Radeon RX 570 vs GTX 1060: Which is the Best?

Although the excitement and the buzz still revolves around the new RTX 3000 series and RX 6800 XT, most users drift towards the older GPUs. Mainly due to budget limitations and the fact that not everyone is interested in 4K gaming. Which is why in this post we are going to take a look back at the oldies before the era of ray tracing. RX 570 vs GTX 1060 are two GPUs that are widely cross compared among gamers.

In terms of pricing the RX 570 wins over the 1060. Although it is definitely better than the 1050 ti, the 1060 seems to have a slight edge over the 570. We will go ahead and analyze how they turn out in gaming fps scores. Before that lets take a look at the specs of each peripheral.

RX 570 vs GTX 1060 Specs

Specs at first impression are as above. You can see that the GTX 1060 is a bit ahead in terms of speeds and connectivity support with Dual Link DVI. With the specs in mind let’s proceed for the gaming benchmark scores.

RX 570 vs GTX 1060 @ 1080P

There’s no point in analyzing the 4K resolution performance of these cards when full HD and 1440P are the clear resolution choices for high quality gaming without compromising frame rates. Therefore lets see how both the GPUs perform in several titles under identical conditions.

With Gears 5, Metro Exodus, Assassins Creed: Odyssey, Borderlands 3, Middle-earth: Shadow of War and many more games the 1060 beats the 570 marginally by a few frame rates. For example in Metro Exodus the RX 570 outputs 28 FPS while the GTX 1060 finishes at 32. It’s the same in Assassins Creed: Odyssey where the scores reach 31 vs 36 FPS for RX 570 vs GTX 1060. Interestingly however on Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 1060 is ahead by more than 12 FPS.

Also in some games like Battlefield V the RX 570 was ahead of the 1060 by a few frames at highest graphics quality. Surprisingly most games where Nvidia managed to beat AMD are the AMD titles. Overall in terms of average numbers the GTX 1060 is 4% faster than the RX 570 in most titles. And as you can very well anticipate the degradation amplifies with the 6GB 1060. However it is not the case with the RX 570 8GB vs the 6GB 1060.

Performance at 1440P

The results are more or less the same in 1440P resolution as well with the two graphics cards at highest quality. The 1060 triumphs in Assassins Creed: Valhalla, Borderlands 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1440P rendering slightly higher frames than the 570. However in Hitman 2, Strange Brigade, Battlefield V the 570 outperforms the GTX 1060 quite significantly. With Battlefield V RX 570 outputs 56 frames while the 1060 stops at 51.

Since all these games were tested at the highest quality with the respective resolutions the limitation for frame output is high. Hence with a few adjustments and lowering anti-aliasing you can squeeze out more frames in 1440P.

To finalize the comparison of the two, in terms of lighting effects, reflection handling, multi rendering and peak effects the 1060 is ahead of the RX 570 by 13% and 21% respectively.

RX 570 8GB vs 1060 6GB

Not much of a difference here except the VRAM and slight changes in speeds. In terms of texture fill rate the Radeon graphics card is ahead because of the higher number of texture mapping units. The significant indicator of higher performance is the extra 2 gigabytes of the RX 570 along with its higher memory bandwidth.

The extra VRAM definitely means better performance at higher resolution even in ultra graphic settings. Therefore the 570 is a bit ahead. However since these numbers are merely on paper lets see how they rival up in 1080p gaming performance at ultra settings.

In Metro: Exodus, Assassins Creed: Odyssey, Control, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto V, Hitman 2, Battlefield V and many other titles the GTX 1650S ranks ahead of the RX 570 with higher frame rates. On the flip side, in some games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V the 570 dominates over the 1650S.

Therefore you can see that the specs on paper winds up differently in gaming. The 570 seems to perform better on high texture demanding games with the larger VRAM. Nonetheless it can be concluded that both the graphics cards are almost on the same page.

RX 570 vs 1650 Super

Another widely popular comparison among GPU geeks. The GTX 1650 SUPER comes with a VRAM of 4GB, Boost clock of 1725 MHz, 1280 cores, 12 Gbps memory speed and 100W GPU power. Number of texture mapping units are higher in the RX 570 hence better texture fill rate than the 1650S. In terms of memory performance the bandwidth of the 1650S is higher than that of the 570. Performance differences at higher resolutions are noticed mostly due to this fact.  

Let’s talk about full HD gaming at ultra graphic settings in both the graphics units. In games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, Cyberpunk 2077, Metro: Exodus, Assassins Creed: Odyssey, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 4 and many more titles the 1650S is ahead by a few frame rates. Interestingly in some games like Battlefield V, Far Cry 5, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Grand Theft Auto V the RX 570 is leading by 10+ frame rates.

Regardless, in terms of lighting effects, reflection handling, multi rendering the 1650S dominates the 570 by more than 20%. When it comes to the price though, it is nowhere near to what they were originally. But when it was released the RX 590 was leading the 1650S only by 3% while the 1650S was much cheaper.

Conclusion

We believe we covered everything there’s to know about RX 570 vs GTX 1060. Both are great reliable graphics cards for 1080p gaming with 60+ frame rates under medium settings. If you are planning on building a rig on a tight budget the RX 570 is a pretty good choice. However you can gain a slight edge in gaming if you throw in a couple of extra bucks and decide to go for the 1060 with 6GB VRAM. If you are on a tight budget and looking for a lower level GPU which still can get the job done, here is our post about the Acer Swift 3 model which has the RX 540 GPU.