When comparing MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Gaming X 6G vs Gainward NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 PHOENIX GS, the Slant community recommends MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Gaming X 6G for most people. In the question“What are the best GTX 1060 cards?” MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Gaming X 6G is ranked 2nd while Gainward NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 PHOENIX GS is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Gaming X 6G is:
The MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X has achieved a Firestrike score of 12010, one of the highest as far as GTX 1060 cards go. For that price, it's more powerful than some other, more expensive cards on the market.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Best performance for the price
The MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X has achieved a Firestrike score of 12010, one of the highest as far as GTX 1060 cards go. For that price, it's more powerful than some other, more expensive cards on the market.
Pro Decent temperatures
The Gaming X 1060 card is able to keep the temperatures of the GPU quite cool, with a result of 38 degrees Celsius in idle and only 65 degrees C under full load.
Pro Great overclocking potential
The overclocking potential for further increasing the card's clock and memory speed is quite high, as the cooler performs well and there is plenty of headroom in terms of power. In this case, an increase of 165 MHz was applied to the GPU clock and a whopping 435 MHz on the memory (22%), without any major issues or artifacts. Further overclocking results in noticeable higher performance. For comparison: a standard Gaming X card manages to achieve a framerate of 87.8 FPS in Battlefield 3 with 1440p resolution, while the same card with this type of overclock can reach over 101 average frames per second.
Pro Quietest GTX 1060 when under a full load
The MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X is extremely quiet, both in idle situations and under full load. The fans of the cooler don't spin at all in idle situations (below 60 degrees Celsius), which means the card is literally silent most of the time. Even under full load, noise production of the Gaming X is very minimal. The card produces 28 decibels (A) measured at a 100-centimeter distance, which is the quietest GTX 1060 made yet. It is half as loud as the EVGA GTX 1060 Gaming SC, and the MSI GTX 1060 Dual Fan version. A reference GTX 1060 produces 34 dBA of noise under load, which is about 50% louder than this MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X card.
Pro Excellent design
The GTX 1060 Gaming X, like its GTX 1080 and 1070 counterparts is an excellent card as far as looks go. The black and red color scheme can easily fit a lot of builds for those users who are obsessed with their build looking as good as possible. It also has an array of RGB lights in the back which can be controlled by an app supplied by MSI.
Pro Extremely good performance
One of the most expensive yet great cards. Still outperforms rx580 in test ever so slightly. If you play on a 1080p, 144hz monitor, you'd have to turn down the graphics a tiny bit to get that many FPS but it still looks great and 144hz in first person shooter looks amazing.
Pro Required 6-pin and stays cool. It has RGB
Cons
Con 8-pin power connector required
The MSI Gaming X version of the GTX 1060 requires a single 8-pin power connector, while the reference GTX 1060 only requires a single 6-pin power connector. MSI has used a more powerful connector in order to create more overclocking headroom, but this might be an issue for gamers with a limited available 8-pin connectors on their power supply unit.
Con The lighting only supports red, green or blue
The logo on the back of the card has lighting which supports red, green or blue. That is, not the full RGB color spectrum, but only those three individual colors.
Con Weird color scheme
The red, black and gold color scheme is not for everyone. If it had been just red and black it would have been much better and much easier to find a suitable motherboard, case and everything else to fit that color scheme. While not a deal breaker for most people who are only interested in performance, it can be a bit annoying for people who care about how their build looks.