MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X 6G Review

1. Introduction2. MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X 6G3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy (1080p, 1440p, 4K)5. Battlefield V (1080p, 1440p, 4K)6. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (1080p, 1440p, 4K)7. Far Cry 5 (1080p, 1440p, 4K)8. Ghost Recon: Wildlands (1080p, 1440p, 4K)9. Middle Earth: Shadow of War (1080p, 1440p, 4K)10. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p, 1440p, 4K)11. Clock Speed12. Temperatures13. Acoustics14. Power Consumption15. Overclocking: 3DMark and Games16. Overclocking: Thermals, Acoustics, Power17. Closing Thoughts18. View All Pages

Almost three weeks ago, Nvidia launched the GTX 1660 Ti – the first GPU based on the Turing architecture to not have any RTX features. In what will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, today marks the release of the GTX 1660. GTX 1660 uses the same TU116 GPU as its bigger brother, but with one TPC disabled – meaning there are two less SMs and 128 less CUDA cores. It also keeps 6GB of VRAM, but in the form of older GDDR5 memory, rather than GDDR6. With prices starting at £199, is GTX 1660 worth buying?

While the baseline MSRP for GTX 1660 is indeed £199, the model we are looking at today is the MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X 6G. This has a much higher price tag of £249.99, making it very much a top-end GTX 1660 card. MSI is hoping the factory overclocked core, Twin Frozr 7 cooler and RGB lighting will be enough to tempt buyers to stump up the extra cash, but why don't we see for ourselves whether or not this price can be justified.

GPU	GTX 1070	RTX 2060 (FE)	GTX 1660 Ti	GTX 1660	GTX 1060
SMs	15	30	24	22	10
CUDA Cores	1920	1920	1536	1408	1280
Tensor Cores	N/A	240	N/A	N/A	N/A
Tensor FLOPS	N/A	51.6	N/A	N/A	N/A
RT Cores	N/A	30	N/A	N/A	N/A
Texture Units	120	120	96	88	80
ROPs	64	48	48	48	48
Rays Cast	0.65 Giga Rays/sec	5 Giga Rays/sec	–	–	0.44 Giga Rays/sec
RTX Performance	6.5 Trillion RTX-OPS	37 Trillion RTX-OPS	–	–	N/A
GPU Boost Clock	1683 MHz	1680 MHz	1770 MHz	1785 MHz	1708 MHz
Memory Data Rate	8 Gbps	14 Gbps	12 Gbps	8 Gbps	8 Gbps
Total Video Memory	8GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR6	6GB GDDR5	6GB GDDR5
Memory Interface	256-bit	192-bit	192-bit	192-bit	192-bit
Memory Bandwidth	256 GB/sec	336.1 GB/sec	288.1 GB/sec	192.1 GB/sec	192 GB/sec
TDP	150W	160W	120W	120W	120W

As we already mentioned, GTX 1660 uses the TU116 GPU – as seen in GTX 1660 Ti. It has been slightly scaled back for GTX 1660, however, with one less Texture Processing Cluster (TPC). Given that, within the Turing architecture, one TPC houses two Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), GTX 1660 accordingly has 22 SMs instead of 24. Two less SMs also means 128 less CUDA cores, giving us a total of 1408.

The other notable change between GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti is the memory. Instead of using GDDR6 memory, the card reverts back to GDDR5 – and that is ‘just' GDDR5, not the faster GDDR5X which debuted with the GTX 1080. Nvidia says this is because G5 gives the ‘best balance of performance and cost' – so G5X/G6 is likely just too expensive for a £200 card. There is still 6GB of memory, but as it is G5 it runs at a slower 8 Gbps, with a total bandwidth of 192.1 GB/sec – effectively the same as GTX 1060.

Lastly, touching on boost clocks, a reference-spec card has a boost clock of 1785MHz. This Gaming X, as we mentioned, comes factory overclocked with a rated clock speed of 1860MHz. GPU Boost 4.0 will take this as far as it can without any manual overclocking, though, and we look at the real-world operating frequency of the card later in the review.

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