Review: EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Ultra Gaming

Conclusion

The GeForce GTX 1660 comes as absolutely no surprise to followers of GPU launches. It distils the Turing architecture further down the financial stack by manipulating the TU116 die in a couple of important ways. Removing two of the full-fat GPU's 24 SMs whilst maintaining frequency reduces GFLOPS throughput by just under 10 per cent, which is pretty much expected. More savagely, however, Nvidia culls the GDDR6 memory in favour of well-established GDDR5, reducing bandwidth by a significant 33 per cent.

Sum of these easy-to-implement changes is performance that is between 10 and 20 per cent slower than GTX 1660 Ti, though some context needs to be provided here. The new GPU, starting at £199, is a really solid performer at FHD and reasonable at QHD. More importantly for Nvidia, it is, on average, faster than rival Radeon RX 580 and RX 590, chews through less power, and is likely to be cooler and quieter.

GeForce GTX 1660 therefore makes sense at £199, and we encourage board partners to understand the target market by releasing simple, inexpensive models. Most will equip their cards with a range of coolers and form factors, however, pulled from existing line-ups, just like EVGA has done. The premium XC Ultra Gaming, likely to cost around £229, though impressive in its own right, somewhat goes against the grain of what GeForce GTX 1660 is all about. That said, the quality cooler offers near-silent operation and a modicum of extra performance over stock.

Bottom line: GeForce GTX 1660 brings the Turing architecture to a wider gaming audience. Worth a punt if you find a simple implementation at £200.

EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Ultra Gaming

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TBC.

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