MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Gaming X 6 GB Review 0

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Gaming X 6 GB Review

Architecture & Features »

Introduction

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NVIDIA launched its GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card, doubling down on its idea of Turing-based GeForce GTX graphics cards that lack ray-tracing capabilities, but feature performance uplifts at normal raster graphics. At $280, the GTX 1660 Ti from last month ended up leagues ahead of the similarly priced and recently launched Radeon RX 590 and could play any game at 1080p with details maxed out, and 1440p with a little tweaking. At its price point, though, the GTX 1660 Ti wasn't really a successor to the current mainstream market leader in terms of sheer sales, the GTX 1060 6 GB. That distinction now goes to the GTX 1660.

At $220, the GTX 1660 is built to a cost, and NVIDIA has made sure it has ample headroom to cut costs further in the future if AMD comes out with competitive products in this segment, such as the fabled "Navi." It is carved out of the same 12 nm "TU116" silicon as the GTX 1660 Ti with fewer CUDA cores and slower 8 Gbps GDDR5 memory replacing 12 Gbps GDDR6. NVIDIA is hence looking to offer a product that's incrementally faster than the GTX 1060 6 GB and anything AMD has to offer in this segment, which can still deliver on Full HD gameplay with maximum quality.



As we detailed the "TU116" in our GTX 1660 Ti reviews, this silicon is derived from the "Turing" architecture by removing RT cores and tensor cores, leaving just the CUDA cores, which have the same IPC and clock-speed uplifts as any other RTX 20-series card. The target audience for the GTX 1660 is that colossal mass of gamers into online multiplayer e-Sports titles and just in need a card that can keep them ticking at Full HD, perhaps even at high refresh rates.

NVIDIA carved the GTX 1660 out of the "TU116" silicon by disabling 2 out of 24 streaming multiprocessors, resulting in a CUDA core count of 1,408 and 88 TMUs, which is still higher than what the "Pascal" based GTX 1060 6 GB packs. With 48 ROPs and a 192-bit GDDR5 memory bus driving 6 GB of memory, the rendering and memory subsystem is practically carried over.

Today, we have with us the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Gaming X, the company's premium offering based on this GPU, featuring its Twin Frozr 7 cooling solution, a back-plate, idle fan-stop, and factory-overclocked speeds.

GeForce GTX 1660 Market Segment Analysis
 PriceShader
Units
ROPsCore
Clock
Boost
Clock
Memory
Clock
GPUTransistorsMemory
GTX 1050$140640321354 MHz1455 MHz1752 MHzGP1073300M2 GB, GDDR5, 128-bit
GTX 1050 Ti$180 768321290 MHz1392 MHz1752 MHzGP1073300M4 GB, GDDR5, 128-bit
RX 570$130 2048321168 MHz1244 MHz1750 MHzEllesmere5700M4 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX 580$170 2304321257 MHz1340 MHz2000 MHzEllesmere5700M8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1060 3 GB$1851152481506 MHz1708 MHz2002 MHzGP1064400M3 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1060$2101280481506 MHz1708 MHz2002 MHzGP1064400M6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
RX 590$2402304321469 MHz1545 MHz2000 MHzPolaris 305700M8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1660$220 1408481530 MHz1785 MHz2000 MHzTU1166600M6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
MSI GTX 1660
Gaming X
$2501408481530 MHz1860 MHz2000 MHzTU1166600M6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1070$3101920641506 MHz1683 MHz2002 MHzGP1047200M8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RX Vega 56$320 3584641156 MHz1471 MHz800 MHzVega 1012500M8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Ti$280 1536481500 MHz1770 MHz1500 MHzTU1166600M6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1070 Ti$4502432641607 MHz1683 MHz2000 MHzGP1047200M8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
RTX 2060 FE$3501920481365 MHz1680 MHz1750 MHzTU10610800M6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
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Nov 2nd, 2024 11:26 EDT change timezone

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