While something like Nvidia’s RTX 3080 is truly impressive, it’s not the right graphics card for every gamer. The GTX 16 series cards offer solid performance at a much lower price, which is great for 1080p gamers or those interested in esports titles, especially now that they also enjoy FSR support. The GTX 1660 is the best of the bunch, but more variants are available. What to choose between GTX 1660 Super, GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660?
We throw all three cards into the ring to see how they hold up. There are many differences between these cards, some major and some minor. Anyway, one thing is clear: not all are the same.
If you want to consider other GPUs, check out our guide to the best graphics cards, regardless of your budget. That might be a good idea if you’re in the market to build a PC right now, as supply shortages have pushed many of Nvidia’s 16-series cards off shelves.
Prices and availability
The Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti was the first of Nvidia’s GTX 16 series – the entry-level alternative to the RTX graphics lineup and a replacement for the more modest GTX 10 series cards. It lacked the larger number of CUDA cores, RT and Tensor cores, and expansive feature sets of RTX cards, but was based on the same 12nm Turing architecture. It debuted on February 22, 2019, followed shortly thereafter on March 14 by the GTX 1660, a card with fewer CUDA cores and slower memory.
The Nvidia GTX 1660 Super was released on October 29, 2019 and is designed to be between the two existing 1660 cards in both price and performance.
All three cards are out of stock at retailers thanks to the current GPU shortage. There are several ways to get a card around the MSRP, including the EVGA Queue system and Newegg Shuffle. However, none of these programs have options for any 1660 model. If you’ve settled on any 1660 variant, your best bets are to call local dealers like Micro Center and Best Buy, or visit the used car market.
EVGA’s queue system and Newegg Shuffle may not feature 1660 models, but they do have much more powerful RTX 30-series graphics cards. If you’re lucky, you can get an RTX 3060 through one of these programs for less than the price of a used 1660, and the 3060 will perform much better.
Performance
The GTX 1660 cards aren’t particularly different in terms of performance, but some offer more performance than others.
| gtx1660 | GTX 1660 Cool | GTX 1660Ti | |
| GPUs | TU116-300 | TU116-300 | TU116-400 |
| CUDA cores | 1,408 | 1,408 | 1,536 |
| basic class | 1530MHz | 1530MHz | 1500MHz |
| turn up the clock | 1785MHz | 1785MHz | 1770MHz |
| Memory | 6GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 |
| memory speed | 8Gb/s | 14Gb/s | 12Gb/s |
| TDP | 120w | 125w | 120w |
When the GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti debuted in early 2019, the obvious differences between the two were a 9% difference in CUDA cores and significantly faster memory on the Ti. The GTX 1660 Super, on the other hand, is less of a bridge GPU and more of a 1660 Ti alternative. It has a slightly higher TDP, slightly higher clock speed, and faster memory. It has the same number of GPUs and CUDA cores as the standard 1660, putting it well below the 1660 Ti in terms of raw performance, but it’s a close race.
In practice, this results in an oddly complex line of graphics cards. The GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti are clearly defined as the top and bottom of this trio of cards, but the GTX 1660 Super is barely weaker than the 1660 Ti. In some tests, we saw it perform only 2% worse. That’s an almost negligible difference, and certainly problematic for the Ti, since the difference between the two is nearly $50, which at this price level is dramatic.
Although it depends on the game. Especially at 1080p, the 1660 Super flies ahead of its Ti and normal variants in resident evil 2. However, the Ti version switches places with Super in shadow Of The Tomb Raider, and the two are almost identical battlefield v The only constant between games is the regular GTX 1660. The Super and Ti variants are underpowered, if only by a small margin.
Different factory-cooled and overclocked versions of each card can even things out on the price scale, but the GTX 1660 Super takes a significant bite out of the 1660 Ti market, giving it a breather.
Ray tracing, Reshade, NULL
One of the biggest differences between Nvidia’s GTX and its RTX graphics cards is that the latter has RT cores and Tensor cores for ray tracing and deep learning supersampling acceleration. GTX graphics cards, including the 16 series, can perform ray tracing calculations, but without high levels of general computing performance (like the 3080 Ti, for example), they are largely unplayable. The GTX 1660 Super is no better than the GTX 1070, which is pretty bad.
DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is also not offered with these cards, as they lack the Tensor cores to support it. What they can do, however, is take advantage of Nvidia’s other driver-level features. All three GTX 1660s support Nvidia’s Ultra Low Latency (NULL) technology, for faster in-game response during competitive gaming. They can also enjoy all the post-processing effects introduced with Nvidia’s Reshade support.
New GeForce Gaming Features: ReShade, Low Latency, and Image Sharpening
Reshade isn’t new – gamers have enjoyed its effects on AMD and Nvidia GPUs for years – but now it’s officially supported and integrated through the Nvidia control panel. All three 1660s fully support it. But due to the slight performance drop suffered by some processing effects and filters, the 1660 Ti should be better equipped for this. We doubt Super will lag too far behind.
The 1660 and 1660 Ti seem super redundant
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Nvidia made an intriguing move by introducing the GTX 1660 Super. It’s an excellent card that offers significantly better performance than the GTX 1660 for around the same price. That means we’ll almost always recommend the Super over the stock 1660. But what about the Ti?
If you were to line up three 1660s side by side, the 1660 Ti would prove to be the most capable option available, but only by a bit. If you know the ins and outs of gaming and PC manufacturing, you can close that small gap fairly quickly by running your CPU at a higher clock speed.
Ultimately, we recommend Super for gamers, though Ti performs slightly better for some titles. Even so, it’s hard for us to recommend cards right now because no retailer currently has any of these three cards in stock. It might be better to try to find a 3060 Ti or wait for the release of a newer 3060. (Though we always recommend waiting for third-party benchmarks.)
At the moment, the current series of cards is all that AMD can offer because no other card matches the price and quality of these products. The RX 6800 and 6800 XT are still impressive cards, so our guess is that AMD will release cheaper cards based on the same architecture sometime in 2021.
editor’s recommendations
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn