The 3GB GTX 1060 In 2022 - I Was Expecting Worse...

**The Three Gigabyte GTX 1060: A Card Worth Considering**

In recent years, I've had the opportunity to revisit some old hardware and see how they hold up against modern games. One such card is the three gigabyte GTX 1060, a mid-range GPU that was once my first "serious" gaming PC. Despite being released in 2016, this card still holds a special place in my heart, and I'm excited to share my thoughts on its performance in 2022.

My journey with the three gigabyte GTX 1060 began when it was my first mid-range GPU. At the time, I paired it with an i5 4460 processor and an 8GB RAM, which seemed like a decent combination back then. I used this setup for a couple of years without any major issues, but as the gaming landscape evolved, so did the performance expectations of modern games. With the rise of higher resolutions, more complex graphics, and increased VRAM requirements, the need for better hardware became apparent.

Fast forward to 2022, and I decided to test the three gigabyte GTX 1060's capabilities against some popular titles. To start with, I booted up Fortnite on a lower setting, aiming for around 60 FPS. The game ran well, but I noticed that my connection issues were causing more stutters than the GPU itself was capable of handling. I had to adjust my settings to 720p low and still struggled with occasional drops in frame rate. However, compared to other mid-range GPUs of its time, the three gigabyte GTX 1060 performed admirably.

The next game I tried out was Forza Horizon 5. I left the game on medium-high preset, but decided to reduce the graphics quality to a safer setting. Although this may seem like an easy compromise, it's essential to note that sacrificing texture quality can still impact overall performance. In my experience, games nowadays require more aggressive optimization to achieve smooth performance at high settings.

Next up was Red Dead Redemption 2. I went with the in-game menu's highest preset available on the Xbox One X equivalent settings, but unfortunately, I couldn't select ultra textures from the in-game menu and had to edit the game's ini document to use them. The resulting texture quality was noticeably better than the highest preset offered by the game, but still not as good as ultra.

One of my primary concerns when using the three gigabyte GTX 1060 is that I'm always walking on eggshells, worried about its performance in games with high VRAM requirements. However, in reality, it's become clear that this card has held up relatively well, especially considering how much hardware has advanced since its release.

**Comparison to the Six Gigabyte GTX 1060**

In comparison to its six gigabyte counterpart, the three gigabyte GTX 1060 is undoubtedly better suited for lower or medium settings. Although I'd still prefer a six gigabyte card if given the choice, it's essential to consider the price difference. In my region, the three gigabyte GTX 1060 costs around £180, which may be worth the investment considering its performance.

Ultimately, if you're in the market for a mid-range GPU and can find one of these cards at a reasonable price, I'd say give it a shot. It's essential to weigh your options, but if budget is no concern, the six gigabyte GTX 1060 would be a more natural choice. However, those on a tighter budget may need to consider other factors before making a decision.

**The Verdict**

In conclusion, my experience with the three gigabyte GTX 1060 has been nothing short of positive. Despite its age, this card still offers decent performance in modern games, particularly when paired with mid-range hardware. While I wouldn't recommend it for 4K gaming or high-refresh-rate applications, it's an excellent option for those looking to play a wide range of titles at lower resolutions.

For me, the three gigabyte GTX 1060 represents a great balance between performance and price. At £180, this card offers several years of happiness in my opinion, especially considering its relatively low price point. If you're in the market for a new GPU or looking to upgrade your existing system, I'd be happy to provide more detailed advice on finding the right hardware for your needs.

