As of late, Nvidia has seemingly focused on both ends of the Pascal totem pole with the launch of the GeForce GTX 1050 / GTX 1050 Ti for laptops (bottom) and the GTX 1080 Ti (top) for desktops. However, the company isn’t ignoring the other graphics chips residing between the two, as Nvidia is now showing its GTX 1060 a bit of extra love by throwing it into its Prepare For Battle bundle program.
Just for clarification, this program already supports the GTX 1070, the GTX 1080, and the GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards and discrete GPUs. This program essentially dishes out a free copy of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands or For Honor and now owners of a new GTX 1060 can take part in the giveaway fun too. What is surprising is that Nvidia waited until now to add the GTX 1060, given the chip is the “Recommended” graphics solution for both games.
Of course, the purchase of a supported GTX 10 Series card or discrete GPU doesn’t automatically grant customers a free game. Brick-and-mortar retailers along with online shops must be participants in the program. Thus, if customers purchase a new Alienware 17 laptop packing a discrete GTX 1080 chip, they won’t get a free copy of Ghost Recon: Wildlands through Nvidia’s bundle. Instead, customers may get a free copy of the laptop sports Tobii eye-tracking and Tobii’s free game giveaway is still active.
That said, here are the participating retailers, system builders, and platform partners:
| Etail/Retail | System Builders | Platform Partners |
| Amazon Canada B&H Best Buy Canada Computers Fry’s Electronics Memory Express Micro Center NCIX Newegg |
AVADirect CyberPowerPC Cybertron Digital Storm iBuyPower Falcon Northwest Maingear Velocity Micro Origin PC Steiger Dynamics XOTIC PC Sager Notebook Computers XIDAX Elite Rigs |
Asus EVGA Gigabyte MSI PNY Razer Zotac |
Customers who purchase qualified GTX 10 Series graphics components from the participants listed above will receive a coupon for the chosen free game. This coupon is redeemable through the GeForce Experience desktop client version 3.2.2 or higher. Complete instructions for redeeming the coupon can be accessed here. The use of the GeForce Experience client requires a Nvidia account.
Nvidia is seemingly pushing these two specific games because they support Nvidia Ansel, a new way of capturing in-game photography. Users can take shots from any position, capture HDR images in hi-res formats, use post-process filters, and more. These images are sharable in a 360 view on a smartphone, PC, and virtual reality headset. What is neat about Ansel is that the game pauses and the free-cam tool takes over once users type ALT and F2.
The GTX 1080 was the first card to hit the scene based on Nvidia’s new Pascal graphics chip design (May 2016). The GTX 1070 arrived just days later (June 2016) followed by the GTX 1060 6GB (July 2016), the GTX 1060 3GB (August 2016), and the Titan X (August 2016). The two GTX 1050 models arrived in August and then the GTX 1080 Ti in March. The laptop variants typically arrived a month or two after their desktop add-in counterparts.
