini. On paper the 1060 is 1-3% slower.

 

[Arubeto]

The Gaming 4G is a little faster than stock -- it is rated to boost 1253 mhz in "gaming mode" (default) vs. 1178 mhz of the 'factory spec' GTX 970. HardOCP.com found this card actually runs at 1366 MHz in games, so that's about 15% over stock. Just FYI.

I don't think you'll notice see any difference in performance between the MSI Gaming 970 and the Zotac 1060 mini. On paper the 1060 is 1-3% slower.

The Zotax 1060 mini has a base clock speed of 1506 Mhz. How does that translate to a 1-3% performance loss when compared to the MSI 970 Gaming, even if the later is overclocked to 1366Mhz?