Turing Light: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Launch with the MSI GTX 1060 Ti Gaming X and the MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS

So Nvidia has managed to re-create a Turing chip that takes conventional paths in the well-known RTX-Off style and yet can still bring the innovations of the architecture over. We'll see how much of it arrives in the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. For any player who is now wondering how Nvidia's Turing architecture would work if the Tensor and RT cores were taken out, I also have the answer today in the form of this test.

The price question is…?

In order to remain fair, one must first analyze the phenomenon with the current prices without emotion. If it succeeds at all, because we have a rather European price problem here, if you want to call it that. A Radeon RX Vega56 is currently available here in Germany from 269 euros (fluctuates) and in France even for 249 euros. But wherever you look, it's always the same MSI-Blower model with a total cost-down cooler. All other RX Vega56s are significantly more expensive. In the USA, for example, Newegg had yesterday one(!) one of these cards in stock for 279 USD, but it has influenced the price search engines first. The others are at 400 USD and above.

Nvidia is talking about a retail price starting at 299 euros for the board partner cards and MSI puts the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS to this point. The 339 Euros for the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X, on the other hand, are illusory and are already in the pharmacy sector, because for exactly this price you can already get a simple GeForce RTX 2060. So the actual competition does not even come from AMD, but from its own warehouse, where the street prices for the GeForce RTX 2060 are slowly adjusting. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti can only lose at such a price.

Now, of course, I don't expect green vest demos in front of the Mindfactory store, but I'm sure that the power of the road will provide a predictable correction here as well. Because lead as an exhibit on the shelves is a bad investment for distributors and dealers. Demand will regulate the price, that's for sure. In terms of perspective, the simple models will certainly reach the 250-euro limit. Then we will also talk again about the meaning or nonsense of this card from a financial point of view. But you have to stay fair and look at all aspects.

The technical aspect is…?

The TU116-400 on the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is not so wrong. The tensor and RT cores "deprived", the area used is still huge compared to the Pascal cards, but it will probably have been an economic consideration in addition to the architecture-based changes mentioned in the intro, partial designs so as it now seems to be under a good technological control. What has been noticed is a very large variation of results compared directly to the GeForce GTX 1070. Since these differences in our test scenarios cannot be fixed on the memory, some slips down should be rather driver-related.

I would also like to return to the FP16 performance, which has increased enormously compared to Pascal. Another advance over Pascal cards such as a GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1060 is the slightly higher power consumption efficiency. Even in the applications where there was a tie between the GeForce GTX 1070 and the GTX 1660 Ti, the power consumption of the small Turing card is 10 to 15 watts lower on average. These aren't galaxies yet, but you can see it when you look for the sweet spot, which then looks at approx. 100 to 110 watts. However, you can also crack the GeForce GTX 1060 with left, even without further action.

With RTX Off, Nvidia has managed to create a Turing for the masses, which must now hope that the street will rule and correct what the sales buddies dream of for the launch. Well, and that with the memory is probably more architecture-related, because to clog 8 GB to a 192-bit interface, one would probably have ended up with a GTX-970 revival. Please, don't. So you can turn it and turn it as you like, below the Ultra HD resolution you will probably get with the 6 GB for a while. However, this would also be one of the reasons for a necessary price correction.

MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6GB

As part of what is technically still feasible and useful, this card is probably at the upper limit of the GTX-1660-Ti-Class. The maximum 140 Watt Power Limit achieves up to 5% more performance at approx. 7% higher power consumption. You can live with that quite well. This map is quiet, cool and still reasonably efficient in direct comparison, which clearly speaks for this model. Only the price has to be started again, but we already had that at the beginning.

The 1950 MHz boost clock of the heated card in the closed housing are really good and the achieved 2.1 GHz when overclocking also. In the test, the card does exactly what you could expect from it and still I find the smaller sister a bit more successful. Why? Because it fits better and certainly better to the target group! Also priced.

MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS

With its 21 cm length, the map is pleasantly short. Nevertheless, it does not have to compromise on a one-fan cooling system, but has two of them that could not have been set more closely. This also keeps it nicely quiet and also quite cool, which is particularly noticeable to the boost clock. With the almost 1.9 GHz in the closed housing at real load, this card with a maximum power consumption of 124 watts still runs quite fixed.

Visually, you can only see the fight for cost savings at second glance, because you can use unnickel-plated heatpipes for this card at MSI and do without RGB claming, you can confidently record that under Peanuts. So the whole thing fits. And precisely because I am hoping that prices will soon adapt to the RTX flood, I also give the purchase tip here. Small but fine. go!

Conclusion

From a purely technical point of view, Nvidia has done a lot of things right with the TU116-400 and the GeForce 1660 Ti and only a few things, let's say so, not so nice. This cannot be sold as progress, but it cannot be demonised either. That's why I'm (still) struggling with an absolute conclusion. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is far from superfluous, even if many see it that way. Only that with the price Should Nvidia practice a little bit. However, I do not have to decide. Good prices? Get well soon!