UPDATED 12:49 EDT / JULY 07 2016

NEWS

Nvidia’s new GTX 1060 outperforms the GTX 980 at only $249

While Nvidia Corp has recently been expanding into new territories like video streaming set-top boxes and mobile electronics, the company is still probably best known as the leading name in high-end computer graphics cards. Earlier this year, Nvidia stunned consumers by announcing its new GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics processing units (GPUs), which offered beefy virtual reality and 4k resolution performance at a respectable price point, and now Nvidia has unveiled a new card that may not be quite is powerful, but it is certainly more affordable.

Starting at $249, the new GeForce GTX 1060 is a mid-range card that still manages to outperform the GTX 980, Nvidia’s last generation high-end card that up until recently had been considered the gold standard of PC graphics capabilities.

According to Nvidia, the GTX 1060 “delivers GTX 980-level performance and twice the energy efficiency in VR.” The new GPU features 1,280 CUDA cores and 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at 8Gbps, along with a boost clock of 1.7GHz that the company says “can be easily overclocked to 2GHz for further performance.” The GTX 1060 will support Nvidia’s new Ansel technology, which allows users to take 360 degree screenshots that can then be viewed with a virtual reality device.

The new card will also support Nvidia’s VRWorks software developer kit, which combines virtual reality graphics with Nvidia’s PhysX physics engine. Nvidia says that VRWorks “allows developers to intertwine what users see, hear and touch with the physical behavior of the environment — convincing them that their virtual experience is real.”

The GTX 1060 will become available on July 19 starting at $249 from a number of the company’s hardware partners, including Asus, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, and others. Nvidia will also offer a special Founder’s Edition for $299, which Nvidia says is “crafted with premium materials and components.”

Nvidia’s new GPU is a direct competitor to AMD’s new Radeon RX 480, which is a little less powerful than the GTX 1060, but it also costs slightly less at only $199.

Image courtesy of Nvidia Corp

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