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 ESTMeet The EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti XC Black GAMING
As a pure virtual launch, the release of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti does not bring any Founders Edition model, and so everything is in the hands of NVIDIA’s add-in board partners. For today, we look at EVGA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti XC Black, a 2.75-slot single-fan card with reference clocks and a slightly increased TDP of 130W.
| GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Card Comparison | ||||
| GTX 1660 Ti Ref Spec | EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Black GAMING | |||
| Base Clock | 1500MHz | 1500MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1770MHz | 1770MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 12Gbps GDDR6 | 12Gbps GDDR6 | ||
| VRAM | 6GB | 6GB | ||
| TDP | 120W | 130W | ||
| Length | N/A | 7.48" | ||
| Width | N/A | 2.75-Slot | ||
| Cooler Type | N/A | Open Air | ||
| Price | $279 | $279 | ||
Seeing as the GTX 1660 Ti is intended to replace the GTX 1060 6GB, EVGA’s cooler and card design is new and improved compared to their Pascal cards, and was first introduced with the RTX 20-series as they rolled out the iCX2 cooling design and new “XC” card branding, complementing their existing SC and Gaming series. As we’ve seen before, the iCX platform is comprised of a medley of features, and some of the core technology is utilized even when the full iCX suite isn’t. For one, EVGA reworked their cooler design with hydraulic dynamic bearing (HDB) fans, offering lower noise and higher lifespan than sleeve and ball bearing types, and this is present in the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC Black.
In general, the card essentially shares the design of the RTX 2060 XC, complete with those new raised EVGA ‘E’s on the fans, intended to improve slipstream. The single-fan RTX 2060 XC was paired with a thinner dual-fan XC Ultra variant, and in the same vein the GTX 1660 Ti XC Black is a one-fan design that essentially occupies three slots due to the thick heatsink and correspondingly taller fan hub. Being so short, though, makes the size a natural fit for mini-ITX form factors.
As one of the cards lower down the RTX 20 and now GTX 16 series stack, the GTX 1660 Ti XC Black also lacks LEDs and zero-dB fan capability, where fans turn off completely at low idle temperatures. The former is an eternal matter of taste, as opposed to the practicality of the latter, but both tend to be perks of premium models and/or higher-end GPUs. Putting price aside for the moment, the reference-clocked GTX 1660 Ti and RTX 2060 XC Black editions are the more mainstream variant anyhow.
Otherwise, the GTX 1660 Ti XC Black unsurprisingly lacks a USB-C/VirtualLink output, offering up the mainstream-friendly 1x DisplayPort/1x HDMI/1x DVI setup. Although the TU116 GPU still supports VirtualLink, the decision to implement it is up to partners; the feature is less applicable for cards further down the stack, where cards are more sensitive to cost and are less likely to be used for VR. Additionally, the 30W USB-C controller power budget could be significant amount relative to the overall TDP.
And on the topic of power, the GTX 1660 Ti XC Black’s power limit is actually capped at the default 130W, though theoretically the card’s single 8-pin PCIe power connector could supply 150W on its own.
The rest of the other GPU-tweaking knobs are there for your overclocking needs, and for EVGA this goes hand-in-hand with Precision, their overclocking utility. For NVIDIA’s Turing cards, EVGA released Precision X1, which allows modifying the voltage-frequency curve and scanning for auto-overclocking as part of Turing’s GPU Boost 4. Of course, NVIDIA’s restriction of actual overvolting is still in place, and for Turing there is a cap at 1.068v.
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CiccioB - Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - link
Kid, as I said you lack basic intelligence to recognize when you are just arguing about nothing.The number I'm using are those published by AMD and nvidia in their quarter results.
Now, if you are asking me the links for those reports it means you don't have the minimum idea of what I'm talking about AND you cannot do a simple search with Google.
So I stand my "insults": you have not the intelligence to argue about this simple topic, so stop writing completely on this site that has much better readers than you and is not gaining anything by your presence.
