RX 7600 vs GTX 1060 vs GTX 1060 vs RX 580 – Time to Upgrade?

According to the Steam Hardware Survey, 5% of you gamers are still using a GTX 1060, which roughly equates to 6.6 million cards in use. 2.25% use a 1660 TI, or around 3 million, and around 1%, or 1.5 million use an RX 580. That is a lot of gamers using six or seven year old GPUs, and AMD’s RX 7600 looks like a mighty promising option that might make it worth an upgrade. Let’s test them and find out! Now seeing as 64.5% of gamers on Steam still use a 1080p monitor, I’ll be testing at 1080p here – although since 1440p monitors are getting pretty common, and cheap, I’ve also run the benchmarks at 1440p. 

Diving straight into the results here, starting with Cyberpunk 2077 on medium settings, if you’re gaming on a GTX 1060 you aren’t having the best time. It is still reasonably playable, but it is below 60 FPS which isn’t the best. The RX 580 fares a little better, at a touch below 60 FPS average, although again this isn’t going to be the absolute best experience. The 1660 Ti does a fair bit better at 90 FPS average – this should be a pretty good experience, especially with the 1% lows being over 70 FPS. This should be pretty smooth and enjoyable. Of course not quite as enjoyable as the 7600 which ploughs through 156 FPS average, and 1% lows of 120 FPS. For those counting at home, that’s three times the performance of both the 1060 and 580 and not far off double the 1660 Ti. Not bad.

CSGO, ever the performant game, isn’t phased by your low GPU power, with functionally identical results. Like sure, the 1060 does offer 150 FPS less than the 7600, but at 534 FPS and 696 FPS respectively, does it really matter? The same order is preserved though, with the 1060 running last, then the 580, then the 1660 Ti, and of course the 7600 on top.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a pretty similar story to Cyberpunk, with the 1060 running at just 50 FPS on medium settings, the 580 at 55 FPS, the 1660 Ti at 72 FPS, then a lightyear ahead is the 7600 with 130 FPS. It isn’t quite triple the performance of the 1060, but it isn’t exactly far from it. The 1660 Ti is still pretty decent here though at 72 FPS average. 

In Fortnite I should make it clear that all the results bar the RX 580 were run in DX12 mode on the High preset with TSR on medium and recommended. The RX 580 refused to run in DX12 mode as Fortnite would just crash on startup, so that might explain why the performance results seem so impressive from the 580 – it seems like the DX12 mode hurts performance across the board here, with the 1060 suffering the most at just 40 FPS average. That means the 7600 is over four times faster, which sounds like a pretty solid upgrade to me. The 1660 Ti does run just over 60 FPS, but not by much.

Hitman 3 is surprisingly close, with the 1060 actually edging out a lead over the 580 with 83 FPS average. The 580 nets 78 FPS, and the 1660 Ti storms ahead with 118 FPS average. All of these should be a pretty good gaming experience, although of course the 7600 is going to be a little better especially on a high refresh rate monitor. You could also turn the settings up with the 7600 and get the same sort of performance but a fair bit more visual fidelity.

Lastly in Shadow of the Tomb Raider you’ll find again that all the cards offer more than 60 FPS even on the high preset. The 1060 is still last, but with a decently playable 75 FPS average. The 580 isn’t that far ahead with 78 FPS, while the 1660 Ti enjoys a healthy lead at 107 FPS average. The 7600 absolutely storms the field here though with 177 FPS average. Not too bad eh?

So just looking at the 1080p results, the 7600 is, on average, 75% faster than the 1660 Ti, 118% faster than the 580, and 160% faster than the 1060. Just from these results, I’d argue that the 1660 Ti probably has some life left in it and unless you are actively noticing low FPS or are tired of running on medium to low settings, you probably don’t need to upgrade. The 580 and 1060 are a different story. While in some games they did manage around 60 FPS, the value proposition of this 7600 seems like a worthwhile upgrade from those cards. I mean getting over double the performance is significant, plus of course things like a much better video encoder including AV1 encoding, much better ray tracing performance – actually anything is an improvement over these three – and better driver support too. 

Things get rather interesting at 1440p though, as especially these two NVIDIA cards only offer 6GB of VRAM, compared to 8GB on both AMD cards. That limitation is becoming more and more of a problem in more recent titles, and at higher resolutions that only compounds the issue. Cyberpunk doesn’t fare so well on the lower end cards, with the 1060 only netting 40 FPS average on medium settings, and 1% lows of 32 FPS. The 580 isn’t much higher at 48 FPS average, with only the 1660 Ti breaking past 60 FPS at 67 FPS average. Of course the 7600 has no problems and runs at almost twice the performance of the 1660 Ti at 120 FPS average. The playing experience is night and day different between the 7600 and the rest – especially the 1060.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is even worse for the 1060 running at just 33 FPS average. The 580 again isn’t much better at 38 FPS, the 1660 Ti suffers pretty heavily at just 48 FPS average. Compare that to the 7600 which is practically soaring at nearly 90 FPS average, or again almost triple the 1060. That is a very noticeable difference for sure.

Fortnite at 1440p is a completely different experience on the 7600. Netting nearly 150 FPS average gives a smooth and enjoyable experience, even on a high refresh rate monitor. The 1660 Ti on the other hand only nets 56 FPS average, and the 1060 is a shocker with just 34 FPS average. While it does look like switching to the DX11 mode will be a better experience as the 580 nets more like 70 FPS here, it’s still lacking by comparison.

Hitman on medium settings is still remarkably playable, even on the 1060 which nets 52 FPS average. It doesn’t quite hit 60 FPS, but considering this is a seven year old card with 6GB of VRAM, I’m pretty impressed. The 580 only runs 1 FPS faster on average, while the 1660 Ti sits fairly comfortably at 77 FPS average. Naturally the 7600 holds the top spot with 125 FPS average. 

And finally in Shadow of the Tomb Raider you can expect around 50 FPS from the 1060 and 580, a bit over 70 FPS from the 1660 Ti and 116 FPS average from the 7600 on the high preset. While I’d prefer over 60 FPS here, I’m still pretty impressed with the performance from the older cards, including the 1060.

If gaming at 1440p is on your wishlist with your GTX 1060 6GB, upgrading to this RX 7600 will net you 170% more performance on average. To put that another way, you get almost three times the performance on average. Considering the £260 price tag on the RX 7600 – at least the Sapphire model that seems to be the only one OverclockersUK have listed right now – that seems like a fantastic deal. Hell even at 1080p you get 160% more performance, so again that seems like a pretty good value. The same can be said for the RX 580, with albeit a smaller advantage of just 116 to 118% more performance (AKA over double) and again that price tag seems like the right spot for that. If you’ve got a 1660 Ti it might still be worth the upgrade for you as you can expect between 75 and 80% more performance, although in general I’d say that it still performs pretty well and I’m not sure if the situation is quite as dire as it is with the 1060 and 580. It would be nice if you got 10 or 12GB of VRAM on the 7600 for a bit better futureproofing – I mean the 580 also has 8GB of VRAM so that’s not even an improvement – but for that fairly budget price tag it’s somewhat hard to argue.