GEFORCE GTX 1660
The new king of affordable gaming graphics
GETTING MORE performance at a lower price is great, but with graphics cards, there’s always a problem of competing with the previous generation. The GTX 1660 is faster than the GTX 1060 6GB, but it’s not a massive upgrade. Instead, it’s better positioned as a replacement for an old GTX 960 or earlier GPU; if you’re using such a card, this a great upgrade, while anyone with a GTX 970 or better will probably want to wait a little longer.
The GPU at the heart of the GTX 1660 is the same TU116 as in the 1660 Ti, with two of the SMs disabled. Perhaps more interesting is when you compare it with the GP106 used in the GTX 1060. Transistor counts increased from 4.4 billion to 6.6 billion, and die size also went up. In practice, TSMC’s 12nm doesn’t appear to be much more than a refinement of its 16nm tech—what Intel would have called 16nm+.
The Zotac Gaming GTX 1660 is nothing fancy, though it does have dual fans for cooling. It’s basically a mini-sized card that can easily fit inside small cases, measuring just 6.83 inches in length. It’s a dual-slot design, and while it’s technically not required, the card uses a single eight-pin PEG power connector. For video outputs, Zotac provides one HDMI 2.0b port, along with three DisplayPort 1.4 ports, and it can run all four outputs simultaneously. If you have an older monitor that requires a DVI-D connection, you’ll have to bring your own adapter. There are no lights, no dual VBIOS chips, or any other higher-end features. This is a no-frills card that provides everything you need, at Nvidia’s base $219 price.
The GTX 1660 uses GDDR5 memory, so it’s not going to come anywhere near matching a 1660 Ti. With the Zotac GTX 1660, performance in games with the overclocked GPU is about 10 percent faster than at stock. Individual results will vary from that a little, but it’s a reasonable baseline estimate. There will likely be factory overclocked models that will run faster on the core and memory clocks, and hit slightly higher speeds. The GTX 1660 does best though, when prices are kept closer to $200 than $250—at $250, you’re probably better off just moving up to a GTX 1660 Ti.
Starting at 1080p, performance of the GTX 1660 is good. It’s about 12 percent faster than the outgoing GTX 1060 6GB, so nothing major, but at least it’s both faster and less expensive. There are a few games where the GTX 1660 isn’t able to average 60fps or more at 1080p ultra, but that’s only in notoriously punishing games such as Assassin’sCreedOdyssey and MetroExodus. Overall, it’s a very capable 1080p gaming card—better than the 1060 6GB that launched a couple of years back, but not tremendously so. 1440p ultra is mostly a miss for the GTX 1660. Some games can break 60fps, but most run at closer to 45fps. Dropping the image quality can get the card back to 60fps, but it’s better to stick with 1080p. 4K ultra is basically out of the question—the 6GB of VRAM becomes an issue with 4K ultra, games running out of VRAM and being forced to swap data out to system RAM.
The GTX 1660 takes over for Nvidia as the new “sweet spot” for mainstream GPUs. That’s why the cards use GDDR5— supply and pricing on GDDR5X and GDDR6 apparently “wasn’t enough” to meet the expected demand. And there’s a large chunk of PC gamers running far less capable hardware, so anyone with a GTX 960 or lower may finally be tempted to make the switch. Or not, since it’s still only a minor bump in performance relative to the GTX 1060 6GB for only a slightly better price.
Rather than upgrades, the biggest draw for the GTX 1660 will be with new builds—newcomers looking to set up a budget gaming PC will find plenty to like with this. It’s not going to bring home any pink slips in a race, but if all you’re looking for is a good 1080p gaming experience, this will do. –JARRED WALTON
VERDICT 9
Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1660
DUAL FAN Great for 1080p gaming; affordable; efficient and quiet.
CRUEL SHAM Modest gains over 1060 6GB; not a true budget GPU price; some games use more than 6GB.
$220, www.zotac.com