Nvidia Launches New GTX 1660, Takes Control of Midrange Market

Nvidia’s 2019 Turing GPU refresh schedule continues, this time with the launch of the GTX 1660. This slimmed-down Turing variant (without DLSS or RTX / DXR ray tracing) is aimed at the all-important midrange market, with an introductory price of $219.

The GTX 1660 is also the first GPU from Nvidia to hit AMD’s midrange pricing bulwark. With the Vega family knocked out of any realistic comparison by Turing, AMD’s Polaris GPU is holding the line on its $200 GPUs. Does Team Red manage to keep its feet?

The answer is yes — mostly — but only by ignoring power consumption altogether. The gap between the two companies has become a canyon in this regard. That weighed on AMD in the reviews from Anandtech, Hot Hardware, and PCMag.

Overall performance for the GTX 1660 is good. Anandtech has published a chart with the absolute and performance-per-dollar improvements.

Prices on the 6GB GTX 1060 were as low as $209 last year, but the GPU generally sold for a bit more than that. How well Turing and Pascal compare with each other by these metrics does depend on which pricing you use for the latter. Either way, the 1660 Ti still offers the best increase in performance-per-dollar of the Turing generation, though the 1660 isn’t far behind.

Desktop users aren’t as concerned with power consumption as laptop and mobile users, but that doesn’t mean power consumption is irrelevant in this space. The situation isn’t a blowout against AMD, but it’s not great, either. AMD’s RX 580 is a bit better positioned in this regard. While it gives up more performance against the 1660, it hits a significantly lower price point ($189 versus $219).

PCMag writes that “Once again, Nvidia is succeeding in filling out a holistic and balanced GPU line for gamers…and the race for second place isn’t all that close.” AMD still has an argument to make for itself below $200, but the GTX 1660 seems to lock out the RX 590. Navi can’t come soon enough.

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