Colorful igame gtx 1660 ultra review in Spanish (full analysis)

The graphics card market does not stop, and this time we are going to analyze the Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra. The smallest GPU of the Turing that comes from the hand of the most renowned Chinese manufacturer in the global market. This is a configuration with a custom triple fan heatsink and RGB lighting on your logo. Like other GPUs of the brand, it has a turbo mode through a button that raises the frequency to 1860 MHz, a figure identical to the Gigabyte or MSI. Let's start this review not without first thanking Banggood for giving us this GPU, showing their trust in us and in our reviews.

The biggest asset of this GPU is its price, since it is the cheapest triple fan configuration with only 240 euros. But will it be at the level of the most renowned assemblers?

Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra technical features

Unboxing

Let's start as always with the Unboxing of the Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra, which is presented to us in a cardboard box completely decorated with a very epic robot that distinguishes this iGame family from Colorful, which has the best performance products. As in other manufacturers, the back area has information about the touches that the brand has made on this GPU and its management software that we will also see.

Under this box, we have another thick cardboard, which is responsible for perfectly storing the product. Inside, a double system of polyethylene foam in the form of a mold has been arranged to hold the card, which in turn comes inside an antistatic bag. What's more, the molds are finished in velvet canvas, something that we have not seen until now, let others learn!

The bundle contains the following elements:

• Graphics card Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra A few cards with illustrations and stickers Poster with the epic robot Instruction manual

Exterior design

What can a Chinese manufacturer like Colorful offer us in its GPUs? Well the most obvious, good quality / price ratio. Although this time the Gigabyte GTX 1660 Gaming OC follows closely, so it will be very interesting to see how far this GPU can go in pure performance. For the rest, you know, it is the second card with the most discreet Turing architecture of the whole family above the 1650, intended for players who will move in Full HD resolutions for the latest available titles.

Let's focus on the design of this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra. Its main claim is that it is presented to us with a triple fan configuration that gives us very good feelings for its good cooling. It's not much different than its competition, with a relatively thick hard plastic shell that covers the entire main face and the iGame logo in the center area.

The hand feeling is more or less similar to other models, offering us a weight of 800 grams, which is not a little if we consider it to be a 1660. At first glance, it seems that the integral aluminum heatsink can be quite finite. Of course, with a remarkable size that stands at no less than 310 mm long, 126 mm wide and 42 mm thick. It's not a surprise at Colorful, since their creations are usually much bigger than the competition. Let's think that another 1660 are in about 280 mm at most.

We have a triple fan configuration, with the two exteriors connected to the same headboard, and the one located in the central area connected to an independent headboard. They have a diameter of 90 mm outside and 80 mm inside, and consist of 9 curved blades with a traditional design that make them relatively noisy when they exceed 1400 RPM. It is a good detail to be able to manage the central fan independently, for example, to raise its RPM a little more than the exterior when we are playing or overclocking.

Something that we are going to miss a lot in a custom GPU like this, is a system that allows you to turn off the fans. This is up to the major manufacturers, and Colorful should be no less, so all three fans will always be running, at a rate of 1200 RPM, which is very similar to Nvidia's RTX reference cards.

We now move to the side area of ​​this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra to see that the case covers approximately half of the heatsink, leaving the area closest to the PCB free so that air can flow perfectly from both sides. On the face visible to the user, we have the “GEFORCE GTX” logo and also the iGAME logo. The latter has RGB lighting manageable through software.

We still have to see the top of this GPU, that is, the one that we will see if we install it in the horizontal position. It is a great detail to have put a protection backplate for the entire PCB, something that we do not see very often on medium-low performance cards like this. In addition, it is manufacturing in good quality aluminum and has openings to improve the cooling of this part.

Ports and power connections

Let's now locate ourselves in the back of the Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra to see what it offers us in terms of connectivity. And we certainly have surprises:

• 1x HDMI 2.0b1x DisplayPort 1.41x DVI DL Turbo mode select button

We see a curious way to raise the frequency of this GPU to 1860 MHz manually for occasions when we need extra performance. In any case it is the frequency that we also find in other models such as the MSI or the Gigabyte, only this time the brand has divided it into two levels.

On the other hand, we have a fairly poor configuration of video ports, since it only supports three monitors and poorly counted. The DVI connector is not a very attractive option, although we have HDMI adapters. But it is that only two standard ports seem very little to us at the current times. The DisplayPort port supports a maximum 8K resolution (7680x4320p) at 30 FPS and 4K at 120 Hz, while HDMI reaches only 4K @ 60 FPS.

The main connector to the board will of course be a PCIe 3.0 x16, which this time is well protected by a plastic sleeve. In addition, we do not forget the connectors that we have on the edges of the PCB, which are a total of three with 4-pin headers. Two of them are used to connect the three fans, while a third in black will be in charge of RGB lighting.

