Review Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 Gaming: Overclocking | Power (Part 1.)

Review and testing of the video card Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2. Part 1 – At the very end of winter, NVIDIA announced three new mid-range graphics cards based on the Turing graphics architecture: GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce GTX 1660 и GeForce GTX 1650…

As it is clear from the marking of the models, these video cards occupy an intermediate place between the new RTX 20xx and the old GTX 10xx. More specifically, the older model, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, fits very precisely between GeForce GTX 1060 and new GeForce RTX 2060…

Moreover, according to NVIDIA, the new product is able to compete with an even more formidable rival – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070. Whether it is or not, today we will try to find out using the example of the original version Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2.

The compact video card has an original printed circuit board and is equipped with an efficient cooling system. At the same time, this model works at the nominal frequencies, which allows us to hope for a good overclocking potential.

Review of the video card Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 6 GB

Specifications and Recommended Cost

The technical characteristics and cost of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 video card are shown in the table in comparison with the reference versions NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 FE and GeForce GTX 1060.

Packaging and equipment

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 comes in a compact box with the manufacturer’s name and graphics card model on the front.

The reverse side of the box is designed in a style typical for NVIDIA products – with a brief description of proprietary technologies in different languages, including Russian.

Despite its compact size, the box is quite reliable. Another cardboard box is placed inside the colored shell, and a video card is fixed in it in two inserts made of foamed polyethylene and an additional cardboard “wrapper”.

Of course, such a box will still not save you from mounting or scrap (yes, yes, this happens at the post office), but for most of the typical vicissitudes of Russian delivery, when the first scene from the movie Ace Ventura (1994) pops up in my head, it is a video card quite capable of protecting.

On one of the ends of the box there is a sticker with the marking of the video card model and barcodes.

In addition to the video card, the box contained a disc with drivers and a brief installation guide, as well as coupons for 3DMark and VRMark test packages from UL.

The latter are especially nice to see bundled with a relatively inexpensive video card, especially since recently, even such original video cards as RTX 2060/2070/2080 do not include anything worthwhile in the kit.

We add that the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 is produced in China and is backed by a three-year warranty. The cost of a video card in Russian stores at the time of writing was about 18.7 thousand rubles. This model is slightly cheaper in foreign online stores.

PCB design and features

The design of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 is both modest and interesting. The video card does not have any bright details or color inserts fashionable in recent years. It is covered in front by a black corrugated casing with two fans, and at the back there is a metal plate with a laconic coloring and the name of the manufacturer.

From above and below one can see the heat pipes coming out of the radiator, as well as the aluminum radiator itself, partially covered by a casing.

The video card is quite compact, its dimensions are 195 × 104 × 40 mm, and it weighs only 594 grams.

On the top right of the video card there is an eight-pin power connector oriented with a latch outward.

The maximum power consumption of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 declared in the specifications should not exceed 120 watts, which is equal to the power consumption of the GeForce GTX 1060 and 40 watts less than that of the GeForce RTX 2060. The recommended power supply for a system with such a video card should not be less than 450 watts.

This model does not have a DVI video output, but is equipped with three DisplayPort version 1.4a and one HDMI version 2.0b at once.

The video outputs are located along one axis, and above them the panel is sparse with rectangular windows for partial outflow of heated air outside the system unit case.

Without a cooling system and a plate on the back, the video card looks like this.

From the power circuit elements and two video memory chips that are missing on the PCB, it becomes clear that the printed circuit board is borrowed from one of the older video cards; here, four phases from the DrMOS assemblies and two phases to the video memory and power circuits are left to power the GPU.

GPU power management is implemented by uPI Semiconductor uP9512R controller, soldered on the back of the PCB.

The NCP45491 controller manufactured by ON Semiconductor is responsible for monitoring and controlling voltages.

The crystal of the TU116-A1 graphic processor, which forms the basis of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2, was released according to the 12-nm process technology, and has an area of ​​284 sq. mm and contains about 6.6 billion transistors. In our case, the processor was released on the 50th week of last year and belongs to revision A1.

