EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Xc Ultra Gaming 1080p & 1440p Gaming Performance

[PAGETITLE=A Look At GeForce GTX 1660 Ti & Our Test Suite][Top Ad] The second GeForce release to come out in 2019 becomes the GTX 1660 Ti, a Turing-based card that's just a bit different from the others (as its GTX moniker implies). Gone are the Tensor and RT cores, but retained are the other performance perks that came along with Turing, leading to some surprising performance in select games and benchmarks. NVIDIA dropped RTX features off of the GTX 1660 Ti for the simple fact that the card is not powerful enough to take proper advantage of those features. We were a bit surprised when the 2060 came out with RTX features, but it ultimately delivered enough performance to justify them. Key features Turing brings to the table, even to the GTX 1660 Ti, includes concurrent FP/INT operations, benefiting games that heavily use both floating-point and integer operations. Far Cry 5 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider can use a lot of both in certain areas of the games. NVIDIA notes that in SotTR, 38% of the game's instructions are integer on average, and lo and behold, the 1660 Ti performs great there. Turing also supports variable rate shading, allowing games to take advantage of adaptive shading to reduce load in unimportant parts of a scene, putting most of the GPU horsepower towards what will actually prove beneficial to the scene. So far, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus takes advantage, and we have no choice but to wait to learn about more. The GTX 1660 Ti includes GDDR6 just like the RTX cards, and it's spec'd at an impressive 12Gbps. With this TU116 design, NVIDIA delivers 288GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 50% higher than the GTX 1060's 192GB/s. NVIDIA's GeForce Gaming GPU Lineup Cores Base MHz Peak FP32 Memory Bandwidth TDP SRP TITAN RTX 4608 1770 16.3 TFLOPS 24GB 1 672 GB/s 280W $1,199 RTX 2080 Ti 4352 1350 13.4 TFLOPS 11GB 1 616 GB/s 250W $999 RTX 2080 2944 1515 10.0 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 215W $699 RTX 2070 2304 1410 7.4 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 175W $499 RTX 2060 1920 1680 6.4 TFLOPS 6GB 1 336 GB/s 160W $349 GTX 1660 Ti 1536 1500 5.5 TFLOPS 6GB 1 288 GB/s 120W $279 TITAN Xp 3840 1480 12.1 TFLOPS 12GB 2 548 GB/s 250W $1,199 GTX 1080 Ti 3584 1480 11.3 TFLOPS 11GB 2 484 GB/s 250W $699 GTX 1080 2560 1607 8.8 TFLOPS 8GB 2 320 GB/s 180W $499 GTX 1070 Ti 2432 1607 8.1 TFLOPS 8GB 3 256 GB/s 180W $449 GTX 1070 1920 1506 6.4 TFLOPS 8GB 3 256 GB/s 150W $379 GTX 1060 1280 1700 4.3 TFLOPS 6GB 3 192 GB/s 120W $299 GTX 1050 Ti 768 1392 2.1 TFLOPS 4GB 3 112 GB/s 75W $139 GTX 1050 640 1455 1.8 TFLOPS 2GB 3 112 GB/s 75W $109 Notes 1 GDDR6; 2 GDDR5X; 3 GDDR5; 4 HBM2 Architecture: GTX & TITAN = Pascal; RTX = Turing NVIDIA says that against the GTX 1060, the 1660 Ti can give us significant performance boosts, upwards of 50%. That alone means that it's worthy of consideration by those who own a 1060, because a 50% gain is no joke. But compare it to the GTX 960, which came out in 2015. In that match-up, the 1660 Ti is about 2.2x faster, so if you are still rocking that one, this 1660 Ti would be a tempting upgrade path. Admittedly, it might be safe to remove some 10-series cards from this table, but for the sake of showing what both generations offer, they're useful to keep for now, even if it'd be silly to purchase a 10-series card when an equivalent 20-series card is available (and now 16-series...) The 1660 Ti slots in rather close to the RTX 2060, which justifies its $70 premium with some extra performance, and the inclusion of Tensor and RT cores. Whether or not that premium is worth it is really up to you, but it's nice to see the price gap isn't that extreme between them. And with that, we'll get into a quick look at our test methodology, and then jump on the test results. A Look At Test Methodology. Techgage Gaming GPU Test PC Processor Intel Core i9-9900K (3.6GHz Base, 5.0GHz Turbo, 8C/16T) Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING CPU tested with BIOS 0602 (October 19, 2018) Memory G.SKILL TridentZ (F4-3400C16-8GSXW) 8GB x 2 Operates at DDR4-3400 16-16-16 (1.35V) AMD Graphics AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) AMD Radeon RX 590 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB; Radeon 18.12.3) * AMD Radeon RX 570 (4GB; Radeon 18.12.3) * AMD Radeon RX 550 (2GB; Radeon 18.12.3) * NVIDIA Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6GB; GeForce 418.91) NVIDIA TITAN Xp (12GB; GeForce 417.35) * NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) * NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (8GB; GeForce 417.35) * NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB; GeForce 417.35) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB; GeForce 417.35) * NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB; GeForce 417.35) * Storage Kingston SSDNow V310 960GB (SATA 6Gbps) Power Supply Corsair RM650x (650W) Chassis NZXT S340 Elite Mid-tower Cooling Corsair Hydro H100i V2 AIO Liquid Cooler (240mm) Et cetera Windows 10 