A SUPER Sweet Spot? NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER Review

[PAGETITLE=A Look At GeForce 1660 SUPER & Our Test Suite][Top Ad] When NVIDIA launched its Turing architecture last fall, who could have foreseen how SUPER it'd become? In the summer, we saw the original GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 get replaced with faster SUPER upgrades, while the original RTX 2060 gained a SUPER complement, rather than replacement - one that commands a fifty dollar premium. Since then, we've seen NVIDIA spread the SUPER butter around even more, landing on the 1650, as well as the focus of this article, the 1660. Based on the previous SUPER models, it would've been safe to assume that these GTX variants would add some cores to their counts, but in actuality, that only applies to one of them: GTX 1650 SUPER. The GTX 1660 SUPER is a bit of an oddball, because it doesn't increase the cores, or even its peak frequencies. What's upgraded boils down to the memory, seeing a bump from GDDR5 to GDDR6, or in other words, a bandwidth boost from 192 GB/s to 336 GB/s. GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 & GTX 1660 SUPER Before we dive in further, here's NVIDIA's full GeForce lineup, for easier comparisons: 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 $2,499 RTX 2080 Ti 4352 1350 13.4 TFLOPS 11GB 1 616 GB/s 250W $999 RTX 2080S 3072 1650 11.1 TFLOPS 8GB 1 496 GB/s 250W $699 RTX 2070S 2560 1605 9.1 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 215W $499 RTX 2060S 2176 1470 7.2 TFLOPS 8GB 1 448 GB/s 175W $399 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 GTX 1660S 1408 1530 5.0 TFLOPS 6GB 1 336 GB/s 125W $229 GTX 1660 1408 1530 5.0 TFLOPS 6GB 3 192 GB/s 120W $219 GTX 1650S 1280 1530 4.4 TFLOPS 4GB 1 128 GB/s 75W $??? GTX 1650 896 1485 3.0 TFLOPS 4GB 1 128 GB/s 75W $149 Notes 1 GDDR6; 2 GDDR5X; 3 GDDR5; 4 HBM2 Architecture: GTX & TITAN = Pascal; RTX = Turing It's not too often we see a release like this, where only the memory has been upgraded, but it's definitely happened before. It does make you wonder exactly how memory-dependent, or rather, memory-starved, games at the intended detail levels and resolutions will be - so this is a fun one to test. To make the move from a regular 1660 to SUPER is $10, or $229 SRP. As with all of NVIDIA's GeForce cards, this GTX 1660 SUPER supports the mainstay GeForce features, such as GeForce Experience, ShadowPlay, GameStream, Ansel, FreeStyle, and so on. What the card doesn't support is the RTX technologies, as its GTX name would imply. That means that accelerated ray tracing is missing, something that'd require a step up to at least the RTX 2060 to rectify. There's really not too much else worth mentioning, as this is a pretty standard fare launch. Interestingly, the model we received from NVIDIA is of GIGABYTE's, a simply named (and stock-clocked) card that is identical to the original 1660 we have, in terms of the PCB, clocks, and cooler solution. So, this really will be a good apples-to-apples test. A Look At Test Methodology. Techgage Gaming GPU Test PC Processor Intel Core i9-9900KS (4.0GHz Base, 5.0GHz Turbo, 8C/16T) Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING CPU tested with BIOS 1302 (September 20, 2019) Memory G.SKILL TridentZ Royal (F4-3600C16-8GTRG) 8GB x 2 Operates at DDR4-3600 16-16-16 (1.35V) AMD Graphics AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (8GB; Adrenaline 19.11.3) AMD Radeon RX 5700 (8GB; Adrenaline 19.11.3) AMD Radeon RX 590 (8GB; Adrenaline 19.11.3) NVIDIA Graphics NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER (8GB; GeForce 441.34) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (6GB; GeForce 441.34) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1660 Ti (6GB; GeForce 441.34) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1660 SUPER (6GB; GeForce 441.34) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1660 (6GB; GeForce 441.34) Storage GeForce: WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB (SATA 6Gbps) Radeon: 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; 1909) All of the GPUs have been tested with current (as of the time the round of testing began) drivers, and with an up-to-date Windows 10 (1909). Our operating system is kept clean and optimized to reduce benchmark interference, ensuring accurate results. V-Sync, G-SYNC, and FreeSync are disabled at the monitor and driver level. Both Intel's chipset driver and Management Engine (ME) are updated to the latest versions. Games Tested & Vendor Neutrality. A total of ten games are included in our current test suite. These include Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for some super-high FPS eSports testing, as well as Far Cry 5, F1 2019, Monster Hunter: World, Metro Exodus, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Division 2, and Total War: Three Kingdoms. We passed over Battlefield V for this round, since we had stuttery performance on the first GPU we tested (not the 1660 SUPER), so in the interest of time, we just chalked it up as a loss, and moved on. In addition to our game suite, the end of the review is augmented with some synthetic benchmarks. Here's the full list of games