Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1660

GDDR5 allows for a truly mainstream price point, balancing value against performance.

- Jarred Walton

GETTING MORE performance at a lower price is great, but with graphics cards, there’s always a problem of competing with the previous generation. The GTX 1660 is faster than the GTX 1060 6GB, but it’s not a massive upgrade. Instead, it’s better positioned as a replacement for an old GTX 960 or earlier GPU; if you’re using such a card, this a great upgrade, while anyone with a GTX 970 or better will probably want to wait a little longer.

The GPU at the heart of the GTX 1660 is the same TU116 as in the 1660 Ti, with two of the SMs disabled. Perhaps more interesting is when you compare it with the GP106 used in the GTX 1060. Transistor counts increased from 4.4 billion to 6.6 billion, and die size also went up. In practice, TSMC’s 12nm doesn’t appear to be much more than a refinement of its 16nm tech—what Intel would have called 16nm+.