Korguz - Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - link
ahh here are the insults and name calling... and you are calling me a kid ??i can, and have done a simple google search.. BUT, i would like to see the SAME info YOU are looking at as well, but again.. i guess that is just too much to ask of you, is it wrong to want to be able to compare the same facts as you are looking at ? i guess so.. cause you STILL refuse to post where you get your facts and info from, i sure dont have the time so spend who knows how long to do a simple google search...
by standing by our insults, just shows YOU are the child here.. NOT me, as only CHILDREN resort to insults and name calling...
as i said in my reply farther down :
you refuse post links, OR mention your sources, simply because YOU DONT HAVE ANY.. most of what you post.. is probably made up, or rumor, if AT posted things like you do, with no sources, you probably would be all over them asking for links, proof and the like... and by YOUR previous posts, all of your info is made up and false..
maybe YOU should stop posting your info and facts from rumor sites, and learn to talk with some intelligence your self.
Qasar - Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - link
sorry CiccioB, but i agree with Korguz.. i have tried to find the " facts " on some of the things you have posted in this thread.. and i cant find them.. i also would like to know where you get your " opinions " from.CiccioB - Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - link
Quarter results!It's not really difficult to find them..
Try "AMD quarter results" and then "nvidia quarter results" in Google search engine and.. voilà, les jeux sont faits. Two clicks and you can read them. Back some years if you want,so you can have a history of what has happened during the last years apart the useless comments by fanboys you find on forums.
Now, if you have further problems at understanding all those tables and numbers or you do not know what is a gross margin vs a net income, then, you can't come here and argue I have no facts. It's you that can't understand publicly available data.
So if you want already chewed numbers that someone has interpreted for you, you can read them here:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13917/amd-earnings-...
I wonder what you were looking for for not finding those numbers that have been commented by every site that is about technology.
@Korguz
You a re definitely a kid. You surely do not scare me with all those nonsense you write when the solution for YOUR problem (not mine) was simply to read more and write less.
Korguz - Thursday, March 7, 2019 - link
CiccioB you are hilarious !!!did you look up the word hypnotize, to see what it means, and how it even relates to this ? as, and i quote YOU " Or you may try to hypnotize the third view " what does that even mean ??
i KNEW the ONLY link you would mention.. is the EASY one to find.
BUT... what about all of these LIES :
" GCN was dead at its launch time"
" 9 years of discounted sell are not enough to show you that GCN simply started as half a generation old architecture to end as a generation obsolete one? "
" that is Hawaii, which was so discounted "
" starting with Fiji and it's monster BOM cost "
" AMD is selling Ryzen CPU at a discount like GPUs and both have a 0.2% net margin "
" One is that AMD is discounting every product (GPU and CPU) to a ridiculous margin "
" a "panic plan" that required about 3 years to create the chips. 3 years ago they already know that they would have panicked at the RTX cards launch and so they made the RT-less chip as well "
i did the simple google search for the above comments from you, as well as variations.. and guess what.. NOTHING comes up. THESE are the links i would like you to provide, as i cant find any of these LIES . so " It's you that can't understand publicly available data. " the above quotes, are not publicly available data, even your sacred " simple google search " cant find them.
lastly.. your insults and name calling ( and the fact that you stand by them ).. the only people i hear things like this from.. are from my friends and coworkers TEENAGE CHILDREN. NOT adults.. adults don't resort to things like this, at least the ones that i know... this alone.. shows how immature and childish you really are... i am pretty sure.. you WILL never post links to 98% of the LIES, RUMORS, or your personal speculation, and opinions, because of the simple fact, you just CAN'T, as your sources for all this... simply doesn't exist.
when you are able to reply to people with out having to resort to name calling and insults, then maybe you might be taken seriously. till then... you are nothing but a lying, immature child, who needs to grow up, and learn how to talk to other people in a respectful manner... maybe YOU should take your OWN advice, and simply read more and write less. Have a good day.
D. Lister - Saturday, February 23, 2019 - link
@CiccioBNavi will still be GCN unfortunately.
CiccioB - Monday, February 25, 2019 - link
If so don't cry if price will remain high (if not higher) for the next 3 years.We already know why.
Simplex - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
"EVGA Precision remains some of the best overclocking software on the market."Better than MSI Afterburner?
Ryan Smith - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
I consider both of them to be in the same tier, for what it's worth.Rudde - Friday, February 22, 2019 - link
In what way does 12nm FFN improve over 16nm? The transistor density is roughly the same, the frequencies see little to no improvement and the power-efficiency has only seen small improvements. Worse yet, the space used per SM has gotten worse. I do know that Turing brings architectural improvements, but are they at the cost of die space? Seems odd that Nvidia wouldn't care about die area when their flagships are huge chips that would benefit from a more dense architecture.Or could it be that Turing adds some kind of (sparse) logic that they haven't mentioned?