tested, and developer allegiances: Battlefield V Counter-Strike: Global Offensive F1 2019 Far Cry 5 - AMD partner Metro Exodus - NVIDIA partner Monster Hunter World Shadow of the Tomb Raider - NVIDIA partner Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege - NVIDIA partner Tom Clancy's The Division 2 - AMD partner Total War: Three Kingdoms UL 3DMark & VRMark Unigine Superposition Note: You can download all of the tested setting images at once here (ZIP, 7MB). Because our time has been dominated by all sorts of benchmarking, we've skipped percentile tests for this review because they add a lot of extra hands-on time to get right. That said, we have lots of results in general to share, focused around 1080p resolution. We've also tossed 1440p and 4K performance for CS: GO and Siege to see how the 1660 SUPER fares in high-FPS esports gaming. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Gaming: F1 2019, Far Cry 5, Metro Exodus] F1 2019. Right off the bat (ahem, starting grid), we can see that the additional memory bandwidth infused into the GTX 1660 SUPER has helped this game's performance by 8 FPS on average, with the same 8 FPS gain with the minimums. Things are looking really good for the 1660 SUPER so far, considering it's not trailing far behind the GTX 1660 Ti, with its higher core count. Far Cry 5. Things are going smoothly for the 1660 SUPER so far, representing a similar gain in performance in Far Cry 5 as we saw with F1 2019. The performance delta between the SUPER and Ti cards are ridiculously tight here, to the point where you may as well call them the same. Metro Exodus. The Metro series has long been known for punishing hardware, and with our chosen Ultra detail levels, there's not much room for the 1660 SUPER to strut its stuff, with both it and the non-SUPER 1660 hovering around the 40 FPS mark. Even the minimums are harsh (we may drop the detail level tested to High in the future). [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Gaming: Monster Hunter World, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Division 2] Monster Hunter: World. We've returned to normalcy, which in this case is the 1660 SUPER pulling a fair bit ahead of the non-SUPER, about 10 FPS. While only ahead by 5 FPS, this is one of the higher peak deltas we've seen from that card so far, but given the $50 price difference between the two cards, one of them is looking really SUPER at the moment. Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The 1660 SUPER continues to leap a good distance ahead of the original 1660, and in this case completely matches the performance of the Ti. It's an odd result, and one that stuck after retesting both cards right after one another. We wouldn't be surprised if a retest on another day would give us better scaling. The Division 2. There's some nice scaling going on between the three 1660s here, but the 1660 SUPER is the definite best bang-for-the-buck of the group. The Radeon RX 590 deserves a shout-out, as well, since it keeps up to the bottom 1660, but costs a bit less, found right now for around $190~200. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Gaming: Total War: Three Kingdoms, CS: GO, Rainbow Six: Siege] Total War: Three Kingdoms. We've come to an interesting result: one where the Ti and SUPER 1660s perform the exact same. We retested both, and came up with the same results. So... you can't buy a SUPER and expect it to benefit you in this game too much, despite it being fairly graphically intensive. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. At 1080p, our CPU (9900KS) becomes a bottleneck really quickly, despite its 5GHz speed. AMD manages to eke a few extra frames over NVIDIA, while the SUPER steps over the Ti. We then see the same thing happen at 1440p, and surprisingly, even 4K. It's beginning to look like this extra memory bandwidth will act as a bit a boon to esports gamers, but before we jump to conclusions, here's another take: Rainbow Six: Siege. With CS: GO, the 1660 SUPER placed ahead of the technically quicker 1660 Ti, offering clear proof that the faster memory is being put to good use. In Siege, the SUPER doesn't fare quite as well, but still does manage to surpass the Ti at 1080p. At the other resolutions, the SUPER still places a comfortable distance ahead of the original 1660. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Synthetic: 3DMark, VRMark & Superposition] UL 3DMark. 3DMark sure does have some interesting impressions sometimes. Despite the fact that the RX 590 sat at the bottom of twenty-one out of twenty-three charts, it somehow managed to place higher than that in both of the Fire Strike tests. Things shake up in the DirectX 12 test, reflecting expected scaling, at least up to the 2060 SUPER, since our real-world testing dictates that the 5700 XT leads most often. UL VRMark. In VRMark, the 1660 SUPER doesn't manage to overtake the Ti, but it sure does come close. More importantly, it keeps ahead of the 1660, especially with the Cyan test. Unfortunately, the target frame rate for the Blue test is 110...

A SUPER Sweet Spot? NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER Review

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Rob Williams