This GPU has 1536 shader processors (20% less than the RTX 2060 and the same more than the GTX 1060), 96 texture units and 48 ROPs. In other words, an exact fit between these two video cards. However, the most notable feature of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU is the lack of support for RT cores and tensor cores, and in simple (for our regular readers) language – support for hardware accelerated ray tracing and deep learning. But wait to say: “This is a fiasco, bro!”, Just remember what the performance of the pre-flagship GeForce RTX 2080 is in games with support for new NVIDIA technologies and predict what it would be on the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti …

The base frequency of the graphics processor of the video card is almost the same as that of the GPU GeForce GTX 1060 and is 1500 MHz, but the forced frequency is 62 MHz higher and is equal to 1770 MHz. Looking ahead, we note that according to monitoring data, the graphics processor of our Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 worked at peak 1950 MHz and stable 1860 MHz. When switching to 2D mode, the GPU frequency drops to 300 MHz.

The video card is equipped with six gigabytes of GDDR6 memory. The memory is recruited with six Micron chips marked 9AA77 D9WCR.

Due to the relatively high effective frequency of 12 GHz, with the same 192-bit bus as that of the GeForce GTX 1060, the theoretical bandwidth of such memory can reach 288.0 GB / s, which is 50 (!)% Higher than that of the GeForce GTX. 1060. There is also a gap in this indicator from the GeForce RTX 2060, but much more modest and does not exceed 15%.

At the end of the video card review, we will present all the characteristics of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 using the GPU-Z utility.

Cooling system

Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 is equipped with a small cooler with an aluminum heatsink on three heat pipes. All tubes are 6mm in diameter and are in direct contact with the GPU.

The radiator is cut from a solid aluminum “blank”, contains three longitudinal slots and many transverse ribs.

The radiator is cooled by two nine-blade fans installed in a plastic frame. The actual diameter of the impellers is 74 mm, and they are produced by Colorful and, judging by the CF-12815S marking, are based on a sleeve bearing.

The rotation speed is regulated by the video card automatically by pulse-width modulation in the range from 0 to 3500 rpm. The fans will stop if the GPU temperature drops below 45 degrees Celsius.

To check the temperature regime of the video card as a load, we used twenty cycles of the Fire Strike Extreme stress test from the 3DMark graphics package.

To monitor temperatures and all other parameters, MSI Afterburner version 4.6.0 and GPU-Z utility version 2.18.0 and later were used. The tests were carried out in a closed case of the system unit, the configuration of which you can see in the next section of the article, at a room temperature of about 25 degrees Celsius.
First, we checked the operating temperature of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 video card with automatic fan speed control.

Auto mode (0 ~ 2390 rpm × 2)

The temperature of the GPU during the test increased to 72 degrees Celsius, and the fan speed increased to 2390 rpm, and the video card was already introducing obvious discomfort in terms of noise. In our opinion, the temperatures are high for a video card of this class, however, what else could you expect from such a simple cooler? Higher efficiency could still be achieved from it by manually setting the fan speed to maximum.

Maximum speed (~ 3500 rpm × 2)

In this mode, the GPU temperature dropped by 7 degrees Celsius at a peak of 65 degrees, and the noise level increased significantly. At such fan speeds, we would not recommend using the video card, since its cooler is too noisy. It can be called comfortable only up to a speed of 2000 rpm.

Overclocking potential

As with previous NVIDIA graphics cards with Turing GPUs, we started exploring the overclocking potential of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 using the automated GPU frequency scanner from MSI Afterburner. This time the scan lasted for an atypically long time, but the result was quite pleasant: +165 MHz with a final stable 2025 MHz.

Moreover, during manual testing, the GPU frequency could be increased by 200 MHz or 13.3%, and the video memory frequency by an astonishing 3000 (!) MHz or 25.0%!

As a result, the frequencies of the overclocked video card were 1700-1970 / 15000 MHz.

At these frequencies, the video card was stable in all games in the test list, which you will see below, and in two benchmarks.

The result, without reservations, is impressive. But even more interesting was the fact that the temperature of the GPU of the overclocked video card increased by only one degree Celsius in comparison with the nominal operating mode.

Automatic mode (0-2400 rpm × 2)

It can be assumed that this happened due to an increase in the speed of the cooler fans during their automatic adjustment, however, on the monitoring graphs we can see only a tiny difference of 10 rpm. So, in general, the overclocking of the Inno3D GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin X2 video card and its temperature regime can be considered successful.

To be continued…