The GTX 1660 was first released by Nvidia on March 14, 2019. Its suggested retail price (MSRP) was $219. Micro-Star International (MSI), a Taiwanese company and Nvidia partner known for its high-quality products, also released its MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X 6G graphics card. Currently, this card is available online for approximately €300.
Introducing the GTX 1660 graphics card
RGB LED lighting for a modern look. The GTX 1660 comes with 6GB of memory . Its GPU reaches a maximum boost clock speed of 1.86 GHz . It uses a PCIe 16x 3.0 interface for installation in your desktop PC's CPU. The GTX 1660 measures 24.7 x 12.7 x 4.6 centimeters (L x W x H) and weighs 845 grams. The GTX 1660 has four video outputs: three DisplayPort and one HDMI.
Efficient cooling with twin frozr 7
For cooling, the card features a heatsink system with two axial fans. It's a 7th generation Twin Frozr cooling system that cools the GPU and memory with over 22% greater efficiency compared to traditional blade-type cooling systems. This system consists of Torx 3.0 fans and a heatsink with a rather unique design. All of this contributes to quiet cooling. The maximum GPU temperature is 95°C. The cooling system automatically shuts off when the GPU temperature falls below 60°C.
Performance and detailed specifications of the GTX 1660
The card's GPU was manufactured using a 12-nanometer . It contains 6.6 billion transistors . These transistors, integrated into the GPU, switch at 1.53 GHz under normal use. The card features a TU116 chip with a Turing architecture. The GPU has 1408 CUDA cores . The card's 6 GB of memory is GDDR5, operating at 8 GHz with a 192 -bit memory bus . This represents a memory bandwidth of 192.1 GB/s.
This card has a texture speed of 157.1. In comparison, another, more powerful card, the Radeon RX 6900 XT, has a texture speed of 771.2.
This card supports the following APIs: DirectX 12, shader 6.5, OpenGL 4.6, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.2.131, CUDA 7.5… On the software side, the following features are supported: GeForce broadcasting, NVIDIA GeForce Experience, NVIDIA Ansel, NVIDIA Highlights, NVIDIA G-SYNC.
GeForce Broadcasting is designed to let you stream your gaming sessions to YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, Discord, or Twitch. To do this, the OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) software perfectly manages the hardware encoder built into the GTX 1660. This allows for a 15% increase in energy efficiency. Everything is optimized by AI to transform your PC into a true livestreaming studio. You can also make video calls with automatic cropping and noise reduction.
You can stream your gameplay with exceptional graphics quality and incredibly smooth rendering. This allows you to share your gaming highlights with video quality encoded directly at the hardware level by the GPU.
With NVIDIA GeForce Experience , you can share your livestreams and gameplay videos with minimal impact on performance. NVIDIA GeForce Experience uses NVIDIA ShadowPlay . GeForce Experience also lets you automatically manage your graphics driver updates. You'll be notified when new driver versions are available, and drivers will be updated with a single click, even while a game is running.
GeForce Experience also allows for automatic configuration of your favorite games' settings, taking into account the best configurations found for users in cloud gaming. GeForce Experience considers the GPU, CPU, and display used.
The NVIDIA Ansel, on the other hand, allows you to capture high-resolution photos with a 360° HDR/Stereo view. You can also apply filters in post-processing with NVIDIA Freestyle .
GTX 1660 graphics card benchmarking
On Fortnite, at 720p resolution, the card manages to deliver 235 frames per second. At ultra 1080p, the frame rate is around 97.5 FPS. At 4K, the video output displays 15 FPS.
Compared to cards with similar performance, the GeForce GTX 980 is 4% slower than the GTX 1660, while the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is 5.55% faster. The GeForce GTX 1660 Super, on the other hand, is 9.68% faster than the GeForce GTX 1660.
On G3DMark, the GTX 1660 achieved a score of 11,551. It ranks between the Radeon RX 580 (G3DMark score of 8,747) and the GeForce GTX 1070 (G3DMark score of 13,305). The highest-performing card is the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER , which obtained a G3DMark score of 18,108, followed by the Radeon RX 5700 XT with a score of 16,721.
Tested on 3DMark, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 scores 5450. This places it below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q , which scores 5582 in 3DMark. The NVIDIA GTX TITAN X performs slightly worse with a score of 5299.
Compared to MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 is very well positioned. Its closest competitors, the AMD Radeon R9 380X and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060-3GB, have 3DMark scores of 3021 and 3829, respectively.
Comparing the GeForce GTX 1660 with the GeForce GTX 1660 Super , the latter is 9.7% more powerful. However, the Nvidia GTX 1660 has the advantage of being less expensive. The GTX 1660 series is also more energy-efficient. The OEM GeForce GTX 1660 consumes 120 watts, while its sibling, the GTX 1660 Super, consumes 125 watts. For the MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X, MSI specifies a TDP of 130 watts. Therefore, the minimum recommended power supply
In conclusion, the GeForce GTX 1660 offers better value for money compared to its competitors in its category. It's a recommended card for gamers who want to play in Full HD. However, it's not designed for 4K resolution. It doesn't yet support ray tracing, which is available on Nvidia cards from the 2000 series and above. The various supported software features allow you to optimize the card's performance. The GeForce GTX 1660 is available online for around €300.
