# MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS 6 GB



## W1zzard (Feb 22, 2019)

The MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS is a cost-efficient design, coming at NVIDIA's baseline price of $279. Even at that price point, MSI managed to squeeze in a backplate and dual-fan cooler. Also worth mentioning is its extremely energy-efficient operation: 2.5x as efficient as the Radeon RX 590, and faster, too.

*Show full review*


----------



## kastriot (Feb 22, 2019)

Great review like always, but thanks to latest vega 56 pricing this product lost upper hand.


----------



## jabbadap (Feb 22, 2019)

All of these have 8-pin power connector and powerlimit is in range of 120W-140W, which is easily done with one 6-pin. What a waste.

I presume there's no reference card from nvidia this time around?


----------



## happy medium (Feb 22, 2019)

kastriot said:


> Great review like always, but thanks to latest vega 56 pricing this product lost upper hand.



it was a sale not a price cut.  or do have a link to one for under $300?


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 22, 2019)

Brutally efficient, shows how terrible the RX 590 was in that regard.

These cards should be very popular for sure.


----------



## happy medium (Feb 22, 2019)

So I read a few reviews, this is what im seeing.

1660ti is......
30% faster than a gtx 1060 6gb
20% faster than a rx 590
5% slower than a Vega 56
2% faster than a gtx 1070

*gains 11% more actual gaming performance when overclocked
*Power consumption 120 watts
*is quiet
* runs cool
* better price performance than gtx 1060 or 2060 and the fastest card per price performance.
* super card for 1080p,  great card for 1440p

On newegg and other online shops have at least a handful of cards at $279

Nvidia will sell millions of these.


----------



## ArbitraryAffection (Feb 22, 2019)

£260 here not bad at all. It's a really nice offering and super efficient too. The only thing for me is the 6GB of vram which many people will tell me is perfectly fine but i don't want a downgrade from 8GB that i already got for £150 on my 570. But aside from that this is a solid card for 1080p max settings gaming and with Freesync now supported by nvidia RX 590 is simply dead at its current price.

I expect 590 to drop to £200 or below to remain competitive in the coming weeks..


----------



## Vayra86 (Feb 22, 2019)

Oh my this is bad GPU. There is zero consistency... Hitman 2 results. Wow.

Avoid!


----------



## Turmania (Feb 22, 2019)

Finally good product from green camp.perfect for 1080p gaming. Over to you AMD with your Navi.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 22, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> Oh my this is bad GPU. There is zero consistency... Hitman 2 results. Wow.
> 
> Avoid!


what's wrong with them ?


----------



## Mescalamba (Feb 22, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> what's wrong with them ?



He most likely means 4K results, which are quite telling why you might want 8GB or rather 11-12GB for 4K.

Also given all those cards have GDDR6 Im curious how they will hold (over time).


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 22, 2019)

Mescalamba said:


> He most likely means 4K results, which are quite telling why you might want 8GB or rather 11-12GB for 4K.
> 
> Also given all those cards have GDDR6 Im curious how they will hold (over time).



This is no more a 4K card the RX 590 is. It's purely aimed at 1080P and in said game it even gives Vega 64 a run for it's money.


----------



## Vayra86 (Feb 22, 2019)

cucker tarlson said:


> what's wrong with them ?



The results are all over the place, really. It shows the card is not very well balanced.


----------



## jabbadap (Feb 23, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> The results are all over the place, really. It shows the card is not very well balanced.



I don't know really. It's right there with the Vegas when they all are in playable frame rates. Only at 4k it drops hard, but then again none of them are really in playable fps anymore. Fine card for 1080p, need a bit tweaks on 1440p and 4k is doable with lowering settings a lot.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Feb 23, 2019)

Vayra86 said:


> The results are all over the place, really. It shows the card is not very well balanced.


I see it match 1070 in Hitman 2,which is where it is overal. is there something wrong with my vision.
Only inconsistent cards I see in the tests are Vegas,creeping close to 1080Ti in some and matching 1070 in others,same pattern in multiple reviews


----------



## Assimilator (Feb 23, 2019)

The fact that this tiny board is able to keep up with, and sometimes beat, the gold standard 1070 is pretty damn amazing. Polaris gets its face smushed even more firmly into the dirt.

Unfortunately this board's layout and voltage controller is actually different to the Gaming X, which means the trick of buying a cheaper variant then flashing a BIOS from a faster variant to open up higher power limits, won't work here (I did this with my 1070 Armor OC). So only course of action is to hope MSI releases an updated BIOS, or someone figures out how to mod Turing BIOSes.



jabbadap said:


> All of these have 8-pin power connector and powerlimit is in range of 120W-140W, which is easily done with one 6-pin. What a waste.



I think 6-pin is effectively dead, using 8-pin regardless means that issues like the RX 480 overdrawing power can never be a problem.


----------



## Super XP (Feb 24, 2019)

All these 1660 ti releases must be due to the pending Navi launch that's suppose completely replace the entire RX 500 series lineups. 
Why else release such a card that is basically not really needed? lol


----------



## Fluffmeister (Feb 24, 2019)

Super XP said:


> All these 1660 ti releases must be due to the pending Navi launch that's suppose completely replace the entire RX 500 series lineups.
> Why else release such a card that is basically not really needed? lol



Well your the time lord, why don't you tell us?

Fact is Turing brings plenty of goodies to the table while AMD shrink turkeys:

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1099379855118995458


----------



## Super XP (Feb 25, 2019)

Lol 
AMD has been playing with its older GPU Design till the new one is ready. Despite this they are doing a great job being competitive.  

IMO the RTX line is a failure.  The reported DOAs are staggering.


