The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Review, Feat. EVGA XC GAMING: Turing Sheds RTX for the Mainstream Market
by Ryan Smith & Nate Oh on February 22, 2019 9:00 AM ESTFinal Fantasy XV (DX11)
Upon arriving to PC earlier this, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console, fruits of their successful partnership with NVIDIA, with hardly any hint of the troubles during Final Fantasy XV's original production and development.
In preparation for the launch, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark that they have since updated. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to utilize OCAT. Upon release, the standalone benchmark received criticism for performance issues and general bugginess, as well as confusing graphical presets and performance measurement by 'score'. In its original iteration, the graphical settings could not be adjusted, leaving the user to the presets that were tied to resolution and hidden settings such as GameWorks features.
Since then, Square Enix has patched the benchmark with custom graphics settings and bugfixes to be more accurate in profiling in-game performance and graphical options, though leaving the 'score' measurement. For our testing, we enable or adjust settings to the highest except for NVIDIA-specific features and 'Model LOD', the latter of which is left at standard. Final Fantasy XV also supports HDR, and it will support DLSS at some later date.
Final Fantasy V is another strong title for NVIDIA across the board, and the GTX 1660 Ti comes very close to the RX Vega 64, let alone surpassing the RX 590 and RX Vega 56.
The GTX 960 is clearly out of its element, and given the 99th percentiles it's fair to say that the 2GB framebuffer shoulders a good amount of the blame. By comparison, this makes the GTX 1660 Ti look exceedingly good at offering basically triple the performance (and amusingly, triple the VRAM).
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wintermute000 - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
There is no way your 970 runs 1440p maxed in modern AAA games. Unless your definition of maxed includes frames well below 60 and settings well below ultra.I have a 1060 and it needs medium to medium-high to reliably hold 60FPS @ 1440p.
eddman - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
$280 for ~40% on average better performance and still 6GB of memory? I already have a 6GB 1060. I suppose I have to wait for navi or 30 series before actually upgrading.Fallen Kell - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
I guess you missed the part where their memory compression technology has increased performance another 20-33% over previous generation 10xx cards, negating the need to higher memory bandwidth and more space within the card. So, 6GB on this card is essentially like 8-9GB on the previous generation. That is what compression can do (as long as you can compress and decompress fast enough, which doesn't seem to be a problem for this hardware).eddman - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
No, I didn't. Compression is not a replacement for physical memory, no matter what nvidia claims.eddman - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
I'm not an expert on this topic, but they state compression is used as a mean to improve bandwidth, not memory space consumption.Someone more knowledgeable can clear this up, but to my understanding textures are compressed when moving from vram to gpu, and not when loading from hdd/ssd or system memory into vram.
Ryan Smith - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
"I'm not an expert on this topic, but they state compression is used as a mean to improve bandwidth, not memory space consumption."You are correct.
atiradeonag - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
Laughing at those who think they can get a $279 Vega56 right now: where's your card? where's the link?atiradeonag - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
Posting a random "sale" being instantly OOS is the usual failed stunt that fanboys from a certain faction to argue for the price/perfOxford Guy - Saturday, February 23, 2019 - link
It's also Newegg par for the course.CiccioB - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
At those all rejoicing that Vega56 is selling for a slice of bread.. that's the end that failing architecture do when they are a generation behind.Yes, nvidia cards are pricey, but that's because AMD solutions can stand up the competition with them even with expensive components like HBM and tons more of W to suck.
So stop laughing about how poor is this new card price/performance ratio, after few weeks it will have the ratio that the market is going to give it. What we have seen so far is that Vega appeal has gone under the ground level, and as for any new nvidia launch AMD can answer only with a price cut, close followed by a rebrand of something that is OCed (and pumped with even more W).
GCN was dead at its launch time. Let's really hope Navi is something new or we will have nvidia monopoly on the market for another 2 year period.