NVIDIA released a new mainstream graphics card that doesn’t have any RT cores or Tensor cores. Meet the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card – featuring NVIDIA Turing architecture, but lacks the real-time ray tracing and DLSS capabilities. Unlike with the RTX 20 series, the GTX 1660 Ti doesn’t have a Founders Edition variant. This means that all GTX 1660 Ti graphics cards will be from NVIDIA’s partners. One of them is the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X, and it’s the graphics card we are going to review as well. The GTX 1660 Ti aims to replace the much older GTX 960 as it offers a 3x performance upgrade or around GTX 1070 level of performance. This makes the GTX 1660 Ti a great graphics card for 1080p and 1440p gaming, as well as a great graphics card for 1080p high refresh rate gaming. The GTX 1660 Ti starts at $279 USD, making it more affordable than the RTX 2060. If you’re looking for an upgrade or planning to buy a new graphics card for your 1080p/1440p setup, stick around and continue reading our MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G review below and find out if this is the graphics card for you.
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G Review – Features
At the heart of every GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is NVIDIA’s new TU116 Turing GPU. Although the GTX 1660 Ti doesn’t have RT Cores and Tensor Cores for real-time ray tracing and DLSS; it does include the new Turing Shader innovation offering improved performance and efficiency. This also includes Concurrent Floating Point and Integer Operation, a Unified Cache Architecture with larger L1 cache and Adaptive Shading.
It looks like NVIDIA is targeting GTX 960 users who skipped the GTX 10 series, and offers them the new GTX 1660 Ti as an upgrade path. It also offers around 1.5 times faster than the GTX 1060 GB in performance making it a sensible upgrade as well; especially for those who do not want to be an early adopter of the new RTX technology.
The TU116 GPU on the GTX 1660 Ti features 24 SM and 1536 CUDA cores. The reference model offers a base clock speed of 1500MHz with a Boost clock speed of 1770MHz. It can provide a total of 11 TOPS; 5.5 TFLOPS FP32 and 5.5 TFLOPS INT32; and 11 TFLOPS of FP16 compute. It has 96 texture units with a texel fill-rate of 169.9 Gigatexels/sec. The GTX 1660 Ti has 6GB of GDDR6 memory, similar to the RTX 2060. However, the memory has a clock speed of only 12 Gbps, a bandwidth of 288.1 GB/s and 192-bit memory interface.
The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti also features an enhanced NVENC encoder unit that adds support for H.256 (HEVC) 8K encode at 30 fps. The NVDEC decoder has also been updated to support decoding of HEVC 4:4:4 8/10/12-bit video streams, and it also supports VP9 10/12-bit HDR.
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G Features
Since there is no Founders Edition available, it’s up to NVIDIA partners to bring out the best of the TU116 GPU. One example is the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G. All GeForce GTX 1660 Ti cards have the same core components built in to them – the TU116 chip and 6GB of GDDR6 memory. On top of that, the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X features MSI’s Torx Fan 3.0 fans. The fans do stop during idle to light load situations and it has an optimized heatsink design with “aerodynamic techniques”.
The MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X also features a custom PCB for enhanced power delivery. It has a solid backplate and RGB lighting as well. Currently, MSI has four main variants of the GTX 1660 Ti – the Gaming (X), the Armor, Ventus XS and Aero ITX.
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G – Specifications
| Specifications | MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X | RTX 2060 | RTX 2070 | RTX 2080 | RTX 2080 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Turing - TU116 | Turing - TU106 | Turing - TU106 | Turing - TU104 | Turing - TU102 |
| Process | 12nm FNN | 12nm FNN | 12nm FNN | 12nm FNN | 12nm FNN |
| SMs | 24 | 30 | 36 | 46 | 68 |
| CUDA Cores | 1536 | 1920 | 2304 | 2944 | 4352 |
| Tensor Cores | None | 240 | 288 | 368 | 544 |
| Tensor FLOPS | N/A | 51.6 | 63 FE / 59.7 Stock | 85 | 114 |
| RT Cores | None | 30 | 36 | 46 | 68 |
| Texture Units | 96 | 120 | 144 | 184 | 272 |
| ROPs | 48 | 48 | 64 | 64 | 88 |
| Giga Rays | N/A | 5 GR/s | 6 GB/s | 8 GR/s | 10 GR/s |
| RTX OPS | N/A | 37 Trillion | 45 Trillion FE / 42 Stock | 60 Trillion | 78 Trillion |
| Compute | 5.5 TFLOPS | 6.5 TFLOPS | 7.9 TFLOPS FE / 7.5 TFLOPS | 10.1 TFLOPS | 14 TFLOPS |
| Base Clock | 1500 MHz | 1365 MHz | 1410 MHz | 1515 MHz | 1350 MHz |
| Boost Clock | 1875 MHz 1770 MHz (Reference) | 1680 MHz | 1710 MHz 1620 MHz | 1800 MHz (OC) FE 1710 MHz (Reference) | 1635 MHz (OC) FE 1545 MHz (Reference) |
| Memory Size | 6GB | 6GB | 8GB | 8GB | 11GB |
| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 | GDDR6 |
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps |
| Memory Interface | 192-bit | 192-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 352-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 228.1 GB/s | 336 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 448 GB/s | 616 GB/s |
| Max. GPU Temp | 88 | 89 | 88 | 89 | |
| Power Connectors | 8 pin | 8 pin | 8 pin | 6+8 pin | 8+8 pin |
| Graphics Card Power (TDP) | 130W 120W (Reference) | 160W | 185W FE 175W (Reference) | 225W FE 215W (Reference) | 260W FE 250W (Reference) |
| Recommended PSU | 450W | 500W | 550W | 650W | 650W |
| Price (At Launch) | $309 $279 (Reference) | $349 | $599 FE $499 (Reference) | $799 FE $699 (Reference) | $1,199 FE $999 (Reference) |
MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G Packaging and Closer Look
The packaging of the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X is quite similar with the other Gaming (X/Z) variants from the company. You also get a driver CD, some reading materials and a coaster. Although I recommend that you go to NVIDIA’s site and download the latest driver version for the GTX 1660 Ti.
The MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X looks very similar with the RTX 20 series Gaming (Z/X) variant. It features two Torx 3.0 fans with a horizontal aluminum heat sink array. It also has a back plate, which is nice. However, I would prefer that the back plate has a darker color tone.
On the output ports, the MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI port. Now let’s proceed to the next page for the test setup I used to benchmark the GTX 1660 Ti, its noise and temperature, and followed by the benchmark results on the next following pages.
For US: It’s available on Amazon.com here
For UK: Check it on Amazon UK here
