With the launch of Nvidia’s Super GTX graphics cards in October 2019, its lineup of entry-level graphics cards has more choice than ever. That’s great news for getting the most for your money, but it can make choosing the right GPU for you a little confusing. To make sure you get the best bang for buck card for you, we’ve taken a look at each of Nvidia’s GTX 1660 GPUs and pitted them in a head to head. GTX 1660 Ti vs GTX 1660 Super vs. GTX 1660.
If you want to consider other GPUs too, check out our guide to the best graphics cards, whatever your budget.
Pricing and availability
Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti
The Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti was the first of Nvidia’s GTX 16-series — an entry-level alternative to its RTX graphics range, and a replacement for its more modest GTX 10-series cards. It lacked the higher CUDA core counts, RT and Tensor cores, and expansive feature sets of the RTX cards, but was based on the same Turing 12nm architecture. It debuted on February 22, 2019, and was followed shortly after on March 14 by the GTX 1660, a card with fewer CUDA cores and slower memory.
The Nvidia GTX 1660 Super launched on October 29 and was designed to sit in between the two existing 1660 cards in both price and performance.
As of late 2019, the GTX 1660 is priced around $230. The 1660 Super sits around $240, and the 1660 Ti starts at $280 and up. These all depend on the version you purchase, of course, since Nvidia doesn’t offer Founders Edition reference cards for these GPUs.
Performance
EVGA GTX 1660 Ti
The raw power of the three GTX 1660 cards isn’t hugely distinct, even if one is certainly the most powerful.
GTX 1660
GTX 1660 Super
GTX 1660 Ti
GPU
TU116-300
TU116-300
TU116-400
CUDA Cores
1,408
1,408
1,536
Base Clock
1,530MHz
1,530MHz
1,500MHz
Boost Clock
1,785MHz
1,785MHz
1,770MHz
Memory
6GB GDDR6
6GB GDDR6
6GB GDDR6
Memory Speed
8Gbps
14Gbps
12Gbps
TDP
120w
125w
120w
When the GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti debuted in early 2019, the obvious differences between them were the nine percent disparity in CUDA cores and the considerably faster memory on the Ti. The GTX 1660 Super, on the other hand, is less of a gap-bridging GPU and more of an alternative to the 1660 Ti. It has a slightly higher TDP, a slightly higher clock speed, and faster memory. It has the same GPU and CUDA core count as the standard 1660, posting it ever-so-slightly below the 1660 Ti in terms of its raw performance, but it’s a close run race.
In practice, this results in a graphics card lineup that is oddly stacked. The GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti are clearly defined as top and bottom of this trio of cards, but the GTX 1660 Super is barely weaker than the 1660 Ti. In some testing, we’ve seen it perform as little as two percent worse. That’s a near-insignificant difference and certainly problematic for the Ti, because there’s a near $50 difference between them, which at this price level is dramatic.
The various factory overclocked and cooled versions of each card may even things out on a pricing scale, but the GTX 1660 Super eats into the 1660 Ti’s market considerably, giving it little room to breathe.
Ray tracing, Reshade, NULL
One of the greatest differences between Nvidia’s GTX and its RTX graphics cards, is that the latter features RT cores and Tensor cores for ray tracing and deep learning super sampling acceleration. The GTX graphics cards, including the 16-series, can perform ray tracing calculations, but without high-levels of general compute performance (like a 1080 Ti has, for example) it’s largely unplayable. We don’t expect the GTX 1660 Super to be any better than the GTX 1070 is, which is rather poor.
DLSS (deep learning super sampling) is also off the table with these cards, as they lack the Tensor cores to support it. What they can do though, is take advantage of other Nvidia features recently introduced in driver updates. All three of the GTX 1660s support Nvidia’s ultra low latency (NULL) technology, for faster in-game response during competitive play. They can also enjoy all the post-processing effects introduced with Nvidia’s Reshade support.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPRPeSjYiq8]
Reshade isn’t new — gamers have been enjoying its effects on AMD and Nvidia GPUs for years already, but now it’s officially supported and integrated through Nvidia’s control panel. All three of the 1660s fully support this. But due to the slight performance hit that some processing effects and filters take, the 1660 Ti should be the best equipped to handle it. We doubt the Super will be too far behind, though.
The 1660 and 1660 Ti feel super redundant
Nvidia made an intriguing move with the introduction of the GTX 1660 Super. It looks like an excellent card that offers noticeably improved performance over the GTX 1660 at a price that is almost identical for some models. and little more than $10-20 higher for others. That means we’re almost always going to recommend the Super over the standard 1660. But what about the Ti?
The 1660 Ti is the most capable of the three 1660s, but only by a little. The 1660 Super is close to $50 cheaper in most instances. Because its performance is so close, we’d expect most gamers to be able to eliminate that gap with a little overclocking.
It’s quite possible that Nvidia has invalidated its existing GTX 1660 cards with the Super, but we’ll hold off on such a definitive statement just yet, to see if Nvidia adjusts its pricing to prevent that from happening. With AMD’s RX 5500 waiting in the wings, it may just need to. For now though, the GTX 1660 Super is the card to buy.