Gadgetory

- The latest graphics card to be released from NVIDIA is their GTX 1660. And this actually differs in quite a few more ways than just your classic CUDA core count compared to the 1660 Ti. First of all, they're using GDDR5 memory, which has significantly less memory throughput speeds than the GDL6 that they're using on the 1660 Ti. Furthermore, there is quite a big difference in price. We're looking at $280 MSRP for the Ti variant, versus $220 for the 1660. If you're in Australia, the cheapest I could find it for was 365 Aussie. NVIDIA have also dropped the CUDA core count down from 1536 to 1408. So roughly an 8.4% reduction. However compared to the 1060 six gigabyte, it's actually an increase of 10%, going from 1280 again, to those 1408 CUDA cores. However, of course, with the Turing architecture, you do get some improvements like better IPC, in that it'll process more for the amount of power it's consuming, as we saw, the 1660 Ti review. However, since it is using GDDR5, this card will show you the power consumption results straightaway. It's using roughly the same as its big brother variant, which was kind of a little bit disappointing to see. However, more on that later. Let's roll those gaming benchmarks, where I'm comparing it against an RX 570 four gigabyte, RX 580 eight gigabyte, GTX 1060 six gigabyte, and also the 1660 Ti. Now I did decide to leave out the RX 590 because I feel it at its current price point, the 1660 Ti has already slayed it. But let's roll those numbers for you guys. (techno music) So I recorded this outro, and then I went back and I looked at the graphs, 'cause I actually hadn't manually made the graphs up yet. And then after I did that, I was like, "Damn, I need to go back and rerecord this outro segment "of what happened with the 1660 here." Because when I saw those numbers, it was clearly outclassing the GTX 1060 by a long shot, and it was beating the RX 580 too, and the RX 570 of course. That's kind of a different league; we'll talk about that a little bit later. But in terms of its main competitors that it's replacing, the 1060 and the RX 580, it's doing a good job of beating those two cards comfortably. And this is coming in at $220 MSRP. So that's what you can get it for on the shelves right now. When I looked at Amazon.com or Newegg, that's what you can pick these up for. This model here, the GIGABYTE three-fan OC, is actually about $20 more, and in Australia it's about 30 Aussie dollars more than the cheapest model you can get. And honestly I really like what GIGABYTE have done, but not just this card, but also the 2000 series in general, where they're offering just a simple, clean aesthetic, and performance. When we look at this card in particular, out of the box, it came with very aggressive overclocking, going up to 1980 megahertz in a 26 degree ambient environment. We managed to boost it past 2.1 gigahertz, so this thing was soaring ahead. Now, the GDDR5, I'm willing to ignore that, because of the $220 price tag, and how well it performs in games in the real world. Like, Apex Legends, it was pretty much catching the 1660 Ti. So, if all's you wanna do is play Apex Legends, and get a brand new graphics card, this is definitely gonna be the card to get. I guess NVIDIA, with the latest driver, 419, has somehow got that adaptive shading working better in this game, because these cards were definitely kicking it, as opposed to the GTX 1660, for example, which lost to the RX 580 in that title. But going through some of the other numbers, when we overclock this thing manually, it did catch up to the 1660 Ti a lot of the times. But in the case of the Ti variant, of course, you can overclock that, but I do like to throw that in there for guys who like to get the most out of their graphics cards. And this thing here has no problems whatsoever staying quiet whilst it was overclocked. Looking at the temperatures and also noise, we had here at 60% fan speeds, maximum temperature of 61 degrees. Move over to 80% fan speeds, the temperatures then dropped to 58 degrees, but the noise was creeping up, but it was still bearable. And then of course, 100%, goes over 50 decibels, and the temperatures drop down to 54 degrees. Auto on this card was a little bit weird. It was coming 5% under 60%, but it was 4 degrees higher, so my recommendation would be to either set a manual fan curve with the max point of 60%, or of course just manually lock in 60% itself, since it was very quiet on the ears. Though going through some of the other features in relation to this card itself. You got three 80 mil fans on the back, you got three display port outs, as well as a HDMI 2.0. It weighs in at 675 grams, is 282 millimeters wide, is a dual slot in depth, and also the length is 113 millimeters. On the side you've got the GIGABYTE logo, which lights up in RGB. You can control that via software if you wish to. And just beside that, you got a single eight-pin connector. Though the backlight is something of curiosity, since it is made of plastic, it's not gonna do absolutely anything to help with thermals. But of course, it does add to the aesthetic, and it will help combat GPU sag. But when it all comes down to it, the GTX 1660 is actually a very solid card. Despite it having its limitations with GDDR5, and that does come out in some titles versus the GDDR6 variant on the 1660 Ti, it is very good value for money. And especially if you wanna manually overclock these cards, they are going to perform extremely well in titles for the dollar. Something else worth mentioning as well, is it does have the NV encoder, the latest update that's the same as the RTX series cards. So in other words, if you're a streamer on budget, this is definitely gonna be a good option if you wanna get into streaming, and still have good FPS, but not have to fork out so much on the CPU side as well as getting so much RAM. But now here is where we relay back to the RX 580, 570, and also the GTX 1060. Now, the 1060 itself, I think it's pretty much irrelevant after the release of this card. You've got everything NVIDIA here, but better, especially on the new market. In terms of the used market, I really can't find any of these up for sale for a decent price. Though the RX 570, and in particular, the 570, that is abundant at the moment on the used market, and you can get them for so cheap. I've been picking up a lot of them personally, but of course, that card is in a different league compared to the 1660. The RX 580, I haven't really found many of them for sale on the used market, though in terms of the new market, you can get them for under 200 USD. So that's an option if you like AMD cards. But in terms of new market cards, this is definitely the best value out there at the moment. So, this card impressed me a lot when I started jotting all the numbers I wrote down into graphs, and then seeing all those bars come out, I was like, "Damn, this thing actually is pulling ahead "by a lot compared to RTX 570, 580, and the 1060." Anyway guys, that about concludes it for this review. If you guys enjoyed this one, then be sure to hit that like button. Let us know in the comment section below as well what you think of this card. And also are you in the market for a used card or new card? Love reading your thoughts and opinions as always. And if you enjoy the content that much, you may wish to consider subscribing, hitting that bell icon, or if you wanna get the latest scoop before it even gets to YouTube, be sure to check us out on Instagram, techyescity. And I'll catch you in another tech video very soon. Peace out, for now. Bye. (relaxing hip hop music)