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Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 arrives to fill an entry gaming desktop slot

It plays in the same ballpark as the more expensive GTX 1660 Ti, but the $200-$250 GTX 1660 will probably be a favorite in 2019's entry gaming desktops.

Lori Grunin Senior Editor / Advice
I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I'm currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I've also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.
Expertise Photography, PCs and laptops, gaming and gaming accessories
Lori Grunin
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The TU116 chip on both the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti cards.

Nvidia

Sticking to its veteran product lineup strategy, Nvidia released its GeForce GTX 1660 mid-entry-level version of its current Turing-generation graphics cards to fill the $200-$220 price band currently occupied by its GTX 1060. That gives it two graphics cards with the Turing architecture in the $200-$300 range after Februrary's 1660 Ti launch.

While there are rumors of a GTX 1650/1650 Ti, which would be the true entry-level cards for populating budget gaming systems currently using the GTX 1050/1050 Ti, there's been no official word. No rumbles about a 1670 as yet.

Both 1660-model cards are targeted at delivering decent 1080p gaming performance. As Tom's Hardware's test results show, it pushes some more games over the 60fps line where the 1060 it replaces fell short -- it looks like the gap is wider for DirectX12 than DirectX 11 -- but if you're going to want to step up to 1440p in the near future, it probably won't serve you very well and the Ti version would be a better option.

Comparative specs


GeForce GTX 1660 TiGeForce GTX 1660
Memory 6GB GDDR66GB GDDR5
Memory bandwidth 288GB/sec192GB/sec
Memory clock speed 6,000MHz4,000MHz
GPU clock speed (base/boost) 1,500/1,7701,530/1,785
Memory data rate/interface 12Gbps/192-bit8Gbps/192 bit
CUDA cores 1,5361,408