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Pretty good for the money although I was hoping Nvidia would of released a dual fan reference version like the other Super cards. Nvidia’s ReShade, a modding/post-processing tool, allows you to create post-processing filters for games and use them in real-time, as well as on still photos/screenshots. The update here is integrating support for Reshade into the GeForce Experience via Freestyle or through Ansel. To implement a filter, extract it into the proper path, activate Ansel (Alt+F2) or Freestyle (Alt+F3), and you can apply the Reshade filters you like, bringing an Instagram-like experience.
To match the value of the RX 590, the new gtx 1090 may need to deliver 1660 Ti-like performance. For those of you not keeping tabs, we now have the GTX 1660 for $220, the GTX 1660 Ti for $280, the RTX 2060 for $350 and the RTX 2060 Super for $400. In the price range between $200 and $400 there were already 4 GeForce options, but as of today we now have 6. The GTX 1660 Super slots in at $230 and there’s also the 1650 Super coming next month, no word on pricing yet. It’s only the Assassin’s Creed and Total War benchmarks where there’s very little between them, elsewhere at 1080p you’re looking at between 10 – 21% higher frame rates from the GTX 1660 Super. There are even a few occasions where the Super actually polls higher than the Ti card, though only ever by a few frames here and there, and generally never more than potential testing variance either.
Normally you’d see higher-spec video RAM tied to a faster GPU, so you’d be left a little unsure as to whether the performance hikes you were seeing were down to the improved graphics silicon or if it was down to the memory. As we’ve said, the actual GPU at the heart of the GTX 1660 Super hasn’t changed from the standard GTX 1660. It’s the exact same TU116 GPU, with 22 streaming multiprocessors and 1,408 CUDA cores. It’s even running at the same base and boost clock frequencies too. So the only thing that’s giving it the serious performance uplift shown by our benchmarking tests is that boosted video memory subsystem.
And in case you were wondering, this support will also extend to Turing-based, non-RTX cards like the GeForce GTX 1660 and GeForce GTX 1660 Ti . There was between 10-15% between the GTX 1660 and GTX GB too – again Nvidia was right on the money here. Nvidia’s claimed boost over the GTX GB was spot on here with a 15% advantage in minimum frame rate courtesy of the GTX 1660. Another relatively gtx 1080 8gb easy game to run if you have a mid-range graphics card, AMD’s RX 590 was particularly strong here, bettering even the GTX 1660 Ti. The latter wasn’t that much quicker than the GTX 1660 either, with the lower three Nvidia cards bunching up at the bottom of the graph. The GTX 1660 Ti performed excellently and was well ahead of the RX 590, leaving the GTX 1660 snapping at the AMD card’s heels.
Kicking off the first of the actual hardware launches for this holiday rumble is NVIDIA, who is announcing their GeForce gigabyte gtx 1060 3gb. This is a relatively minor, but none the less interesting revision to the GTX 1660 family that adds a SKU with faster GDDR6 memory for improved performance. Along with the GeForce GTX 1650 Super , these two cards are going to be the backbone of NVIDIA’s mainstream efforts to close out the year. And while NVIDIA’s other GTX 1660 cards aren’t going anywhere, as we’re going to see today, with its $229 price tag, the GDDR6-equipped GTX 1660 Super is pretty much going to make the other 1660 cards redundant. Neither the GTX 1660 Super nor the 1650 Super will have reference or FE models from Nvidia. Precisely for that reason, we have an EVGA GTX 1660 Super SC Ultra card on hand for testing and this review.
GeForce GTX® 1660 SUPER™ features a dedicated hardware encoder that unlocks the ability to game and stream simultaneously with superior quality. On our rig, which included a GTX 2080 and an i7-4790K, we found that we could turn most of the ray tracing related settings to Ultra or Extreme without dipping below 30FPS. That said, this shader pack doesn’t require an RT Core for smooth performance and by all accounts runs well with Nvidia 1000 series cards. That’s right, graphics cards like the GeForce GTX 1060 on up through the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and even the Titan Xp will have limited support for ray tracing.
The thing is, while a $50 difference in price isn’t that big, particularly in the high-end and extreme markets, for mainstream and budget builds where every cent counts, the GTX 1660 Super is an easy recommendation. It’s nearly as fast as its big brother and costs less, and it outperforms anything AMD currently offers in the same price range (it’s about 20 percent faster than the RX 590). If you can’t go much over $200 for a graphics card upgrade and you’re still running a GPU that’s several generations old, say hello to the GTX 1660 Super. Something else to consider is whether a $230 graphics card will do everything you want. It’s basically around GTX 1070 levels of performance, a card from three years ago that was routinely available for $350 . These days, a 1070 is still fine for 1080p gaming, but with next-gen consoles due out next year with ray tracing features, I think the RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super are better long-term investments.