Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660

The GeForce GTX 1660 continues the downward price and performance trend with Nvidia's Turing architecture, cutting additional high-end features to bring a generational improvement to the mainstream market.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660 and EVGA's superb XC Ultra custom design result in a new mainstream gaming champion. This is the graphics card you want for 1080p gaming at 60 frames per second.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G might not feature RT or Tensor cores, or even GDDR6 video memory, but it delivers excellent gaming performance and streaming capabilities for its entry-level price.

Now that the dust has settled we do indeed, finally, have our successor to the GTX 1060 after nearly two years, and it's a good one. It would be a more exciting story if the 1660 Ti had been the $219 card, but we need some more competition to drive prices down. 2019 is just getting started, but NVIDIA is making a pretty good case for their midrange GPUs with the 1660 series already.

The Gigabyte GTX 1660 offers superb value for Full HD gaming, but you may be tempted to spend a little more for the slightly more powerful GTX 1660 Ti.

A tenor de los resultados obtenidos en nuestras pruebas, las GTX 1660 se sitúan claramente a medio camino entre las GTX 1060 de generación previa y las nuevas GTX 1660 Ti, una posición que las hace claras sustitutas de las primeras. También mejoran la eficiencia energética frente a la generación pasada, aunque no de forma drástica al ser difícil apurar en esta gama ya de por si eficiente.

The GeForce GTX 1660 comes as absolutely no surprise to followers of GPU launches. It distils the Turing architecture further down the financial stack by manipulating the TU116 die in a couple of important ways. Removing two of the full-fat GPU's 24 SMs whilst maintaining frequency reduces GFLOPS throughput by just under 10 per cent, which is pretty much expected. More savagely, however, Nvidia culls the GDDR6 memory in favour of well-established GDDR5, reducing bandwidth by a significant 33 per cent.

Gigabyte has played it pretty safe with this card, and it has paid off big time. They’ve basically used an off-the-shelf cooler design, which I suspect means they can keep costs down a bit. They’ve then delivered a card that has impressive cooling performance to match the boost clocks of the most expensive GTX 1660 cards but leaving £25 in your pocket. For those looking for big performance on a budget, it’s a fantastic deal. The downside is it does look a bit boring from some angles, but to be honest, I don’t think that really matters at this price range.

The GeForce GTX 1660 certainly addresses the issue of offering a more compelling product. So who is going to step up from the GTX 1000 series? Well, anyone with a GTX 1050 but not 1060. So perhaps the GeForce GTX 1660 is an interesting enough card for GeForce GTX 960/970 owners that are looking to upgrade.

However, if we focus solely on the hardware and its performance, the GeForce GTX 1660’s ~$219 price tag tips the scales in NVIDIA’s favor. The GTX 1660 offers better overall performance, a newer GPU architecture, and it is more power-efficient as well. Unless there are some major price-shifts as a result of this launch, if you’ve got $220 to spend on a GPU, the GeForce GTX 1660 is the card to get.

If you are gaming on a tight budget and plan to game around the 1080 resolution but want to play all the latest titles with full image quality then the MSI GTX 1660 Ventus XS OC Edition is a no-brainer, combining cool temperatures with very attractive pricing and wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award. If you have more money to spend than this then your life is simple. Look at the 1660 Ti or the 2060, dont bother buying factory overclocked or cards with massive over priced coolers. They just dont need it.

NVIDIA doesn't bundle any games with GTX 1660, but EVGA has stepped up and is offering the Grip racing game with their GTX 1660. I have no doubt that AMD will quickly adjust their pricing to address the changed market conditions. Radeon RX 570 and RX 580 have already seen price drops, down to $130 and $170, respectively. Especially RX 570 is now at a price point that is so low that many people are going to be willing to overlook its shortcomings both in performance and noise levels — and the two-out-of-three game bundle will help here there, too.