Nvidia has introduced its reference GTX 1060 “Founders Edition” and its partners are good to go with custom designs. We will soon have one sample from Gainward. Today we will share our first thoughts about the reference board.  

As was the case with the earlier launched Geforce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, the Geforce GTX 1060 will also be available as a special limited Founders Edition (which is a fancy new name for reference edition), priced at US $299, a US $50 premium. 

The card is based on Nvidia's 16nm GP106 Pascal GPU, which features 1280 CUDA cores, 80 TMUs and 48 ROPs,  6GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 192-bit memory interface. The GPU works at up to 1.7GHz on the GPU Boost clock and Nvidia claims it can go as high as 2.0GHz with overclocking, which is impressive. It needs a single 6-pin PCIe power connector, thanks to its low 120W TDP. It also features three DisplayPort 1.4s, a HDMI 2.0b and a DVI display output.