Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super review: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is the superstar of the entry-level graphics card market. Not only does it outperform the original GTX 1660, but it also matches the performance of the GTX 1660 Ti, making the latter almost irrelevant in comparison.
“Super” budget graphics card.
- pros: Affordable | Performance | Not very hot;
- Minuses: No RT cores | Limited choice of ports;
Nvidia Turing has been around for a little over a year now, and today the graphics card lineup is significantly larger than it was at launch. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is the sequel to the hugely successful GTX 1660 that has made it into many budget gaming PCs thanks to its amazing price-performance ratio.
This ingenious budget graphics card was the answer to users looking for under $ 20,000 graphics that can handle 1080p games at high settings, while not inferior in performance to consoles. Now the GTX 1660 Super, thanks to the new GDDR6 memory, is slightly faster than the original and only slightly more expensive.
The new GTX 1660 Super is significantly faster than the original GTX 1660, just slightly outperforming the GTX 1660 Ti, so if you’re looking for a 1080p graphics card, the super-charged 1660 is probably the best graphics card of 2019.
| GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER PRICES AND AVAILABILITY
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is available for purchase today for $ 229 (RUR 15,000 + VAT). This makes the new 1660 Super less than RUB 1,000 more expensive than the original GTX 1660. But with faster GDDR6 memory, you get a significant performance boost for a modest price increase.
In addition, at this price point, it is inferior even to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. You can get similar performance with the GTX 1660 Super, but for a few thousand rubles less. A few months ago, we wouldn’t have been looking at the GTX 1660 Ti, but with the GTX 1660 Super, the Ti just has no reason to exist.
| GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER FEATURES
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is based on the same TU116 GPU as the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti, but offers 1408 CUDA cores just like the original 1660. An important difference from the original graphics card is the memory upgrade to GDDR6. The video memory raises the speed from 8 Gbps to 14 Gbps – the same speed is used by VRAM on the RTX 2080 Ti.
Upgrading to GDDR6 goes a long way towards bridging the gap between the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Ti.
It’s also important to note that the new graphics card does not offer the RT and tensor cores that Turing graphics cards offer in the RTX 20 series. That means, while you can technically get ray tracing, it will turn any game into a slideshow. During our review, we accidentally left ray tracing enabled in Metro Exodus, even the game’s menu became almost unusable.
But at the end of the day, you couldn’t expect a graphics card at this price point to compete with models twice as expensive. The GTX 1660 lacked RT cores like the GTX 1660 Ti, so it’s no surprise that RT cores are missing on the GTX 1660 Super.
You should also be aware that the choice of ports on the GeForce GTX 1660 Super is a bit limited. We tested the EVGA GTX 1660 Super SC Ultra, which was only able to offer DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. This isn’t exactly the graphics card you’d want to use 10 screens with, but we’d love to see Nvidia replace DVI with a second HDMI, or perhaps even USB-C.
Finally, if you buy this graphics card, you will need external power for it to work, in this case an 8-pin PCIe power connector. This means that the GTX 1660 Super draws 127.4W under load, so you must ensure that you have at least a 500W PSU.
| GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER: PERFORMANCE
Quite frankly, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super graphics card seemed pretty damn interesting to us, especially when compared to its peers. In the Time Spy test, the GTX 1660 Super lost about 5% to the GTX 1660 Ti, which costs significantly more, and is also 14% faster than the GTX 1660, which it essentially replaces. In Fire Strike, the difference became thinner, the video card was only 2% behind the GTX 1660 Ti.
These performance advances have continued in gaming. In Metro Exodus at 1080p, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super averaged 41 FPS, versus 38 FPS for the vanilla GTX 1660 and 44 FPS for the 1660 Ti. It might seem like the difference in performance isn’t big, but it does matter.
In the less demanding Middle Earth: Shadow of War, the GTX 1660 Super felt at ease, offering 79fps at 1080p with Ultra quality settings. We believe Middle Earth reflects most of the typical AAA games you’ll play, so you might expect killer performance in most games. After all, games like Metro are few and far between.
Even at 1440p, the GTX 1660 Super can offer a decent result, but the first dips appear. In Middle Earth: Shadow of War, the video card managed to achieve a respectable 54 frames per second, but in Metro: Exodus it fell to 32 FPS. Technically, this is a playable figure, but not enough for a gaming PC, since 60 frames per second is the gold standard. However, no one will prohibit twisting a few settings to get a comfortable gaming experience.
The GTX 1660 Super is basically all we could ask for in terms of budget gaming performance. It evens out the gap between the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Ti. In fact, even rough numbers are enough to make the GTX 1660 Ti obsolete. We’re not sure what Nvidia’s goal is here, but the result is very good.
| GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER REVIEW: SUMMING UP
If you’re looking for the best graphics card for 1080p gaming, you need the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super. The original GTX 1660 was the best graphics card in the budget segment, and now Nvidia is making it better in every way. The Nvidia Super series has been a hit of sorts after the RTX miss – and we can’t help but recommend the GTX 1660 Super.
After all, 1080p is the most popular resolution in PC gaming, and video cards in this price range are the ones that are best sold by Russian users. And until AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 releases in November, Nvidia will dominate this segment of the market, obviously.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super review
Anton Zim
30.10.2019
10/10
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is the superstar of the entry-level graphics card market. Not only does it outperform the original GTX 1660, but it also matches the performance of the GTX 1660 Ti, making the latter almost irrelevant in comparison.
10
Overall Score
Verdict:
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super is the superstar of the entry-level graphics card market. Not only does it outperform the original GTX 1660, but it also matches the performance of the GTX 1660 Ti, making the latter almost irrelevant in comparison.
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