Sarfraz
Introduction
Perhaps one of the most confusing things today is the mid-tier graphics cards category. There hasn’t been as many graphics cards in this tier as we have today. There are probably 7-8 graphics cards in this tier which have similar performance but the pricing is very close. So, sometimes it becomes very difficult to choose between them.
I won’t take all of them in this post, but rather use 3 graphics cards that are close to each other and share the same series. The GTX 1660 is the first one that was launched by Nvidia in February 2019 in the Turing series which represented Non-Ray Tracing technology. The GTX 1660 Ti was also introduced at the same time but the GTX 1660 Super was launched later in October.
These cards are aimed at 1080p ultra settings gaming but they vary in performance. GTX 1660 is the slowest while the GTX 1660 Super falls between the 1660 and 1660 Ti. This is what you need to know at first. But let’s jump to the detailed comparison.
Specs
| Graphics Cards | GTX 1660 | GTX 1660 Super | GTX 1660 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|
| CUDA CORES | 1408 | 1408 | 1536 |
| MEMORY | 6GB GDDR5 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 |
| CLOCK SPEED | 1530/1785MHz | 1530/1785MHz | 1500/1770MHz |
| MEMORY BANDWIDTH | 192GB/s | 336GB/s | 288GB/s |
| Memory Speed | 8Gbps | 12Gbps | 14Gbps |
| TDP | 120W | 125W | 120W |
All of these cards are based on the Turing architecture and share most of the specs equal to each other including TDP, connectivity, VR and other Nvidia technologies.
But the above-mentioned specs are the ones which make each of these graphics cards different from one another. GTX 1660 features the same amount of Cuda Cores as the GTX 1660 Super but the GTX 1660 Ti has 128 Cuda Cores higher. This makes GTX 1660 Ti faster than the other two in real-world performance.
Each one of them has 6GB of VRAM but the GTX 1660 uses a slower GDDR5 version RAM which is one of the reasons the GTX 1660 is slower. However, the memory bandwidth says something else when the GTX 1660 super is taken into consideration. While the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 Super use 6GB GDDR6 memory, the bandwidth the Super version uses is much higher than the other two.
The Super version uses an equal memory bandwidth as the RTX 2060 uses which is 336GB/s which is around 16.6% higher than the GTX 1660 Ti and 14Gbps memory speed makes it much faster than the Ti and non-Ti version. Other specs are almost similar to the GTX 1660 but the memory specs make the GTX 1660 Super stand out.
Performance
When all of the three graphics cards are compared, the GTX 1660 proves itself to be the slowest, then comes the Super version at the 2nd place making the GTX 1660 Ti the fastest among the three. But how much is the difference?
Following video shows benchmark of different games with these three GPUs that are combined with i9 9900K and 16GB RAM clocked at 3200MHz. This should eliminate any possible bottlenecks. The testing is done by Testing Games youtube channel and there are other testers which got similar results too.
All the three GPUs prove themselves to be the best choices for 1080p Gaming meanwhile the results show some differences. The GTX 1660 Super is roughly 10% faster than the GTX 1660 and the 1660 Ti is around 2-5% faster than the Super.
Pricing
The current pricing of GTX 1660 varies from around $220 to $240 for the standard versions, while the Super edition costs around $230-$260 and most of the GTX 1660 Ti GPUs cost around $270-$300. So, a rough price difference between a GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Super is around $20, while the cost difference between a GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660 Ti is around $40.
Conclusion
When the price to performance ratio is considered, the GTX 1660 Super provides better value than the GTX 1660 and the Ti version. The Super series is definitely proved itself better than the non-Super one although they share the same architecture. The significant difference between GTX 1660 Super and GTX 1660/Ti is mainly due to the memory specs.
One can easily conclude from the comparison in real-world gaming that just increasing the memory bandwidth and speed can make a significant difference in fps. The GTX 1660 Super is the best GPU among the three to buy right now for a great 1080p Gaming PC Build. While the GTX 1660 also seems to be a good option if you can get one around $210, but GTX 1660 Ti is a No-No at this time.
