Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super Review

Merely in time for the holiday shopping flavor, we have not one but ii new Super graphics cards from Nvidia.

For those of you not keeping tabs, we now take the GTX 1660 for $220, the GTX 1660 Ti for $280, the RTX 2060 for $350 and the RTX 2060 Super for $400. In the price range between $200 and $400 in that location were already 4 GeForce options, but equally of today we now have half-dozen. The GTX 1660 Super slots in at $230 and there'southward likewise the 1650 Super coming side by side month, no word on pricing yet.

So what'due south new on the GTX 1660 Super? Not a lot, to be honest but the original GTX 1660 was pretty skillful already. Allow'southward review information technology spec past spec: we get the exact same GPU equally the non-super, base model GTX 1660. It has the same 22 SM units / 1408 CUDA cores which are clocked at 1530 MHz with the same GPU heave clock of 1785 MHz, it carries the same 88 texture units resulting in the aforementioned texel fill rate.

In other words, it'due south the exact aforementioned 12nm 284mm2 die comprised of half dozen.half-dozen billion transistors. Information technology besides has a 6GB VRAM buffer, but it's here where the changes have been fabricated. Nvidia has upgraded the 8 Gb/s GDDR5 memory of the standard 1660 to xiv Gb/s GDDR6 memory and this sees a massive 75% increment in retentivity bandwidth. In fact, this provides the 1660 Super with even more memory bandwidth than the Ti model.

This ways the GTX 1660 Super comes with the same spec GDDR6 memory that you'll find on the RTX 2060, 2060 Super, 2070, 2070 Super, 2080, 2080 Ti and even the Titan RTX.

Increasing the MSRP past simply $10 over the base model seems like a pretty good deal as that'south just a four% price hike for a 75% increase in retention bandwidth which should mostly, upshot in double digit performance gains.

Before nosotros get into the benchmarks, here'southward a quick epitomize of the $200 - $300 cost segment this twelvemonth. Way dorsum in February we got the first GTX 1660 serial GPU, the $280 Ti model. In our launch-day review we concluded information technology was the first GPU release in some time that nosotros'd come away feeling completely pleased. The 1660 Ti offered GTX 1070-like performance for a slight toll premium over the GTX 1060 6GB. Without any competition from AMD it was a pretty expert result.

A month later we got the standard 1660 and we had cipher bad to say about it, not even anything remotely negative. The 1660 was a expert value offering from Nvidia and it completely wiped out the GTX 1060 serial along with the RX 580 and 590, though the 1660 Ti really took care of the 590.

That was until later in the year when the Radeon RX 590 dropped from around $300 to nearly $200. All of a sudden it was a contender again. By slashing prices AMD has managed to remain relevant in the upkeep and mainstream GPU market with their older RX 500 serial GPUs, and in fact managed to become the go to option beneath $200. And that remains the example today. The $200 RX 590 is no doubt going to exist thorn in the $230 GTX 1660 Super'south side. To friction match the value of the RX 590, the new GTX 1660 Super may need to deliver 1660 Ti-like functioning.

For testing we used our usual GPU examination machine sporting a Cadre i9-9900K clocked at five GHz with 16GB of DDR4-3400 memory. On manus nosotros have two GTX 1660 Super models, the MSI Gaming X and Gigabyte Gaming OC, and both evangelize the exact same performance, typically operating at 1965 MHz. The MSI Gaming X peaked at 63 C in our F1 2022 stress test and with a fan speed of 1700 RPM it was very quiet. The Gigabyte Gaming OC ran ane caste cooler for the nearly office, though it did peak at 65 C now and then, the fans also spun 100 RPM faster though both cards were overall very quiet when gaming. We've looked at 17 games in full, all tested at 1080p and 1440p.

Benchmarks

First up nosotros have Shadow of the Tomb Raider and here the new 1660 Super was 4% faster than the base of operations model. We guess that'southward in line with the iv% cost hike. Not exactly an exciting result merely it was significantly faster than the RX 590, so in that location's that.

Nosotros see a dramatic improvement when testing with Only Crusade 4. This time the 1660 Super was 12% faster than the base model, making it just a single frame slower than the 1660 Ti. As a result nosotros're looking at GTX 1070-like performance in this championship, and that's a GPU that used to cost $400 near 3.five years ago. Not amazing progress, merely welcome to 2022.

Resident Evil 2 shows almost no performance uplift for the 1660 Super over the standard 1660, just a ~2% increment for the average frame rate. Information technology besides managed to match the RX 590.

Nosotros come across a nine% performance comeback for the 1660 Super over the base model, taking the boilerplate frame rate in Rainbow Six Siege from 118 fps to 129 fps and that meant it was only five% slower than the Ti model.

Nosotros see another solid performance uplift, this time when testing with Battlefield Five. A thirteen% increase over the base model is the all-time result we've seen yet. This likewise placed the 1660 Super just ahead of the RX 590.

