Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super Review: Huge Memory Bandwidth Jump

[bluetooth fairy]

It'll last plenty through 2020.

The problem for ALL of these lower midrange cards is 2021, because new consoles will massively raise the bar for multi platform games releasing the year after they launch. All of a sudden every high end multi platform game will be designed for at least 6 decent Zen 2 cores and a GPU potentially as fast as a 5700, although most likely a tad below it.

One mitigating factor is those consoles will still be focused on 4K and 30FPS with most high end titles. So as long as you have a strong contender such as this you'll be fine for 1080p 60FPS for a while longer.

Even saying THAT by the time the consoles get momentum Nvidia will have long released the replacements for all of their cards currently on sale. They'll all be much faster because of the significant leap to 7nm. In a years time you'll probably find RTX2060S performance is in the same market slot as this card is right now.

Thanks for reply, but I'm not sure that I really needed such a lecture. I was just using data from the TS article (and also from the TPU 1660s article) to try predict 1660s life time at 1080p with ultra graphics settings. I tried to say a word and point on what actual data it is based on. I believe that everyone is capable of making basic conclusions from the data I have used. Next-gen consoles and 2021 were not the topic I wanted to discuss.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Thanks for reply, but I'm not sure that I really needed such a lecture. I was just using data from the TS article (and also from the TPU 1660s article) to try predict 1660s life time at 1080p with ultra graphics settings. I tried to say a word and point on what actual data it is based on. I believe that everyone is capable of making basic conclusions from the data I have used. Next-gen consoles and 2021 were not the topic I wanted to discuss.

You used your chosen extrapolations to predict an unknown future, I used my awareness of significant upcoming shifts in gaming industry hardware standards to shape my own vision.

This is an open forum. If you feel like joining in speculation about the future then all relevant factors are up for discussion, whether you want to accept that or not. The easy way to not get involved in an existing discussion is to not reply to someone's post in the first place. Perhaps create for yourself an original line of thought if that is an inconvenience to you. ?

 

[NightAntilli]

I’m sorry but you are just wrong. I’m so fed up of hearing this guff that AMD equal Nvidia in driver support. This article demonstrates the stability of the drivers. Fine, AMD drivers are perfectly stable in games. But they have way way more bugs and glitches than Nvidia. The amount of time I have spent in my life that AMD drivers have cost me to perform windows reinstalls because the driver install corrupted because of something stupid like having an open programme in the background.

The Nvidia driver experience is far superior. Not only are they easy to install, they have less bugs and come out more often and more promptly after game releases. I deeply pity anyone who thinks AMD has parity with Nvidia in this department.

Anecdotal evidence... And also;

I've owned both (well still do) and in my experience the AMD driver problems have been on a par with nVidia (I still have to close my animated backgroud program when upgrading nVidia drivers as it causes a system crash every time) . nVidia drivers updates for laptops seem to be a 50-50 on whether they upgrade nicely (frequently get the device not installed error part way through as the system is using the lower power onboard intel). With AMD the red screen of death was a bit of a problem prior to crimson but the latest issues have been win 10 related and not AMD (win 10 auto downloading the wrong drivers causing boot loop). So to be honest not much to pick between them in my experience (YMMV).

So yeah, just like fadingfool said, YMMV. I pity anyone that still is touting the same thing of over a decade ago.
AMD's interface is even superior now. They release drivers basically monthly, so, I don't know where the complaint of lack of driver support for games is coming from.
Anyone can submit a complaint of the drivers, and they will work on it.

I really don't see the issue, other than simply mind share and repetition. The one independent investigation is being dismissed because of anecdotal evidence...
Yeah... That's how far the absurdity has come regarding the mentality of PC gamers...

Bonus;

It still does mean that the RX 590 has just become basically obsolete. So your original point still stands.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

You used your chosen extrapolations to predict an unknown future, I used my awareness of significant upcoming shifts in gaming industry hardware standards to shape my own vision.