**Final Thoughts**

I've had an enjoyable journey revisiting some old hardware and testing it against modern games. It's always fascinating to see how things have changed over time, and while this experience has taught me a lot about mid-range GPUs, I'm excited to explore other aspects of gaming hardware in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now it was about five and a half years ago that i bought a three gigabyte gtx 1060 for my personal system this exact model actually at that time i was really happy with my purchase and even more pleased with the money i had saved by opting for this card over the 6 gig variant fast forward to 2022 and the prices of new and used cards have finally started coming down this 1060 cost me 130 pounds a little bit more than 10 50 ti's are going for and about 30 to 40 pounds cheaper than a 6 gig 1060. a few months ago i might have been less hesitant to suggest the three gig 1060 to those who were on a stricter budget but with the way things are right now in terms of prices now video over seriously though i thought we'd take a look at how the three gig card is holding up anyway because while it may not seem worth it in comparison to the slightly more expensive 6 gig version it is still a sensibly priced used option and prices may vary depending on where you live so say goodbye to half your vram and 128 cuda cores because this cut down 1060 is going to show us what it can do starting with warzone and as you might have guessed very low is ideal for 60 fps at 1080p now of course 60fps isn't a must it all depends on personal preference but in first person shooters like this it is far more ideal than 30. the game informed us that we had exceeded the vram limit even with the low settings but that didn't mean that the game was unplayable there were some odd little stutters you might be able to pick up in the video but i think these are due to the connection problems i've been having this week there's a new internet provider being switched on where i live and it's causing chaos at the moment hopefully these issues then aren't being caused by the three good card and i don't think they are because there was nothing too serious in the percentile figures to say otherwise it's a different kind of stuttering when it's the game cyberpunk 2077 did better than i thought of course we now have the addition of fsr in this and other games but i wanted to keep things at native today because i don't feel the quality sacrifice would be worth the extra frames and 60fps wouldn't constantly be doable anyway it is up to you though i prefer to play somewhere between 40 and 60 fps with native 1920 by 1080 as opposed to enabling fidelity fx super resolution it's really not that bad or as bad as i thought it would be i was expecting low 30s for an average so to hit an average that's at least 10 or so fps higher is nice and the game still looks good on low the 1060 is still supported by nvidia driver wise as well so there's no concern there yet either elder ring is capped at 60 frames per second with the medium preset we were able to hit that a lot of the time the average actually came back as 58 because more densely populated areas will cause some frame dips but overall it's nothing too serious the game is very much playable with nvidia's weaker 1060 variant you'll notice that the vram is going to be between 2.5 and 3 gigs throughout as well modern games will really push this card but even in those games that apparently exceed the memory limitation well i didn't see anything that was too horrific in terms of performance you will notice yourself having to make some texture quality sacrifices though but more about that later on far cry 6 crashed first of all but then i remembered that it recently got an update and all i needed to do was verify the game files from within the ubisoft launcher i mentioned just now that texture quality has to be sacrificed but honestly in 2022 all the settings need to be sacrificed it's not just a vram limitation anymore this card is just better suited to low or medium settings anyway i can't pretend that the six gig card wouldn't do better because of course it would i think the three gig card here though is better than you might think it's certainly better than i thought even if we are limited to lower quality visuals a lot of the time we were also exceeding the vram limit here too on paper even when i switched to 720p low but there wasn't too much of an impact on the one and point one percent lows again it was more my connection issues plaguing fortnite than anything else the game ran okay we saw the usual stutter here and there but it is playable even at high different areas of the map will run differently and you might want to consider a 60 fps cap to make the drops a little less noticeable or you could turn things down to medium high was probably a little bit ambitious if i'm honest the same could be said about forza horizon 5. although this oasis desert race run really well at high settings with 2x msaa enabled i left the game at the high preset that it seemed to have been left on the last time i played either that or it defaulted to this medium would be a safer option but there's no reason you can't go for high having said that i've got a bad feeling about those busy town races things should hold pretty steady but i'll admit three gigs of vram is somewhat of a concern i'm going into every game as if i'm treading on eggshells a three gigabytes of vram world is an uncertain one in this day and age and i have a feeling that the next year or two will be very harsh on our little friend here last but not least it's red dead redemption 2 now earlier i mentioned texture quality sacrifices and this is where i must refer back to that point usually i go into rdr2 with digital foundry's xbox one x equivalent settings which include ultra textures unfortunately i couldn't select ultra textures from the in-game menu and to use them i'd have to edit the game's ini document it's not difficult it's just mildly inconvenient ultra might cause a bit of a performance loss anyway but instead i went for higher which in this game is noticeably not as good as ultra but it still looks pretty good overall and runs well too owners of this card have probably been making texture quality sacrifices for years and now in 2022 it seems as though the other settings might have to join the textures in being reduced in order to get the best performance out of modern games but you know what i think that while the 6 gig 1060 is for sure the better choice the three gig card hasn't done that badly if i was still using mine that i bought in 2016 i'd be fairly happy with my investment yet part of me would have always been wondering what if i had spent the extra thank you very much for watching then this has been a look at the three gigabyte gtx 1060 in 2022 it's a card that well it sort of holds a special place in my heart it was my first sort of mid-range gpu i'd say back in the day back in 2016 i think i had it paired with an i5 4460 and back then that was a pretty decent combination and i think i used it well for a couple of years so i've got some decent usage out of it and back then i never had any problems but there we go the three gigabyte 1016 2022 if you can find one consider how much it costs in comparison to the six gig card where you live because in all honesty that would certainly be the better bet even if it's 30 40 or 50 pounds more then again you'll have to see what newer options you could find at that price point if you enjoyed this video leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't let me know if you still have one of these cards in your system and how well it's doing for you because i'd love to hear your experiences with the games that you play subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one at this resolution this gpu should set me up for years to come and i certainly