ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Strix Graphics Card Review

DirectX 12 Testing

Considering the fact that we’ve been hearing about DirectX 12 for what feels like forever, it’s a little surprising that the number of DX12 titles out there remain few. Heck, one such game was Fable Legends, and that was shut down a few months ago. We’re definitely in the middle of a waiting game for more DX12 titles to get here, but thankfully, those that do exist now prove great for testing.

Of all the DirectX 12 games out there, Ashes of the Singularity takes the best advantage of its low-level API capabilities. As a strategy game, there could be an enormous number of AI bots on the screen at once, and in those cases, both the CPU and GPU can be used for computation.

I should be clear about one thing: low-level graphics APIs are designed to benefit low-end hardware better, but when we’re dealing with GPUs that cost hundreds of dollars, that rules that kind of test useless. For that reason, I’ve chosen to benchmark these three games as normal; the results might not be specific to low-level DX12 enhancements, but they’re still fair for comparisons against other high-end graphics cards.

AMD has been dominant in Ashes for most of the game’s life, but the GTX 1060 manages to overtake the Radeon RX 480, and the Strix furthers that. That’s not to say that anything has happened to the DX12 performance of the AMD card; the NVIDIA cards just have more grunt from the get-go.

So, how about Rise Of The Tomb Raider?

In DirectX 12 mode, the GTX 1060 can deliver more than 60 FPS on average at 1080p, with ASUS’ Strix even managing to surpass 70 FPS. At 1440p, detail levels will have to be dropped.

Finally, Hitman remains dominant in AMD’s territory. Despite the GTX 1060 being the fastest card overall, AMD’s stock-clocked RX 480 still managed to beat out the pre-overclocked ASUS Strix. Not a bad showing by the red team.