The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Review, Feat. EVGA XC GAMING: Turing Stakes Its Claim at $219
by Ryan Smith & Nate Oh on March 14, 2019 9:01 AM ESTOverclocking
Last, but not least, we'll take a look at overclocking. While NVIDIA does support overclocking, they have limited actual overvolting, and instead providing the ability to unlock 1-2 more boost bins and associated voltages. Either way, Maxwell 2 and Pascal certainly have much to thank for high clockspeeds; for Maxwell 2, it was a combination of high efficiency and ample overclocking headroom, while Pascal took advantage of the FinFET process to ramp up the clocks to new heights.
A total of four different overclocks were tested via EVGA's Precision X1; unfortunately, we were not able to get the auto OC scanning functionality to fully work. First was a baseline, consisting of 100% overvoltage and max temperature limits; power limit is already set to a soft cap of 130W at stock. The second was overclocking the GDDR5 memory by 1Gbps. The third was overclocking the GPU by +100MHz; in practice, observed clocks were in the mid 1900MHz. Lastly, all previous adjustments were combined for an overall overclock.
| GeForce GTX 1660 Overclocking | ||||||
| Baseline | Memory OC | GPU OC | All OC | |||
| Core Clock | 1530MHz | 1530MHz | 1530MHz | 1530MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1785MHz | 1785MHz | 1885MHz | 1885MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 8Gbps | 9Gbps (+250MHz) | 8Gbps | 9Gbps (+250MHz) | ||
Naturally, these results cannot be taken as representative of all GTX 1660 cards, but results here can offer some insight.
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The_Assimilator - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
1660 Ti power usage: more for GPU, less for GDDR6. 1660: less for GPU (due to 2 fewer SMs), but more for GDDR5. Hence why overall power usage for both is the same. What I still don't understand is why all of these cards, despite being rated to draw under 150W, come with 8-pin power connectors; 6-pin would make far more sense and would make them compatible with many older systems.Alistair - Friday, March 15, 2019 - link
They are still holding back. This would have been an incredible 7nm card. That's still what I want. Not interested.backpackbrady - Saturday, March 16, 2019 - link
amazing post ryan / nate!@# hoping you could answer a question beyond my knowledge for me. would the 1660 hardware-based encoder nvenc be at a disadvantage with the TU116 and GDDR5 changes? im not sure what effects the encoders performance. thank you very much for your time and knowledge. bradyHrel - Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - link
Suddenly Nvidia's pricing seems completely fair.Supercell99 - Thursday, March 28, 2019 - link
Chinese are done dumping after market GFX cards. Used market is drying upHrel - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
This is looking like one hell of a good card for the money and the market. Faster than the RX 580 and RX 590, priced like a cheap 590 or average 580, less power draw, runs cooler, includes Nvidias (frankly) superior software and drivers. So right now either the GTX1070 used, or the GTX 1660 new, 1070 should be about the same price even used. Only cheaper ones I found were crypto mining cards and F that noise.There are some technology differences but idk, you guys don't seem to go into great detail about the differences between GTX 1070 and GTX 1660 excluding game performance. Are there any notable DX features included in the newer card or is it just straight performance improvement?
Hrel - Saturday, March 30, 2019 - link
I think a year or so from now I'll pick one of these up, either 1660 or ti, will depend on then current pricing.