Compute Benchmarks
Nvidia cards aren’t exactly known for their compute performance, but I still like to take a look and see how they perform. To do that I test using two different benchmarks, Folding at Home to test folding performance then CompuBenchCl to take a look at Video Composition performance and Bitcoin mining performance. My first test was Folding at Home both in single and double precision. In single precision performance the 1060 AMP! Edition performed really well, nearly on par with the GTX 980 Ti and noticeably ahead of the Founders Edition. This is also in a different world altogether from the RX 480’s. But in double precision testing things flip completely upside down and the RX 480’s are up near the top and the GTX 1060 AMP! Edition is down near the bottom. Nvidia doesn’t include FP64 compute cores in their consumer GPUs so the normal FP32 have to do it but this is less efficient.
In CompuBenchCL Video Composition the Zotac card once again outperforms the Founders Edition. That extra edge helps get it a little closer to the RX 480 4Gb that is directly above it. The results are similar in the Bitcoin Mining test where the RX 480’s have a slight edge. In bitcoin mining though power efficiency plays a part as well and the higher efficiency of the GTX 1060’s and with their performance being just a step down from the RX 480 it does make the GTX 1060 a contender.
