ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1660 review: Turing for the masses

NVIDIA wants to corner the mainstream market

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is still fresh from the oven, but the company is already back with yet another card for gamers on a budget. The GeForce GTX 1660 is based on the same TU116 GPU as the GeForce GTX 1660, and it features all the benefits of the Turing architecture, including support for concurrent floating point and integer operations, a unified cache architecture, and adaptive shading. 

On top of that, it also has the enhanced NVENC encoder like the other Turing GPUs, so there's support for H.265 (HEVC) 8K encode at 30fps. The new encoder also offers up to 25 per cent bit rate savings for HEVC and up to 15 per cent savings for H.264, so you can stream at a lower bit rate and achieve better image quality than you would on a Pascal GPU. 

As its name might suggest, the GeForce GTX 1660 sits somewhere between the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and the GeForce GTX 1060. At US$219, it'll be an appealing choice for those running on a tight budget, and a sensible upgrade if you're running a GeForce GTX 960 or 970 and older. According to NVIDIA, nearly two-thirds of GeForce owners are still using GPUs at the level of the GeForce GTX 960 or worse, so the GeForce GTX 1660 should look like a pretty compelling upgrade for these folks. 

However, like the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, the GeForce GTX 1660 also doesn't feature any RT and Tensor cores, but its target audience probably won't miss them.

Either way, NVIDIA looks like it's focused on making it easier for users to upgrade and at as low a cost as possible. For instance, the GeForce GTX 1660 has a TDP of just 120 watts, so you probably don't have to go get a new power supply. The card will also run off a single 8-pin power connector. 

NVIDIA isn't releasing a Founders Edition this time either, and it's going straight to launch with custom models from its partners. 

The ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1660 I'm reviewing today is a mini-ITX card that features a compact, single-fan design. It measures just 174mm long, so it'll fit in even the most compact of cases. In Gaming mode, it has a base clock of 1,530MHz and boost clock of 1,800MHz, slightly up from the default 1,785MHz base clock. OC mode pushes the clock speeds slightly higher to a 1,560MHz base clock and 1,830MHz boost clock. 

The single fan uses ASUS' wing-blade design, which features drooped tips on each fan blade in order to reduce drag. The fan also utilizes dual ball bearings for improved durability and longevity. 

Round the back, the card features just three display outputs, including one HDMI 2.0b, one DisplayPort 1.4, and one DVI-D connector. That said, NVIDIA says the GPU actually fully supports VirtualLink connections over USB-C as well, and it's up to individual manufacturers to implement it.

But first, what are its specifications?

Before we look at how the card performs, here's a look at its reference specifications and how it stacks up against the rest of NVIDIA's line-up:

Compared to the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, the GeForce GTX 1660 strips back even more features. For example, it has just 6GB of older GDDR5 memory, the same as the GeForce GTX 1060, instead of faster GDDR6 memory. As a result, there's a noticeable drop in memory bandwidth, which may be especially apparent if you run higher quality textures and resolutions. 

That said, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB launched at US$249 for partner boards, but the US$219 GeForce GTX 1660 is shaping up to be both faster and cheaper, so it's difficult to really complain. NVIDIA also isn't making available different memory configurations, and all the cards will ship with the same 6GB of GDDR5 memory. 

Test Setup

The detailed specifications of our new graphics card testbed system is as follows:-

• Intel Core i7-8086K (4.0GHz, 12MB L3 cache)
• ASUS ROG Strix Maximus X Hero (Intel Z370)
• 4 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SSD
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• Acer Predator X27, 4K monitor

The full line-up of graphics cards and their driver versions are listed below:

• ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1660 (ForceWare 419.35)
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC (ForceWare 418.91)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition (ForceWare 417.54)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Founders Edition (ForceWare 417.35)
• PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 (Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 18.12.3)

[hwzcompare]

[products=661041,659169,655676,562776,655704]

[width=200]

[caption=Test cards compared]

[showprices=1]

[/hwzcompare]

Benchmarks

Next up, here's a list of all the benchmarks used:

• 3DMark
• VRMark
• Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Far Cry 5
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Tom Clancy's The Division

We used the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark and stress test in 3DMark for our temperature  and power consumption tests respectively.

3DMark

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stress your hardware in turn to assess its performance.

There is roughly an 18 per cent gap between the GeForce GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti in 3DMark Fire Strike, so the former performs closer to the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB than it does with its Turing counterpart. Compared to the Pascal card, the GeForce GTX 1660 is roughly 8 per cent quicker. 

