Power Consumption & Temperatures
The following power figures were taken from the wall using the CABAC PowerMate PM10A power meter. All cards were tested in the same test system, under the exact same conditions.
The GTX 1060 allowed for a maximum total system power consumption of 197 watts after 30 minutes of gameplay in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. That was 12% less than what we saw from the RX 480 and a 22% improvement over the GTX 980.
This time the total system power consumption dropped by 17% when using the GTX 1060 compared to the RX 480 in Call of Duty Black Ops III. When compared to using the GTX 980 the test system consumed 26% less power with the GTX 1060.
The last game we took power figures from was Just Cause 3. Here the GTX 1060 consumed quite a lot less than the RX 480 as the test system drew 22% less power. The GTX 1060 also consumed 26% less power than the GTX 980 here.
A Word On Temperatures
Under full load the GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition graphics card didn't exceed 66 degrees in our tests with an ambient room temperature of 21C. By comparison AMD's reference RX 480 peaked at 81 degrees while the 1070 FE reached 76 degrees.