In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 MSI Gaming X 3GB are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780.

The GTX 1060 has a 706 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce GTX 780, but the GeForce GTX 780 has 120 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 1060. As a result, the GeForce GTX 780 exhibits a 52.7 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the GTX 1060. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 1060 has a 706 MHz higher core clock speed than the GeForce GTX 780 and the same number of Render Output Units. This results in the GTX 1060 providing 33.9 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 1060 was released over three years more recently than the GeForce GTX 780, and so the GTX 1060 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the GeForce GTX 780 when running the latest games.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The GeForce GTX 1060 MSI Gaming X 3GB and the GeForce GTX 780 have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The GeForce GTX 780 has 96.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 1060, which means that the memory performance of the GeForce GTX 780 is massively better than the GTX 1060.

The GeForce GTX 1060 MSI Gaming X 3GB has 1152 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 780 has 2304. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 1060 is 2055 and the actual shader performance of the GeForce GTX 780 is 2078. The GeForce GTX 780 having 23 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GeForce GTX 780 delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 1060.

The GTX 1060 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GeForce GTX 780. This means that the GTX 1060 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GeForce GTX 780.

The GeForce GTX 1060 MSI Gaming X 3GB requires 120 Watts to run and the GeForce GTX 780 requires 250 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 400 Watts for the GTX 1060 and a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GeForce GTX 780. The GeForce GTX 780 requires 130 Watts more than the GTX 1060 to run. The difference is significant enough that the GeForce GTX 780 may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GTX 1060.