VRMark

Futuremark’s VRMark benchmark is designed to assess a PC’s ability to handle high-performance headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. If a PC passes the Orange Room test, it is ready for the latter two systems. The second graph also shows how the cards fared against the benchmark's target of an average FPS of 109. 

Strangely enough, the GeForce GTX 1660 did worse than the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB here, falling behind by around 11 per cent. Still, it passed the Orange Room test quite handily. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity has long been the poster child for the performance benefits a low-level API like DirectX 12 can bring. It is based on the Nitrous engine and can be extremely punishing thanks to the huge number of onscreen units and the sheer level of detail accorded to each unit. However, the CPU does become the limiting factor at lower resolutions and settings. 

Escalation is quite punishing at Crazy settings, so you'll probably want to stick to High settings. In DirectX 11 mode, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti was around 11 per cent faster than the GeForce GTX 1660. However, the latter also managed to beat both the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and Radeon RX 590. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided features just about every trick to make your game look pretty, including things like volumetric and dynamic lighting, screenspace reflections, and cloth physics. Even though it was released in 2016, the game is capable of bringing even the most powerful systems to their knees. 

The GeForce GTX 1660 was quite capable of handling the game at High settings, and it even managed to churn out playable frame rates with the settings cranked up to Ultra. At High settings, it was faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 by 20 per cent. The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti still held on to a sizeable lead though, racing ahead to an 18 per cent advantage. 

Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 is actually an AMD launch title, so it'll be interesting to see how the green camp fares here. 

The GeForce GTX 1660 came ahead of both the GeForce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 590, but the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti was still a good 16 per cent faster at 1080p and High settings. Compared to the Pascal card, the GeForce GTX 1660 was roughly 13 per cent quicker.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Once again, the GeForce GTX 1660 came in snugly between the GeForce GTX 1060 and 1660 Ti. It also edged ahead of the Radeon RX 590, despite being cheaper. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Even with all the settings turned up, the GeForce GTX 1660 turned out a fairly decent result, even though the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti was still 12 per cent faster. The improvement over the GeForce GTX 1060 is modest, coming in at around 20 per cent. 

Tom Clancy's The Division

The GeForce GTX 1660 handled itself quite well at Ultra settings, squeezing out a roughly 17 per cent lead over the GeForce GTX 1060. 

Temperature and power consumption

Since there is no Founders Edition model for the GeForce GTX 1660, cooling performance will vary between the custom solutions implemented by different vendors. The Phoenix card with me today employs just a single fan for cooling, which is probably why it ran hotter than the dual-fan ROG Strix model, despite being the less powerful card.

In fact, compared to the rest of the cards, cooling performance is quite disappointing, as even the GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition ran cooler. 

When it came to power consumption, the card performed quite similarly to the GeForce GTX 1060, albeit with higher idle power draw. The numbers here also highlight just how inefficient AMD's Radeon RX 590 is, as NVIDIA consistently beats it in terms of performance per watt. 

Turing is truly here for everyone

Truth be told, there isn't a lot I can say about the new GeForce GTX 1660. It's faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, as you'd expect from a card that's intended as the direct successor to last generation's model. But aside from the improvements at the architecture level for Turing, the GeForce GTX 1660 is very much an iterative upgrade.

Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, this year's hardware is faster than last year's, which doesn't seem particularly exciting or newsworthy, especially when the upgrades are more incremental than game-changing. That said, progress is progress, and I think we're reaching the point where so-called budget cards actually serve up pretty decent performance, and you don't have to turn all the settings down just to get a playable experience. 

Furthermore, the Turing cards pushed a GeForce GTX 1060-class card down to the space previously occupied by the GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti. The GeForce GTX 1660 can push over 60fps at max settings in many of the triple A titles I benchmarked, and I think that's quite impressive for a card that retails at US$219. It's not quite as cheap as the US$139 that the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti launched at, but I feel like we're getting there (perhaps with Turing's successor?).

Either way, while Turing may have driven the price of the high-end cards way up, it's also made better performance more accessible at lower prices. If you don't need bleeding-edge performance and are looking to upgrade from a GeForce GTX 960 or older, the GeForce GTX 1660 will make you pretty happy, especially if you only play less demanding esports titles. Having said that, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti still feels like it offers a better balance between price and performance. If you can afford it, you should definitely pony up. 

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.