This is an open forum. If you feel like joining in speculation about the future then all relevant factors are up for discussion, whether you want to accept that or not. The easy way to not get involved in an existing discussion is to not reply to someone's post in the first place. Perhaps create for yourself an original line of thought if that is an inconvenience to you. ?

I used to speak for myself and stay in touch with the original review. Speculations in the comments section? Ok, when under specific news posts (we have more than enough of them here on TS). Advices? Thanks, when I'm asking. As simple as that.

All in all, 1660S is a good thing for now. This is where we didn't split in our opinions.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Anecdotal evidence... And also;


So yeah, just like fadingfool said, YMMV. I pity anyone that still is touting the same thing of over a decade ago.
AMD's interface is even superior now. They release drivers basically monthly, so, I don't know where the complaint of lack of driver support for games is coming from.
Anyone can submit a complaint of the drivers, and they will work on it.

I really don't see the issue, other than simply mind share and repetition. The one independent investigation is being dismissed because of anecdotal evidence...
Yeah... That's how far the absurdity has come regarding the mentality of PC gamers...

Bonus;

It still does mean that the RX 590 has just become basically obsolete. So your original point still stands.

We really have to agree to disagree. From my experience and understanding there isn’t a debate. AMDs drivers do not match up to the quality of Nvidias. There is plenty of real evidence. Nvidia release far more WHQL drivers than AMD (look up what that means). And also look how quickly after a new release Nvidia get a driver out compared to AMD. Look up how long AMD fix their known issues (this info is on the websites and forums of both respective companies). You are simply factually incorrect to claim they have parity.

Anyone who thinks otherwise usually has an agenda to make AMD look better than they are for some reason (often referred to as fanboyism). Or simply hasn’t experienced both manufacturers. From my experience, most people who have used AMD can agree.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy AMD. But their equivalent cards need to be cheaper or faster than Nvidia to mitigate the factually worse driver support you get with them.
P.S. stop watching Adored TV. He talks absolute nonsense.

 

[Vulcanproject]

I used to speak for myself and stay in touch with the original review. Speculations in the comments section? Ok, when under specific news posts (we have more than enough of them here on TS). Advices? Thanks, when I'm asking. As simple as that.

All in all, 1660S is a good thing for now. This is where we didn't split in our opinions.

It seems you must be unaware that commenting under specific news posts is the same as commenting in the forum.

When talking about the future then yes, unless you have a time machine it is speculation. Idle certainly. Entertaining and stimulating debate? Hopefully. I consider that to be mostly the point of these everyday interactions.

In the meantime if you have a problem and don't want to join in then you know where the door is, you don't have to announce your disinterest on each specific topic prior to leaving. I'm sure that you might consider it advice, I just consider that common sense.

I feel the 1660 Super is a good card for now and for the foreseeable future, at least until a new generation of consoles take hold. It's no secret that historically, cards with greater memory and bandwidth compared to their direct rivals age somewhat better. Not least because those technical expectations skyrocket spanning console generations.

 

[NightAntilli]

We really have to agree to disagree. From my experience and understanding there isn’t a debate.

That's because some people are too tied up in their own beliefs and refuse to look at evidence. It's exactly why people hate AdoredTV. Everyone loves to slam him, but barely anyone can actually prove his points wrong. No one has been able to prove that video I linked wrong. Most simply rely on avoidance, just like you are recommending.

AMDs drivers do not match up to the quality of Nvidias. There is plenty of real evidence. Nvidia release far more WHQL drivers than AMD (look up what that means).

What does the amount of WHQL drivers have to do with the quality of the drivers? More is not always better. Let's take a look at how often AMD does it, for the sake of clarity...

AMD (https://www.techpowerup.com/download/amd-radeon-graphics-drivers/) :
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 19.10.1 WHQL
LATEST STABLE
October 17th, 2019 - What's New

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 19.9.2 WHQL
September 24th, 2019 - What's New

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 19.8.1 WHQL
August 22nd, 2019 - What's New

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 19.5.2 WHQL
June 3rd, 2019 - What's New

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 19.4.1 WHQL
April 3rd, 2019 - What's New

That's a new WHQL driver every month or every two months. Sure. That's less than nVidia. nVidia's WHQL driver releases vary between once every two months and three a month. But let me ask you a question. Do you like reinstalling drivers a lot? I for one do not like to keep reinstalling drivers every time. Most of the time I install a driver every couple of months, if that. AMD's WHQL releases are more than sufficient, and are on time for pretty much all new games nowadays.

