Nvidia’s new GTX 1660 balances power usage, performance and cost

Nvidia recently revealed its new 1660Ti, which is a Turing-based card like the new RTX ones – only without the stuff that makes the latest Turning cards interesting and appealing. Now, there’s a another card. The 1660 without the Ti bit on the end is available from today, coming in at a very palatable £199/ $219. The suggested local pricing is around R3699 including VAT.

It’s been built to balance power usage, performance and cost using the same YU116 Turing GPU found in the 1660Ti. It comes with 1,408 CUDA cores and 6GB of GDDR5 memory with a 192-bit memory bus, for a combined memory bandwidth of 192GB/sec. That means you can expect respectable 1080p performance, and probably some decent 1440p gaming as well.

Most importantly, the card uses a single 8-pin power connector, and sucks up just 120 watts, making it an easy upgrade for those with older cards who just want shinier visuals without the hassle of upgrading power supplies as well.

Depending on the game though, the new 1660 goes toe-to-toe with cards like the Maxwell-based 980. It’s 68 per cent faster than the GTX 970 and 113 per cent faster than the GTX 960 – so that’s decent performance for its price. Still, with the pricing difference between this card and the 1660Ti, I’d go for that. It’s a decent upgrade for those running 9 series cards, but offers just a 15 per cent increase over the 6GB 1060, and a 30 per cent increase over the 3GB variant.

There’s no Founder’s Edition of the card, so you’ll have to pick one from your favoured OEM partner.

Last Updated: March 14, 2019