Shipments of Nvidia's GTX 1060 are already hitting retail stores, ahead of the card's official launch date on the 19th of July. The third installment in the GeForce GTX 1000 series is expected to be available worldwide for purchase next Tuesday. Priced at $299 and $249 for the Founder's Edition -- reference design -- and custom add-in-board models respectively.

The GTX 1060 is Nvidia's most affordable Pascal board yet and it is expected to compete against AMD's popular mainstream RX 480 graphics card which launched late last month. The GTX 1060 features Nvidia's midrangeGP106 GPU with exactly half the CUDA cores as its older sibling GP104, which powers the GTX 1080.

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With 1280 CUDA cores, a 192bit memory interface,6GB of memory and 4.4 TFLOPs of compute the GTX 1060 delivers almost exactly half the performance of the GTX 1080. Making it a compellingupgrade, much like the RX 480, for those 95%+ of gamers still playing at 1920x1080. Not only that but also quite the capable stepping stone into 1440p 60Hz gaming.

Nvidia GTX 1060 Graphics Cards Already Avialable InRetail Stores Ahead Of July 19 Launch

Dragon Computers, a Dutch computer retailer, has teased the GTX 1060 launch on its facebook page. The retailer posted a photo of the very first batch GTX 1060 graphics cards that have hit its shelves. Which consisted ofGainward graphics cards, a popular Nvidia AIB partner in Europe.

Special thanks to Virtual Pixel for the tip!

We've learned over the past couple of weeks that there are two variants of the GTX 1060. A 6GB version and a 3GB version, and neither of them willsupport SLI. It’s not yet confirmedwhether the two variants of the GTX 1060 will differ in other ways besides the memory configuration. However, rumors point towards the 3GB version featuring fewer CUDA cores than the 6GB version. it’s been reported that the two versions don’t even share the same driver codenames, unlike the 4GB & 8GB variants of the RX 480.

The GTX 1060, Nvidia's Mainstream Pascal Graphics Card - Diving Into The GP106 GPU

The GP106 GPU powering the GTX 1060 is approximately 200mm² large. The chip includes 20 Pascal Streaming Multiprocessors, with 64 CUDA cores each, for a total of 1280 CUDA cores. The GPU also features80 Texture Mapping Unitswhich deliver a texture fill rate of 120.5 GTexls/s.the GPU includes 48 Render Output Unitsarranged into groups of eight, each group connected to a 32bit memory segment. There are six 32bit memory segments which together form thethe 192bit memory interface.

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Connected to that 192bit memory interface is six GDDR5 memory chips clocked at 8Ghz, for a total of 192GB/s of memory bandwidth. In terms of capacity, as we've mentioned earlier, the card will come in 6GB and 3GB memory configurations. The graphics engine operates at a base frequency of1506Mhz and boosts to1708Mhz. Which delivers a peak single precision FP32 compute throughput of 4.4 teraflops.

The GTX 1060 graphics card is rated at a thermal design power of 120 watts, sixty watts less than the GTX 1080 which is rated at 180 watts. Considering the performance of the GTX 1080, which is rated at 9 TFLOPS. This makes the GTX 1080 33% more power efficient than the GTX 1060. A result that's likely to do with the higher number of ROPs and larger memory interface per CUDA core compared to the GTX 1080.The reference design GTX 1060 -- Founder's Edition -- includesa single 6-pin power connector much like AMD's RX 480.In terms of I/O the card comes standard with threeDisplay Port 1.4 connections, a single HDMI 2.0b connection and a singleDVI-D output.

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GeForce GTX 1060 Founder's EditionLaunching Next Tuesday, 19th Of July For $299

The GTX 1060 will officially go on sale this upcoming Tuesday, 19th of July at $299. We could see non-reference designs sell for less than $299. Nvidia's suggested retail price for its AIB partner cards is $249. Howeverwith theGTX 1080 and GTX 1070we have yet to see any cardssell for the official MSRP that Nvidia has announced for its AIB partner cards.

The majority of custom GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards that have launched have been priced quite similarly to their Founder's Edition counterparts. It's not clear yet whether we'll see a repeat of that same unfortunate situation with the GTX 1060. But the hope is that with a mainstream card like the GTX 1060, pricing will be more competitive.

Nvidia GTX 1000 Series