----------



## Assimilator (Feb 25, 2019)

Super XP said:


> Lol
> AMD has been playing with its older GPU Design till the new one is ready. Despite this they are doing a great job being competitive.



Thanks for that laugh of the day.



Super XP said:


> IMO the RTX line is a failure.  The reported DOAs are staggering.



According to who? The little fanboy devil sitting on your shoulder?


----------



## Super XP (Feb 25, 2019)

Assimilator said:


> Thanks for that laugh of the day.
> 
> 
> 
> According to who? The little fanboy devil sitting on your shoulder?


https://www.kitguru.net/components/...-an-unusually-high-number-of-failure-reports/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp/18025.html

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/...cting-failure-analysis-crashing-black-screens

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...d-the-least-appealing-gpu-upgrades-in-history

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fo...0-series-launch-you-cant-benchmark-goals/amp/

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/sys...er-100-billion-dollars-in-valuation-33449142/


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/9lnilf


----------



## Mescalamba (Feb 26, 2019)

Assimilator said:


> Thanks for that laugh of the day.
> 
> 
> 
> According to who? The little fanboy devil sitting on your shoulder?



Well, in our country we have little local "ebay" and there sits 2080 Ti for okay-ish price. Reason? Owner got third card in RMA after previous two died and just gave up.

Ofc could be his fault, I wouldnt touch GDDR6 with any kind of OC at all.. also some boards seem to be more durable than others.

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/11/21/rtx_2080_ti_fe_escapes_testing_by_dying_after_8_hours/

Hmm... ofc newer batches seem to be more okay, but who knows. I would really love to know why these cards die.


----------



## 64K (Mar 2, 2019)

Looks like a very nice GPU for 1080p or 1440p but you might have to turn down the settings. I alway try to remind people that they aren't just buying a card to play the games that are already out. Most people upgrade every other generation so you have to consider what might be necessary for the next 4 years. Performance requirements inevitably go up over time.


----------



## Smanci (Mar 2, 2019)

@W1zzard 
Is it possible to have cooler mounting hole spacing mentioned in reviews? It'd be useful especially with these cards that do not have a reference model but might still allow aftermarket coolers if the spacing is OK.


----------



## Super XP (Mar 2, 2019)

Assimilator said:


> *According to who? The little fanboy devil sitting on your shoulder?*



Seeing how you haven't responded yet, I've given you and anybody else Fact Based Info.
Fanboy Devil? Lol I ain't a fanboy, I'm a FACTS Boy. I don't just spew Crap out just because I want to Ya Know. Lol

FYI I own 2 Nvidia GPUs on 2 other PCs I have but use my RX580 8GB for Gaming on my MAIN PC.. Yes the Radeon on my Main PC. Lol


----------



## nguyen (Mar 4, 2019)

Super XP said:


> Seeing how you haven't responded yet, I've given you and anybody else Fact Based Info.
> Fanboy Devil? Lol I ain't a fanboy, I'm a FACTS Boy. I don't just spew Crap out just because I want to Ya Know. Lol
> 
> FYI I own 2 Nvidia GPUs on 2 other PCs I have but use my RX580 8GB for Gaming on my MAIN PC.. Yes the Radeon on my Main PC. Lol



Wow such fun facts you gave, now check out this vid:










Der8auer confirmed that AIB 2080 Ti failure rates are within normal range, according to retailer Caseking. Seems like Nvidia itself is not doing a good job QA for their FE model. AIB models are doing fine. I bought an Asus 2080 Ti turbo for myself and a Gigabyte 2080 Ti Gaming for a friend since dec 2018 and both are running fine (Micron RAM).

Back to topic: MSI Ventus 1660Ti is 2.5 times more efficient than RX 590 lol, wondering what kinda voodoo magic can AMD put into Navi to close that much of an efficiency gap.


----------



## ArbitraryAffection (Mar 4, 2019)

Fluffmeister said:


> Well your the time lord, why don't you tell us?
> 
> Fact is Turing brings plenty of goodies to the table while AMD shrink turkeys:
> 
> __ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1099379855118995458


Vega also brought some cool features in its architecture but no one was willing to use them, because they don't have the marketshare. NVIDIA does. So you see Radeon is between a rock and a hard-place. (I am of course talking about NGG Fast Path + Primitive Shaders, _and _2x FP16). Now that Nvidia finally caught up to feature parity with GCN5, maybe that latter one will get some more use 



Assimilator said:


> Thanks for that laugh of the day.


Radeon is really competitive, and when you consider budget vs budget (just like Ryzen) they are doing pretty well actually. It's just unfortunate that many people choose GeForce over Radeon when Radeon offers a better solution (RX 570, V56 are examples in current lineup) because the brand isn't as strong. But yes I do admit that in the high-end from 2070 upwards Nvidia is pretty much competing with themselves. I don't really like the Radeon VII, and i do believe that RTX 2080 is a better gaming graphic card but both are overpriced IMO.

Navi, or the next-gen architecture (Arcturus?) from Radeon should bring them back to the top with regards to feature set. Hopefully, as i said, now that Nvidia has caught up, maybe devs will start using them instead of re-hashed DX11 engines that favour Pascal and prior gens 



nguyen said:


> Back to topic: MSI Ventus 1660Ti is 2.5 times more efficient than RX 590 lol, wondering what kinda voodoo magic can AMD put into Navi to close that much of an efficiency gap.


Polaris 30 is pushed right out of its efficiency zone, TU116 is not. Turing is _nowhere near_ 2.5x as efficient when both are in their sweetspots. (But yes, Nvidia is still more efficient).


----------



## Nxodus (Mar 23, 2019)

I don't know why team AMD is commenting so hard here, do you folks have inferiority complex or what is going on?


----------

