GTX 1060 Performance in GTA V at 1080p and 1440p - Ultra Settings

Intro

Hello to everyone and welcome to my Blog. In this article, I am going to test GTX 1060 in GTA V and going to guide you about its performance in this game in 2021. In this test, I am going to use GTX 1060 in GTA V at ultra settings at higher resolutions like 1080p and 1440p. The settings preset for this GPU are going to be ultra as we all know that GTX 1060 is a high-end graphics card. The GTX 1060 that I am going to use is a 6GB version of GTX 1060. 

 

Anyway, this is An MSI Gaming GTX version of 1060 which I am going to use for this performance test. I am running this GTX 1060 with a Ryzen 9 5900X with the latest Nvidia Drivers which are 471.11 for this GPU present these days when I am testing this. I just overclocked it a little bit with 100 MHz on the core clock and 200 MHz on the memory clock. It is very easy to work to achieve such an overclock with any GTX 1060 these days. I believe so that’s why I haven’t made any changes to the power limit.

I am running this GPU with A Ryzen 5900X having 32 GB ram with 3200 MHz frequency. If you want to achieve the FPS performance as I will tell you after testing, you specifically don’t need a Ryzen 5900 rather you can achieve similar performance with a 16 GB ram and Ryzen 3 3300X. I assure you it will do an excellent job with such a build.

 

At 1080p Ultra Settings

 

We are going to test this card at higher settings like ultra 1080p, 1440p, and also these settings by turning the AA (Ant aliasing) 4X at 1080p and 2X in 1440p.

 So let’s start with 1080p’. The settings preset for 1080p I have kept at ultra as we know that this card is capable to handle GTA V at the highest settings. Now we are beginning with 1080p Ultra later we will test 1080p settings ultra with AA turned on to 4X. Particles and Grass quality are set to be high as these are the intensive settings of GTA V.

 On counting the FPS I came to know that we are getting extremely high FPS on average even at the Ultra settings preset at 1080p. In less intensive areas the Average FPS appears to be 115-20. If you use the GTX 1060 without overclocking as I overclocked a bit you can easily achieve similar performance with 5-6 frames lesser than this, yet the overall experience will be quite excellent.  

 

GTX 1060 Performance in GTA V at 1080p and 1440p - Ultra Settings

These FPS are that we are getting are extremely high for a game like GTA V and it is a high refresh rate experience. It only requires your CPU to be beefy a bit. Similarly, if you use a CPU as Ryzen 3 3100 you can easily achieve approximately 110-115 FPS on average which is going to be a great and high refresh rate experience. Even on gaming at ultra 1080p with the high FPS the game doesn’t stutter at all while this game stutters a little with much higher FPS. This is the GTX 1060 which is managing to control the stutters of the game. 

 Now the grass quality comes in and we going to test GTX 1060 in the most grass and greenery intensive areas of the GTA V. The frames are dropping to higher 80s and even sometimes to the higher 70s. I thought the FPS will drop to 60s or higher 60s as this area is full of grass and is the most intensive area of the GTA V. Even in the most intensive area of the game GTX 1060 is providing us with pleasant smooth stutters free experience. If we use ultra grass quality instead of high we will notice huge FPS drops on those settings in the grass intensive areas. There is not much visual fidelity on running it at ultra. So, I think these high grass quality settings are best to enjoy such brilliant graphics and a high refresh rate experience.

 

At 1080p with AA Set to 4X

 

Now I am going to test turn on AA to 4X because that is reasonable at 1080p with GTX 1060. Oh My God! Now I am getting FPS below 60 in the grass intensive area of the GTA V with AA set to 4 times. AA is the most demanding setting preset of the GTA V game and it was kind of expected because I tested in the most intensive area of the game. If you set the AA to 2X you will not see any drops from 60 it will easily manage to provide that experience. The drop here is due to the AA because it is the setting that provides the best of the graphics in GTA V.

 

GTX 1060 Performance in GTA V at 1080p and 1440p - Ultra Settings

At AA set to 4X you want everything to look sharp and crispy and it looks very much pretty at these settings with AA set to 4X at 1080p but with a few drops in FPS below the 60s. But it’ll happen only in grass intensive area of the game where you will notice some drops in FPS otherwise the FPS stay most of the time above the 80s and sometimes above the 90s. Even with the drops in frames at 1080p with AA 4X, the game experience is still very smooth and playable. The experience is still awesome because of the optimization of the game and can be played easily with any kind of hardware. Even a GTX 480 can play GTA V high 1080p settings with  60+ FPS so it’s not an issue for a graphics card GTX 1060.

 

At 1440p Ultra Settings

 

Now I am going to test GTX 1060 at 1440p in GTA V at ultra settings with AA turned OFF and every other setting set to be very high. So, let’s move to the performance of GTX 1060 in the game. Wow! The FPS number is showing to be 100 FPS on average and the game looks excellent and feels very smooth to play. GTX 1060 is amazing for GTA V at these settings because the experience that it has provided so far is very great. 

 

GTX 1060 Performance in GTA V at 1080p and 1440p - Ultra Settings

Even at 1440p at ultra settings, you can play GTA V fine getting decent performance from this GTX 1060. It will drop some FPS in the grass-intensive areas a bit but while driving in the city I am getting 100 FPs on average and still the game looks and feels amazing. Let’s check the FPS inside the bushes and it seems no problem at all for GTX 1060 to run GTA V at these settings in these areas with good FPS. Inside the bushes, I got 80+ FPS on average.

 

At 1440p with 2X AA

 

Now I am testing GTX 1060 by turning on AA to 2X because 4X will be too much for the GTX 1060 to handle on 1440 than 4X on 1080p. We are getting 60 FPS on average in not even more demanding areas of the game with these settings. 

 

Let me now check it in the most demanding area of the game and Oh! The FPS is dropping to 50s and sometimes to 40s while getting 60 FPS on average in not most demanding areas. It is a kind of similar experience to AA 4x on 1080p. 

 

GTX 1060 Performance in GTA V at 1080p and 1440p - Ultra Settings

At 1440p if you want to achieve similar FPS numbers even an i7 2700 will do a good job and may provide you with these FPS with GTX 1060 in GTA V. i7 2700 being a 10-year-old CPU will provide an awesome experience with the GTX 1060. CPU bottleneck becomes less of a problem if you are running a game at a higher resolution at a higher refresh rate. If you are aiming for 60 FPS experience at 144Hz monitor 1060 is very good to provide you with this experience at 1440p.

 

Conclusion 

 

Then after checking the performance of GTX 1060 in GTA V at higher resolutions I would like to suggest you to play GTA V at these settings on a GTX 1060. It is capable of providing a higher refresh rate experience at high resolution so it is a good choice for playing games as it is a budget GPU. If you get a GTX 1060 I will suggest you buy one to enjoy a high refresh rate experience in GTA V.