A balmy three% performance increment is seen in Far Weep New Dawn, taking the frame charge per unit from 87 fps up to 90 fps and that meant the 1660 Super was 11% slower than the Ti model.

Testing with The Division ii sees the 1660 Super land right between the base model 1660 and the Ti version. That means with 74 fps on boilerplate the faster retentiveness resulted in a ix% functioning uplift.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a very memory sensitive championship as here the 1660 Super enjoys a 13% performance boost thanks to the faster retentivity and that placed it within a few frames of the more expensive Ti model.

We see a mild 3% operation comeback in Prey, then not a practiced result every bit anything less than a 4% increase makes the 1660 Super "worse" value than the 1660.

As was the case with Battlefield V, we encounter solid gains for the 1660 Super in Star Wars Battlefront II, here it was nine% faster than the base of operations model. It was still 7% behind the 1660 Ti, but that'due south a great result for the new $230 GPU.

Nosotros've seen this in a few games and with Projection Cars 2 we take all the same another case where the extra retentivity bandwidth leads to no performance uplift, only an extra frame for the 1660 Super over the non-super version.

Nvidia did claim up to 20% functioning gains and we have our first example of that here with Monster Hunter Earth. The 1660 Super was good for 67 fps on average and that makes it twenty% faster than the standard 1660 and merely 7% slower than the 1660 Ti.

For Award sees the 1660 Super deliver another significant performance improvement over the base model, this time an eighteen% increment in frame rate is seen and that meant the Super was just 5% slower than the 1660 Ti.

The Witcher iii shows our all-time 1660 Super result yet. This time it was 25% faster than the base of operations model 1660 (nosotros triple checked). This huge jump means the 1660 Super is much faster than the standard 1660 and the RX 590.

Solid performance gains can as well exist seen when testing with Sniper Elite four, the 1660 Super was xiv% faster than the base model and just 4% slower than the Ti model, so another first-class result.

Kingdom Come up Deliverance has the 1660 Super performing very well again, beating the base model by a 9% margin to come up in just iii fps behind the 1660 Ti.

Finishing up the gaming benchmarks nosotros have Middle-earth Shadow of War and here the 1660 Super was 19% faster than the base model and just 3% slower than the Ti version, so again some other excellent effect.

Ability Consumption

Hither's a quick expect at total system consumption and equally yous can see the 1660 Super sucks down a trivial more power than even the Ti model. Conspicuously that higher clocked GDDR6 memory is power hungry and hither nosotros run into an increment on total system draw by 9% over the standard 1660.

Performance Summary

Admittedly the new GeForce GTX 1660 Super looks much amend in a number of games than we were expecting. There were a few titles with meaningless gains, but overall the results expect very positive.

Let'southward have a await at the boilerplate frame rates across all 17 games tested at 1080p...

Hither we see that the new GTX 1660 Super delivered 88 fps on boilerplate across the entire range of games tested. That made information technology x% faster than the base model 1660 and just vi% slower than the 1660 Ti. Given it costs just iv% more than the 1660 and 22% less than the 1660 Ti, that seems similar a good result.

At times the 1660 Super was able to match the GTX 1070, but overall it was a tad slower. Still it is 13% faster than the RX 590, which volition put them within hitting distance on a cost per frame basis.

It's hard to predict exact pricing but considering all regular GTX 1660 cards are priced at $230 or more, we are working under the assumption that the 1660 Super volition come in at $240. At this price the Super is meliorate value than existing GTX 1660 models and much better value than the 1660 Ti.

At the intended $230 MSRP, the GTX 1660 Super would cost just two% more per frame than the RX 590 and that makes it the improve pick given the profoundly reduced ability consumption. At $240 it may still be the correct pick for about, but anything more than than that and you could argue strongly for the RX 590 at $200.

Wrap Up

When nosotros offset saw the specifications for the GTX 1660 Super, we didn't know what to brand of it. The 75% increase in retentivity bandwidth is huge, but ultimately if the GPU wasn't memory starved to begin with, that would but end up beingness a big number on newspaper that wouldn't interpret into meaningful gains in the existent world.

We saw a little bit of that in games similar Projection Cars 2, Prey and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Simply we also saw a lot of gains in the vicinity of vii-13%, which is how we arrived at a x% improvement on average. There were even a few titles such as The Witcher 3, For Honour and Monster Hunter Globe which saw gains in the 18 to 25% range. For a mere $10 extra over the base 1660, nosotros run across this as a worthwhile update.

As expected, the performance uplift isn't universal, only we saw plenty gains for this new GPU to get the 'Super' moniker.

When compared to the AMD competition, the GTX 1660 Super is a good fleck faster than the Radeon RX 590, beating it overall by a thirteen% margin. But the Radeon's appeal is on pricing and that will determine which way y'all should get. If Nvidia does offer the 1660 Super at $230 then we'd buy it over a $200 RX 590 and that was probably their intention all along.