Pro (64-bit; build 17763) Notes * Synthetic tests only. Since the time AMD's GPUs were originally tested, newer drivers have released, such as the latest: 19.2.2. We retested the RX 590 at 1080p using that 19.2.2 driver, and found no difference in performance. We also tried to run the same tests again on Vega 56, but couldn't get past the driver install in time. Games Tested & Vendor Neutrality. A total of eight games are included in our current test suite. Recent additions include Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Beyond these eight titles, UL's 3DMark and VRMark, as well as Unigine's Superposition, are used for some quick and dirty tests that you may be able to run at home. Here's the full list of tested synthetic benchmarks, games, and developer allegiances: Battlefield V Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - AMD partner F1 2018 Far Cry 5 - AMD partner Forza Horizon 4 Monster Hunter World Shadow of the Tomb Raider - NVIDIA partner Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - NVIDIA partner UL 3DMark & VRMark Unigine Superposition For our apples-to-apples testing, the graphics settings seen above apply to every one of our tested resolutions so as to deliver easily comparable results. In most cases, each configuration is tested twice, with more runs added if the initial results make the extra testing necessary (which isn't required too often). Note that VSync is disabled at the driver level to prevent games from enabling it without us noticing. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Gaming: Battlefield V, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, F1 2018 & Far Cry 5] Battlefield V. Battlefield V starts us off with a 1660 Ti that's very competitive with AMD's Radeon RX Vega 56. Given the $279 pricing of the 1660 Ti, it's easy to assume it'd perform similarly to the $279 RX 590, but there's a decent 11 FPS average gap at 1440p, a lead that grows to 14 FPS at 1080p. It seems strange that this $279 card keeps up to the Vega 56, but it's not something that's a surprise to AMD. Last night, we were shot over an email from the company talking of a $279 Vega 56 over at Newegg, which of course was sold out by the time anyone clicked through. There's no telling if that kind of pricing is going to become static, but if it does, the RX 590 would then need a drop to reflect the gap in performance at the same price point. We'll see what happens. In case anyone asks, there are in fact a few models missing from the 1440p chart that could be included. That includes the GTX 1080, and possibly the 1070 Ti. The results seen above were merged from both our RTX 2060 and Radeon VII reviews, and certain cards, like the 1080, were not tested for either of those. We received our 1660 Ti less than 24 hours before embargo, and didn't realize when the embargo lift even was, so there was no time to get other cards tested in time. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. In Battlefield V, the 1660 Ti pulled a fair bit ahead of the RX 590, while almost matching the RX Vega 56. In Deus Ex, the battle of the $279 cards becomes closer, but NVIDIA still ekes about 5 FPS more on average. Meanwhile, the Vega 56 outperforms the 1660 Ti by a fair margin here, which makes you realize if that model did become available regularly for $279, it'd offer a ton of value. That's not something we can count on, though, especially since the least-expensive Vega 56 we can find as of the time of writing on Newegg is $400 ($350 if you want to go refurbished). F1 2018. AMD might be the company with its logo on Formula 1 cars, but it's NVIDIA that dominates in F1 2018. Here, the 1660 Ti outperformed the Vega 56 at 1440p, and matched it at 1080p. Thanks to this, the gain on 1660 Ti over RX 590 is significant - about 15 FPS at 1440p, and 22 FPS at 1080p. Far Cry 5. It feels like AMD is a big part of this review even though its focus is on an NVIDIA card, because we continue to see the 1660 Ti give the RX 590 a hard time, and remember, that card only released in November. NVIDIA really didn't give AMD much time to enjoy the $279 price point before charging in with this oddly-named GTX. The RX 590 already felt like a good value, so by default, the 1660 Ti feels like a good value by this point - but, we still have more tests to conquer. FC5 is an example of a game that happens to work better on hardware opposite of the game sponsor. Far Cry 5 was heavily promoted as being best played on Radeon, yet here we are, with NVIDIA exhibiting some notable leads. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Gaming: Forza Horizon 4, Monster Hunter, SotTR & Ghost Recon Wildlands] Forza Horizon 4. AMD typically performs very well in Forza games, having promoted both Forza 7 and Horizon 4 for benchmarking to some extent, but sadly, the #BetterRed team falls far behind NVIDIA here. The RX Vega 56 is somehow 4 FPS slower than the 1660 Ti at 1440p, a gap that widens to 9 FPS at 1080p. Naturally, edging out Vega 56 means...

EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Xc Ultra Gaming 1080p & 1440p Gaming Performance

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Rob Williams