PCB and internal hardware

As it could not be otherwise, we are going to disassemble the heatsink of this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra to see in more detail what the PCB offers us. On this occasion we only have to remove the four main screws and another two located next to it to be able to extract the entire block. Of course, we will lose the warranty if we do this.

Heatsink

Here we have the complete dissipation block of this graphics card. As we can see, it is totally built in a single block, although along it we have three copper heat pipes passing through the fins to better distribute the heat. These extensions belong to two tubes that pass directly through the processor and perform the function of cold block in bare copper.

Despite making direct contact, the tubes could be better polished, and with a greater contact surface than they have to improve efficiency a little more. For the rest, we see the block of good quality and with fins wide enough for heat exchange.

We can see that around the cold block we have a metallic surface with attached thermal pads. Its mission is to capture the heat of the 6 GDDR5 memory chips of 1 GB each, which will surely support a fairly large frequency rise.

PCB

Moving to the PCB, we find as always the graphics processor in the central area, which this time has been glued to the heatsink with white thermal paste. Quite abundant in fact, but if we want to give it an extra performance, let's consider placing one of the gray ones (based on metals) that provide greater heat conductivity.

A large surface of this PCB is completely empty at least in terms of surface electronics, because we do have the power connector, and the fan and lighting connectors.

In the deepest area, it is where we find all the GPU power configuration, consisting of 6 choke coils, for the chokes friends, R22 built by Trio and with IPP (iGame Pure Power) technology in its 6 corresponding MOSFETS. Surely it calls your attention that instead of taking advantage of the main heatsink to cool the MOSFETs, Colorful has installed a second aluminum heatsink with small fins for independent cooling.

Technical specifications and benefits

Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra is a graphics card with Turing architecture and a TU116 chipset built in the 12nm FinFET manufacturing process. Inside it has 1408 CUDA cores and absolutely no Tensor or RT cores, so it has no native ability to do Ray Tracing. We already know that current Nvidia drivers provide this capability even Turing and Pascal RTX GPUs.

This processor works at a base frequency of 1530 MHz, while they have a second stage boost of 1785 MHz. Thanks to the button on the back, we can add a third turbo stage at 1860 MHz. All this gives us a capacity of 88 TMUs (texture units) and 48 ROPs (rendering units), measures that will help us to compare other cards on the market. The 1408 KB cache on this GPU is split into two cores for best performance.

On this card, we have a total of 6GB of GDDR5-type VRAM memory, instead of the GDDR6 to be used by its older sisters, including the 1660 Ti. They work at a frequency of 8 Gbps (8000 MHz) over a bus width of 192 bits, and a bandwidth of 192 GB / s.

Test bench and performance test

Let's go immediately to the testing phase of this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra, where we will see if the Chinese brand competes from you to you with the main exponents operating in Europe. The test bench that we have used consists of the following elements:

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i9-9900K
Base plate:	Asus Maximus XI Formula
Memory:	16 GB G-Skill Trident Z NEO 3600 MHz
Heatsink	Corsair H100i Platinum SE
HDD	ADATA SU750
Graphic card	Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra
Power supply	Cooler Master V850 Gold

The tests consist of tests that run in various resolutions, such as Full HD and 4K. We have run all of them on the Windows 10 Pro operating system in its 1903 version with the latest version drivers available for this graphics card

As always, let's remember through this table the different ranges of FPS we consider and the gaming experience that they bring us:

FRAMES PER SECOND
Frames Per Second (FPS)	Gameplay
Less than 30 FPS	Limited
30 ~ 40 FPS	Playable
40 ~ 60 FPS	Good
Greater than 60 FPS	Fairly Good or Excellent

Benchmarks and synthetic tests

For benchmark tests we will use the following titles:

• 3DMark Fire Strike Normal3DMark Fire Strike UltraTime SpyVRMARK

Well, in the end we see that in all synthetic tests this graphics card falls slightly behind the Gigabyte. All the tests have been carried out with the turbo mode at 1860 MHz activated, so the frequency in theory is the same as the competition. In any case, the differences are minimal, sometimes a few points, so it can also influence the drivers and the specific conditions of the test bench.

Game testing

After synthetic tests, we will proceed to evaluate the real performance in games, thus having a closer guide of what our GPU will be able to deliver under DirectX 12, and OPEN GL.

The tests will be carried out at the three most used resolutions in gaming, we refer to Full HD (1920 x 1080p), QHD or 2K (2560 x 1440p) and UHD or 4K (3840 x 2160p). In this way, we will have a complete range of results to be able to compare them with other GPUs. For each of the games, we have kept the automatic settings selected in each and for each resolution.

