Is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 worth buying in 2024?

The GTX 1060 was second on Steam's list of December hardware surveys of GPUs. This is for a good reason: 1060 became an excellent value proposition that offered superior performance in a 1080p high-to-ultra setting without breaking the bank.

These were the times without the ARC series of GPUs from Intel and good price-to-performance cards from AMD.

Considering the performance, even with the recently released God of War for PC, the GTX 1060 can manage a respectable 30 to 40 fps in the highest settings. With subsequent generational updates, the need to settle for a respectable card is long gone.

The answer to that depends on the needs and particular scenarios, but in general, there are much better investments to pick up in the GPU segment than the GTX 1060 in 2024.

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Is the GTX 1060 still a viable option in 2024, considering the significant performance improvements offered by similarly priced cards?

	Intel Arc A750	Nvidia GTX 1060
Core Clock	2 GHz	1.5 GHz
Memory bus width	256 bits	192 bits
Power draw	225 W	120 W
Memory Bandwidth speed	512 GBps	192 GBps

Consider the recently released Intel Arc A750 GPU. The graphics memory bandwidth of the A750 is a staggering 512 GBps for a price similar to what a GTX 1060 retails for today while offering 192 GBps of bandwidth. This dramatic gap shows itself to be highly pronounced in games requiring extensive amounts of graphic memory, which entails most games in 2024.

Similarly, the 8 GB on the Arc A750 is based on a 256-bit memory bus width, compared to the 192-bit width on the 6 GB GTX 1060. Simply put, a higher memory bus width implies faster and larger communication between the memory VRAM and the GPU. The higher it is, the higher the frames obtained in general.

Moreover, the memory clock speed on the 1060 is 1.5 GHz, while the Arc A750 offers 2 GHz of memory clock speed. This results in a GPU capable of much faster calculations when it comes to rendering. In terms of power draw, the GTX 1060 does consume far less power than cards like the A750, but the performance sacrifice is not worth it.

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With newer engines like UE5, games are going to look bonkers, thus needing as much power as they can get

The GTX 1060 is an eight-year-old card in 2024. Not only will the support for official drivers from Nvidia start to dwindle, but this old card will age faster, thanks to more demanding upcoming games.

Take, for example, Hogwarts Legacy, the much-awaited game from Portkey Games. The official page enlists playing the game in 1080p high settings at 60 fps, they recommend a minimum of Nvidia 1080 ti. Of course, playing on a 1060 is possible, but you’ll have to consider massive trade-offs like sacrificing fps for resolution or vice-versa.

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Although Ray-tracing is still a luxury, the 1060 cannot handle it in upcoming games

Say what anyone may about the current situation of ray-tracing in video games, it will become mainstream among even the most stringent of gamers. Currently, most gamers prefer higher frames over ray-tracing, but that may change as games get better by optimizing performance for ray-tracing.

With Unreal Engine 5, this looks achievable at a comparatively lesser price paid in performance to get good lighting in games. As developers fully utilize the UE5, the games shall get better optimized to handle it at available resources, thus making cards like the GTX 1060 a relic.

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Thus, the 1060 is not worth the purchase in 2024. Interestingly, the only time it can be recommended is if the daily driver GPU malfunctions and one needs a decent card as a replacement. For everyone else, a similarly priced RX 6600 series, RTX 3060 series, or Intel Arc A750 offers much more bang for the buck, although at a higher price.