And lastly, you tell me to look up WHQL as if that's some great sort of safety net. It isn't. WHQL is more a label than anything else. It cannot be some sort of safety net or quality assurance when nVidia's WHQL drivers have killed GPUs multiple times;

WARNING! NVIDIA 196.75 drivers can kill your graphics card

I'm getting a steady stream of reports in from NVIDIA users that the latest 196.75 drivers can cause severe cooling problems, even possibly resulting in the death of the hardware.

www.zdnet.com

Nvidia 320.18 WHQL Display Driver is Damaging GPUs | ModCrash

Evidence that Nvidia 320.18 WHQL Display Driver is Damaging GPUs. We've gathered the data and built the timelime... it's not pretty.

modcrash.com

Latest NVIDIA Driver is Apparently Killing GPUs

NVIDIA's latest driver release, 364.72 apparently is plagued with issues and apparently has even been killing gamer's GPUs! Reports of issues with this specific driver have been all over the GeForce Forums, Reddit, and many other forums.

thinkcomputers.org

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/226705/the-latest-drivers-fried-my-graphics-card/

And also look how quickly after a new release Nvidia get a driver out compared to AMD.

Sure... Let's take one of the latest games... COD Modern Warfare was released on October 25th. When were the driver releases?
AMD:
AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2019 Edition Graphics Driver 19.10.2 Hotfix (Release date: October 25, 2019)
Support For:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
With ultra presets on the Radeon RX 5700 XT, achieve up to 18% better performance playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 edition 19.10.2 than with Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.10.1. RS-322

nVidia:
GeForce Game Ready 440.97 WHQL drivers (Release date: October 22, 2019)
Our latest GeForce Game Ready driver delivers day-one support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and The Outer Worlds.

Yes. nVidia is technically earlier. But does that really matter in this case? It's not as if the AMD driver is late. Additionally, AMD specifically mentions what improvement to expect compared to the prior driver. No such thing from nVidia. How do we know that something actually changed? Also a fun note... Take a look at the comments on nVidia's page regarding this driver...

Game Ready Driver For Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and The Outer Worlds Available Now

Get the definitive experience when playing two of the year’s most anticipated titles by downloading and installing our latest Game Ready Driver.

www.nvidia.com

Just to quote a few;
"The 440.97 and the 440.52 beta driver have messed up my blacks in HDR on my c9."

"My geforce experience won't even open giving me an error 0x0003 I need help. "

"Why have we not recieved a response as to why MW isn't showing up under our games in Geforce Experience? "

And look how many people say "same problem" on that last one... So much for "more reliable drivers"...

Look up how long AMD fix their known issues (this info is on the websites and forums of both respective companies). You are simply factually incorrect to claim they have parity.

Well... I'd love to take an honest and in depth look, but to be honest, I don't expect a different result in this case. For one, AMD has more issues listed in their driver releases, and more solved points, every single month. I guess people equate the lack of listed issues on nVidia's own release that there aren't any, which is obviously false as I've shown above. I think I have provided enough evidence that AMD's driver support is not really inferior to nVidia's, nor are nVidia drivers some sort of golden standard that people seem to hold on to. If you think this point is somehow valid, prove it. All we've seen up until now is repetition, and the arguments you provided have been proven wrong at this point. So...

Anyone who thinks otherwise usually has an agenda to make AMD look better than they are for some reason (often referred to as fanboyism).

Ah yes... Typical well-poisoning argument. The ones firmly believing something that has been proven to be false by independent investigators, or simply by direct evidence and logic, is definitely not part of an agenda, nor fanboyism...

Or simply hasn’t experienced both manufacturers. From my experience, most people who have used AMD can agree.