In GTX graphics we disable the RTX options to improve performance, and that is why we can find registers superior to much more powerful cards.

The games tested, along with their quality, texture filter and execution API.

• Final Fantasy XV, standard, TAA, DirectX 11 DOOM, Ultra, TAA, Open GL 4.5 Deus EX Mankind Divided, Alto, Anisotropico x4, DirectX 12 Far Cry 5, Alto, TAA, DirectX 12 Metro Exodus, Alto, Anisotropico x16, DirectX 12 (with and without RT) Shadow of the Tomb Rider, Alto, TAA + Anisotropic x4, DirectX 12 (with and without DLSS) Control, Alto, without RTX, rendered at 1920x1080p, DirectX 12 Gears 5, Alto, TAA, DirectX 12

Regarding the marks of frames per second, we see that the competition is very close between the two GPUs, the positions alternate in the three resolutions. Therefore, we could conclude that we are facing a draw, with a performance that we expected to be good and at the level of the best.

Overclocking

To overclock this GPU we have used EVGA Precision X1 software as almost always. To buy the results with 1660 other views, we have used Shadow of the Tomb Rider with DirectX 12.

Shadow of the Tomb Rider	Stock	Overclocking
1920 x 1080 (Full HD)	75 FPS	86 FPS
2560 x 1440 (WQHD)	50 FPS	59 FPS
3840 x 2160 (4K)	27 FPS	32 FPS
	Stock	Overclocking
Fire Strike (Graphics Score)	14029	15707

Coinciding with other models analyzed, the overclocking capacity of this GPU is sensational, something that extends to the rest of the GTX of Turing architecture, and also the results they offer make the difference. This time we have tightened the nuts on the Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra until we reach a stable 2040 MHz in the GPU clock and 2475 MHz in the memory clock, with an increase in the program of 950 MHz for GDDR5.

Achieving excellent stability in these registers with the fans slightly turned up for no heating problems, we have obtained improvements of up to 11 FPS in Full HD resolution. It will undoubtedly be the resolution that interests us most for this GPU, which is great. But in the other resolutions we have increased 9 FPS and 5 FPS respectively, thus reaching close to 60 in 2K resolution, which is very good news. If we look at the previous comparative tables, we are practically reaching the values ​​that the GTX 1660 Ti delivers in its stock configuration.

Temperatures and consumption

As always we have had the graphics card under stress for several hours with FurMark monitoring the evolution of the average temperatures with HWiNFO.

Regarding the consumption values, we see that it is a very efficient GPU, one of the best we have tested, although in stock it pays to have all its fans running.

The same influences the temperatures at rest, and for that reason it offers such good temperatures. We think that with this heatsink this card would need a fan shutdown system to be completely silent and consume even less. As always, we have jointly stressed CPU and GPU to give us 309 W of consumption.

Final words and conclusion about Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra

One more that we add to the recommended list, because this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra is a graphics card with a very good performance-price ratio, if not the best. And is that we have records that practically match its direct competition as the MSI or Gigabyte models.

It is an ideal card to play in Full HD resolutions and even 2K with games that are not too demanding, or with the graphics a little touch up. We will practically have 60 FPS insured, leaving most titles in a high quality.

In addition, we have seen that its overclocking capacity is very good, skimming the records of its older sister the 1660 Ti. With this triple fan system the overclocking has been completely stable and without covering any problem for the integrity of the card. We have a rear button to toggle the boost and turbo frequency manually, which is useful and unique in the iGame range.

We recommend reading the best graphics cards on the market

And speaking a little more about the cooling system, we have a triple fan design with a heatsink that has given us very good results. But it would be much better with a system that allows the fans to turn off, it is true that they are silent, but with their capacity they could be turned off much of the time, avoiding their wear.

As for design, it is a brand card of the house, with a fairly large size exceeding 310 mm and with an integrated aluminum backplate to improve quality and protection. On the side it also has a small lighting system. We did not like its port configuration too much, since we only have three, and one of them is an almost useless DVI already in extinction.

We conclude with its price and availability, where this Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra stands out a lot. We can get it for a price of approximately 240 euros at Banggood.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ IDEAL FOR PLAYING IN FULL HD	- FEW VIDEO PORTS
+ GREAT OVERCLOCKING CAPACITY	- FANS NEVER TURN OFF
+ AGGRESSIVE AND RGB DESIGN
+ VERY GOOD PERFORMANCE HEATSINK
+ GREAT PERFORMANCE / PRICE RATIO

The Professional Review team awards you the gold medal and recommended product:

Colorful iGame GTX 1660 Ultra

COMPONENT QUALITY - 82%

DISSIPATION - 88%

GAMING EXPERIENCE - 80%

SOUND - 78%

PRICE - 85%

83%