Nvidia's 250-euro Graphics Card

Nvidia's 250-euro Graphics Card oct 2019

With the GTX 1660 Super, Nvidia brings a Turing- based graphics card to preempt AMD's Radeon RX 5500. Thanks to GDDR6 memory, the performance of the Geforce is right, because it clocks obscure high.

For Nvidia 2019 was so far only a limited super year: sales and profits were lower compared to last year, especially the gaming division broke down massively. In order to boost sales of the Geforce RTX and keep its market share advantage over AMD, Nvidia, therefore, released super versions of the Geforce RTX 2080, the Geforce RTX 2070 and the Geforce RTX 2060.

With regard to the Radeon RX 5500 (XT), which will be released in the next few weeks, the super upgrade also applies to the GTX cards. The first is the Geforce GTX 1660 Super. From the end of November 2019, the cheaper GeForce GTX 1650 Super will follow. Today we test the GeForce GTX 1660 Super for 250 Euro, which curiously uses faster video memory than the nominally better Geforce GTX 1660 Ti.

The technical basis of the Geforce GTX 1660 (test), the Geforce GTX 1660 Super and the Geforce GTX 1660 Ti (test) is always the same graphics chip: The so-called TU116 is a Turing GPU as in the Geforce RTX but lacks the eponymous RT cores for raytracing acceleration (more precisely, the BVH ) and the tensor cores for the DLSS called anti-aliasing. Other changes compared to previous Pascal-based GPUs such as the GP106 of the very popular Geforce GTX 1060 are significantly larger and faster L1 / L2 caches and dedicated INT32 parallel to the FP32 cores.

	GTX 1660 Ti	GTX 1660 Super	GTX 1660	GTX 1650 Super	GTX 1650
GPU	TU116-400-A1	TU116	TU116-300-A1	TU116	TU117-300-A1
ALUs	1536	1408	1408	1280	896
TMU	96	88	88	80	56
Base / Boost	1,500 / 1,770 MHz	1,530 / 1,785 MHz	1,530 / 1,785 MHz	1,530 / 1,725 ​​MHz	1,485 / 1,665 MHz
Storage	6 GB GDDR6	6 GB GDDR6	6 GB GDDR5	4 GB GDDR6	4 GB GDDR5
interface	192 bits @ 6 GHz	192 bits @ 7 GHz	192 bits @ 4 GHz	128 bits @ 6 GHz	128 bits @ 4 GHz
ROPs	48	48	48	32	32
Board power	120 watts	125 watts	120 watts	100 watts	75 watts
power plug	8P	8P	8P	6P	none

Specifications of the Geforce GTX 16xx

In order to sell the Geforce GTX 1660 Ti from the Geforce GTX 1660, Nvidia releases only 1,408 of the 1,536 shader units. However, the video memory clocks at each 192-bit wide interface dramatically higher: The GeForce GTX 1660 uses GDDR5 with 4 GB / s, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, however GDDR6 with 6 GB / s for whopping 50 percent more data transfer rate. However, the Geforce GTX 1660 Super does not take a middle ground but has different specifications.

It uses 1,402 ALUs like the GeForce GTX 1660 but combines them with GDDR6 video memory like the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. But instead of - let's say - 5 GBit / s, the Geforce GTX 1660 Super from Nvidia with 7 GBit / s flooded storage equipped. So the card has less processing power than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, but almost 17 percent more bandwidth. The advantage for Nvidia's partner is that the same boards can be used for the Geforce GTX 1660 Super and the Geforce GTX 1660 Ti.

The extent to which the higher bandwidth is noticeable depends on the particular game, the engine, its implementation, and finally, the scene used and the graphics settings. Between the Geforce GTX 1660 and the GeForce GTX, 1660 Ti was previously about 16 percent, with the lead of the Ti model increases with increasing resolution. Taken on the Geforce GTX 1660 Super, this provides interesting results.

Availability and conclusion

The GeForce GTX 1660 Super costs at least 245 euros, this is the official announcement from Nvidia. The Geforce GTX 1660 Super Twin Fan we tested is a bit higher at 250 Euros, it is a standard clock model. The Geforce GTX 1660 and the Geforce GTX 1660 Ti remain in the trade, which is why three Nvidia cards between 200 euros and 300 euros are available.

Conclusion

With the GeForce GTX 1660 Super Nvidia wants to achieve a little extra distance to the upcoming Radeon RX 5500, so customers do not compete. Although the Geforce GTX 1660 Super surprises with high-clocking GDDR6 video memory, the performance is as expected between the Geforce GTX 1660 and the Geforce GTX 1660 Ti. The efficiency suffers a bit, yet the Geforce GTX 1660 Super needs 100 watts less than the Loosely slightly slower (and cheaper) Radeon RX 590 from AMD.

The Twin Fan from Zotac is a good model of the GeForce GTX 1660 Super because it is quiet at idle as under load and runs at standard speed. That makes sense, because in this performance class higher frequencies often mean a hefty surcharge with very little extra power. For the time being, however, we would advise being patient where exactly the Radeon RX 5500 is sorted in terms of speed and price.

On top of that, the sale of the Radeon RX 590 is expected to yield a few bargains, and the regular GeForce GTX 1660 could go down in price due to the super reissue. Until then, even users of older Nvidia cards will benefit from the competition, as driver functions such as image sharpening in the Control Panel and the Reshade filters in the Geforce Experience make for more fun.