We have one person here (not including myself) that has used both and confirmed that your mileage may vary. But that's repetition.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy AMD. But their equivalent cards need to be cheaper or faster than Nvidia to mitigate the factually worse driver support you get with them.
P.S. stop watching Adored TV. He talks absolute nonsense.

Most of the time AMD cards are both cheaper and faster within their price range. This is not the case for the RX 590, or the Radeon VII, or any of the older cards right now except the RX 570. It definitely is true for the 5700 series, and most likely it will be true for any other cards released in the near future. And it was mostly true for many releases in the past, including the R9 290X, RX 480, and most of the HD series cards (from 4000 to 7000 series). And yet everyone still buys nVidia. Not because of drivers or power draw or whatever, but, because of bias and mind share. How I know? Fermi is the most obvious example. There are a gazillion more.

Sometimes AMD does not deserve to sell cards. This is the case right now. The RX 590 is an irrelevant card at this point, and so are many others in AMD's line-up. But equally as many times, they do deserve the sales, and they simply don't get them. Look at the market share between the RX 570 and the 1050 Ti, for example... And then look at their performance and their pricing.
People are simply biased towards nVidia, and most of them don't even know that they are biased. And it's sad, because, it will actually ruin the PC gaming market in the long term. It has already started. But that's another story for another time. For now.. The whole driver thing.. Let's just say..

Case closed.

 

[Toju Mikie]

Who in their right mind would pick an RX590 over this just to save $30!? You get 13% worse performance, way more noise, way more heat, a larger power bill and you’re at the mercy of AMDs awful Radeon driver support.

Was the driver support really that bad? I had a Radeon HD 7790 a few years ago, and the only "driver" issue that I recall was Windows Updates automatically installing the incorrect driver. After getting the AMD version of the driver, it went pretty smoothly. I agree with you on the RX 590 though, not a good buy.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I genuinely pity all on this thread who genuinely believe AMD drivers have parity with Nvidias. They simply do not. Those who think they are are biased or simply do not understand what they are talking about. The neutral truth is that Nvidia drivers are better than AMDs.

If AMD driver support wasn’t such a puddle of piss, the market wouldn’t be 85% Nvidia despite Nvidia being worse value.

 

[neeyik]

Chalk up another thread of comments that are no longer about the article. Please use other sections of the board for discussions about drivers, support, etc and keep this thread solely for the content of the article in question.

 

[Ravalo]

I genuinely pity all on this thread who genuinely believe AMD drivers have parity with Nvidias. They simply do not. Those who think they are are biased or simply do not understand what they are talking about. The neutral truth is that Nvidia drivers are better than AMDs.

If AMD driver support wasn’t such a puddle of piss, the market wouldn’t be 85% Nvidia despite Nvidia being worse value.

I’ve had an XFX rx 560 (mini itx version) for around a year now and I only had 4-5 issues:

-I was playing a video while the driver was installing and the pc displayed a green static image (like the crt tvs) when the installation ended, so I had to restart the pc

-I used to get (and I still get) screen tearing even when the game runs at the same framerate as my monitor’s refresh rate (72 hz) and even when using freesync

-the pc sometimes restarts itself even when im watching a video (the pc used to enter a boot loop and the gpu would display a red and blue light, but that doesnt happen anymore)

-I once got a BSOD when trying to switch between csgo (which was stretched 4:3) and the desktop to do something

I might buy a gtx 1660 or something for my new gaming pc (the pc im using has an athlon that’s as powerful as the pentium G4400, so it takes like 50 minutes to export a 10 minute video) to check if nvidia drivers are any better

 

[GameZenChill]

Hey Steve, when you test new Graphics Cards, or do a mega benchmark, do you re-test all cards again for that test, or use old benchmark numbers and just test the new parts ?

Benchmark numbers for all cards seem the same from the 1650 Review benchmark back in April, to this one in October.

Sometimes, games get updates, and drivers usually get updated every month or so. And then there's Intel CPU security-flaw patches, and AMD Bios updates etc.