Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Mining Performance Review

The GTX 1060 is one of the newer GPUs released by Nvidia as an upgrade to their oldest mid-high tier GPUs. It is interesting that the cheaper and smaller GTX 1050/ti are manufactured using the top-notch 14nm technology, while the GTX 1060 use the 16nm one which is usually considered slightly worse.

However, this does not prevent the GTX 1060 from having huge overclocking potential and be overall great GPUs for mining.

Hashrate and Performance

It’s time to get to the meat of the review – the hashrates. Sadly, the GTX 1060 3GB version does not work with Ethereum. As you probably know, 3GB GPUs cannot longer store the DAG file, which keeps growing in size with every new DAG epoch. There is no way around that, so in this article I will be reviewing the GTX 1060 3GB merely in the context of zCash mining. It works with Ethereum 🙂

GTX 1060 6GB Stock and Overclocked

The GTX 1060 6GB features okay stock frequencies, but the real fun starts with overclocking. Compared to the GTX 1050Ti I reviewed before, the GTX 1060 has amazing overclocking potential. In this setup we are using Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 6GB on Claymore’s Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner v9.6, EWBF’s CUDA Zcash miner, Nvidia Optimised Ethminer and Nicehash.

Ethereum hashrate on stock settings is 19 Mh/s with a power consumption of 100W. Card’s working temperature is 68C (154.4 F).

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Mining Performance Stock Clocks

system power draw is 35w

The card memory can be overclocked up to 4,700 MHz* (+925), which makes Ethereum hashrate reach the 23.7 – 25 Mh/s mark. While this will drive power consumption to 120 W, this will still make the card more profitable to mine, considering today’s Ethereum price and mining difficulty, and electricity cost of $ 0.1 per KW/h.

At this point, it is worth mentioning that the GTX 1060 fan does a great job by keeping the card at 56C with 65%.

The card can be further overclocked up to 10 GHz which will result in better hashrate, but this proved to be unstable.

(*) This can be achieved only by using the MSI Afterburner utility or similar.

 GTX 1060 6GB – Underpowered

For those of you who live in Connecticut, New Jersey or other places where electricity is rather expensive, you might prefer to lower the power target of the card in addition to overclocking it.

By lowering the power target you will see how the hashrate goes down too; however, hashrate drop is really low compared to power savings. By cutting power usage by -30% (70%) you lose only 0.3 MH/s, which means that now your card will output 23.5 – 24.7 Mh/s while drawing 80 Watts from the wall. Make sure you leave the memory clock at 4,700 MHz* (+925).

Even with electricity cost of $ 0.1 per KW/h this setup is more profitable than leaving the power target at 100%. Besides, lowering the power target drops the GPU temperature to 58C (136 F), which means that you can turn off the fan safely so the card becomes 100% silent.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Mining Performance Overclocked

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G (GV-N1060WF2OC-6GD)

List Price: $299.99

Price: $279.99

You Save: $20.00

Price Disclaimer

Recommended Hardware for 6x GTX 1060 Mining Rig

Mining Ethereum Only

start.bat file for claymore: EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal ETHEREUM_WALLET.WORKER_NAME -epsw x -tstop 80

start.bat file for ethminer: ethminer -U -S eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -O ETHEREUM_WALLET.WORKER_NAME –cuda-parallel-hash 4

Dual Mining Ethereum Decred / Siacoin with Overclock (Claymore Ethereum Miner)

start.bat file for ethereum + decred: EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal ETHEREUM_WALLET.WORKER_NAME -epsw x -dpool dcr.suprnova.cc:3252 -dwal USERNAME.WORKER-dpsw WORKER_PASS -tstop 80

start.bat file for ethereum + siacoin: EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal ETHEREUM_WALLET.WORKER_NAME -epsw x -dpool stratum+tcp://sia-eu1.nanopool.org:7777 -dwal SIACOIN_WALLET.WORKER_NAME -dcoin sia -tstop 80

Mining ZCash (EWBF’s CUDA Zcash miner)

start.bat file for zcash: miner –server eu1-zcash.flypool.org –port 3333 –user WALLET_ADDRESS.WORKER_NAME –pass x

Profits (1 ZEC $254.9)

Nicehash Mining Hashrate and Profits

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB in stock

6x GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Mining Rig Monthly Earnings

Zcash Mining Rig Monthly Earnings with 6x GTX 1060 6GB

 GTX 1060 3GB and zCash

It is worth mentioning that the GTX 1060 works surprisingly well with zCash too. In stock settings, the 6GB version outputs about 300 Sol’s. The 3GB one outputs about 275 Sol’s with the same clocks and TDP. As usual, the EWBF ZEC miner is the best choice for zCash, since it usually allows the card to hash better.

As per today, the ROI of a GTX 1060 6GB for ETH mining is about 7 months, considering that electricity cost is $ 0.1 per KW/h. It is surprisingly how card prices are booming. Only a week ago there were several vendors offering 3GB GTX 1060 for $ 200. Now, the cheapest prices I could find are:

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in stock

Additional Info

As you know, there are several different releases of each Nvidia card depending on the manufacturer. It is confirmed that:

In conclusion

Thanks to Nathan Kirsch for taking the time to test different frequency combinations and coming up with the ones that work the best.

While GTX 1060s might not be as desirable as the GTX 1070 series, they are still pretty much functional and have decent ROI with ETH. If you want to know more about the 1070 and the 1080/ti, I will be reviewing them soon too, so stay tuned!

PS: Additional thanks to Ed Stewart for giving me insight on DAG size and on when to expect it to hit the 3GB mark. I do read your comments and I really appreciate any constructive critics and suggestions 🙂

Thank you for reading. As always, your comments, suggestions and questions are welcome.

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