don't plan on gaming at 4k i think 180 pounds for a few years of happiness is a great price to pay and i could and will easily recommend this card to anyonehello everyone and welcome to another video now it was about five and a half years ago that i bought a three gigabyte gtx 1060 for my personal system this exact model actually at that time i was really happy with my purchase and even more pleased with the money i had saved by opting for this card over the 6 gig variant fast forward to 2022 and the prices of new and used cards have finally started coming down this 1060 cost me 130 pounds a little bit more than 10 50 ti's are going for and about 30 to 40 pounds cheaper than a 6 gig 1060. a few months ago i might have been less hesitant to suggest the three gig 1060 to those who were on a stricter budget but with the way things are right now in terms of prices now video over seriously though i thought we'd take a look at how the three gig card is holding up anyway because while it may not seem worth it in comparison to the slightly more expensive 6 gig version it is still a sensibly priced used option and prices may vary depending on where you live so say goodbye to half your vram and 128 cuda cores because this cut down 1060 is going to show us what it can do starting with warzone and as you might have guessed very low is ideal for 60 fps at 1080p now of course 60fps isn't a must it all depends on personal preference but in first person shooters like this it is far more ideal than 30. the game informed us that we had exceeded the vram limit even with the low settings but that didn't mean that the game was unplayable there were some odd little stutters you might be able to pick up in the video but i think these are due to the connection problems i've been having this week there's a new internet provider being switched on where i live and it's causing chaos at the moment hopefully these issues then aren't being caused by the three good card and i don't think they are because there was nothing too serious in the percentile figures to say otherwise it's a different kind of stuttering when it's the game cyberpunk 2077 did better than i thought of course we now have the addition of fsr in this and other games but i wanted to keep things at native today because i don't feel the quality sacrifice would be worth the extra frames and 60fps wouldn't constantly be doable anyway it is up to you though i prefer to play somewhere between 40 and 60 fps with native 1920 by 1080 as opposed to enabling fidelity fx super resolution it's really not that bad or as bad as i thought it would be i was expecting low 30s for an average so to hit an average that's at least 10 or so fps higher is nice and the game still looks good on low the 1060 is still supported by nvidia driver wise as well so there's no concern there yet either elder ring is capped at 60 frames per second with the medium preset we were able to hit that a lot of the time the average actually came back as 58 because more densely populated areas will cause some frame dips but overall it's nothing too serious the game is very much playable with nvidia's weaker 1060 variant you'll notice that the vram is going to be between 2.5 and 3 gigs throughout as well modern games will really push this card but even in those games that apparently exceed the memory limitation well i didn't see anything that was too horrific in terms of performance you will notice yourself having to make some texture quality sacrifices though but more about that later on far cry 6 crashed first of all but then i remembered that it recently got an update and all i needed to do was verify the game files from within the ubisoft launcher i mentioned just now that texture quality has to be sacrificed but honestly in 2022 all the settings need to be sacrificed it's not just a vram limitation anymore this card is just better suited to low or medium settings anyway i can't pretend that the six gig card wouldn't do better because of course it would i think the three gig card here though is better than you might think it's certainly better than i thought even if we are limited to lower quality visuals a lot of the time we were also exceeding the vram limit here too on paper even when i switched to 720p low but there wasn't too much of an impact on the one and point one percent lows again it was more my connection issues plaguing fortnite than anything else the game ran okay we saw the usual stutter here and there but it is playable even at high different areas of the map will run differently and you might want to consider a 60 fps cap to make the drops a little less noticeable or you could turn things down to medium high was probably a little bit ambitious if i'm honest the same could be said about forza horizon 5. although this oasis desert race run really well at high settings with 2x msaa enabled i left the game at the high preset that it seemed to have been left on the last time i played either that or it defaulted to this medium would be a safer option but there's no reason you can't go for high having said that i've got a bad feeling about those busy town races things should hold pretty steady but i'll admit three gigs of vram is somewhat of a concern i'm going into every game as if i'm treading on eggshells a three gigabytes of vram world is an uncertain one in this day and age and i have a feeling that the next year or two will be very harsh on our little friend here last but not least it's red dead redemption 2 now earlier i mentioned texture quality sacrifices and this is where i must refer back to that point usually i go into rdr2 with digital foundry's xbox one x equivalent settings which include ultra textures unfortunately i couldn't select ultra textures from the in-game menu and to use them i'd have to edit the game's ini document it's not difficult it's just mildly inconvenient ultra might cause a bit of a performance loss anyway but instead i went for higher which in this game is noticeably not as good as ultra but it still looks pretty good overall and runs well too owners of this card have probably been making texture quality sacrifices for years and now in 2022 it seems as though the other settings might have to join the textures in being reduced in order to get the best performance out of modern games but you know what i think that while the 6 gig 1060 is for sure the better choice the three gig card hasn't done that badly if i was still using mine that i bought in 2016 i'd be fairly happy with my investment yet part of me would have always been wondering what if i had spent the extra thank you very much for watching then this has been a look at the three gigabyte gtx 1060 in 2022 it's a card that well it sort of holds a special place in my heart it was my first sort of mid-range gpu i'd say back in the day back in 2016 i think i had it paired with an i5 4460 and back then that was a pretty decent combination and i think i used it well for a couple of years so i've got some decent usage out of it and back then i never had any problems but there we go the three gigabyte 1016 2022 if you can find one consider how much it costs in comparison to the six gig card where you live because in all honesty that would certainly be the better bet even if it's 30 40 or 50 pounds more then again you'll have to see what newer options you could find at that price point if you enjoyed this video leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't let me know if you still have one of these cards in your system and how well it's doing for you because i'd love to hear your experiences with the games that you play subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one at this resolution this gpu should set me up for years to come and i certainly don't plan on gaming at 4k i think 180 pounds for a few years of happiness is a great price to pay and i could and will easily recommend this card to anyone\n"