Nvidia gtx 1660 super review in Spanish (full analysis)

The embargo has been lifted and we bring you the new Nvidia GTX 1660 Super. In the absence of a Founders Edition model, we have been sent the: Asus GTX 1660 Super OC the custom model that the GPU giant has just launched. Finally, the new mid-range Nvidia Super GPUs have been officially launched on the market, specifically the 1660 and 1650 Super to compete with the next Radeon RX 5500 and 5600. It is basically the TU116 chip but now with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory, thus increasing the memory bus by up to 75%.

With these new graphics cards, specifically the 1660 Super, the manufacturer has decided to insert another model between the 1660 and 1660 Ti to increase the variety in the mid-range. However, this time the 1660 will not be discontinued, which is excellent news for everyone. Will we see that 5-10% improvement over the normal 1660? Let us begin this analysis.

We must thank Nvidia for their trust and collaboration with us in transferring their product to us for this analysis.

Asus GTX 1660 Super OC technical features

Unboxing

The presentation that has been used for the Nvidia GTX 1660 Super is similar to other graphics cards on the market. This time Asus has chosen to introduce a double box bundle for its new model. The first box is just a printed cover with enough information about the card and the corresponding photographs of it.

The second box is made of rigid, black cardboard. Inside it we have a quite peculiar fastening system for the GPU. It is not the typical foam block, but the graphics card is held with a plastic to a cardboard mold. Above it, another mold around it prevents it from moving and being crushed. It seems that Asus has modified its typical presentation in a single box for something similar to other brands, although with its own seal.

In any case, the bundle has the following elements:

• Nvidia GTX 1660 Super Graphics Card User Guide

And it would be. At least the card comes with its ports all covered with plastic protectors. Although this time it does not come in an antistatic bag, something that also catches our attention from the manufacturer.

Exterior design

We have before us another graphics card that joins the large mid-range for the gaming market. Nvidia has chosen to keep the same graphics chip as in the 1660, increasing only the performance of its memory to a GDDR6. In this way, the new card should be located just below the 1660 Ti, although we will see this later, since the GPU has been overclocked with respect to the reference model. He is clearly preparing for what AMD has to come up with, with the new 5600 and 5500. The competition is served.

Focusing already on the design of the Asus GTX 1660 Super OC we have a quite peculiar presentation with a double fan heatsink as you can see. The peculiarity lies precisely in the measurements, specifically in the thickness with no less than 56 mm, occupying almost three complete slots. The others are more or less standard with 240 long and 120 mm wide once connected on board.

It is not common to find a mid-range graphics card with this great thickness, so let's be careful with its vertical installation or in small chassis because we could be in trouble. And it is that a considerable size casing has been used, all of it made of hard plastic of great rigidity and thickness, although at the same time very light. We see an angular design in all its corners and surface, with two 90 mm fans located in the central area of ​​it.

These fans are the same as those used in strix configurations, although with a larger diameter. Two fans with 9 helical helix designs that deliver axial flow to the heatsink. In them, the outer ring system has been used to join the propellers and achieve a more stable air flow with greater inertia. These two fans can be managed independently, for example, through their own Tweak II software or any other focused on overclocking such as the EVGA Precision X1 that we usually use.

You could not miss the Asus own 0 dB system, which will keep the fans off while the graphics card is idle. However, at its maximum lap rate they will reach 3600 RPM, a very high figure that we will never see unless we are the ones who configure it.

We are now on its sides, where you can see how the plastic casing practically does not cover the heatsink block, leaving everything free to better expel air. It is not a very refined design we must admit, with some fairly prominent edges in certain places along the card. On the front we fear something practically identical, where we clearly see the lighting connectors and fans.

Yes, this Asus GTX 1660 Super OC also has a small lighting system on its side. Let's not think that it is the Geforce GTX logo, nor that of Asus, but a small diagonal band that separates both. Not bad, we also assure you that the lighting is very powerful and in perfect RGB although it is not configurable. Why not also illuminate the logos? Already put, the manufacturing cost will be practically the same and it will be something very different from the competition.

Asus has taken great care of the general aspect of the card, because it is not common to find backplates in the mid-range, except for OC models such as this one. This time a rather thick plastic plate has been used instead of aluminum, which is perfectly normal.

Part of its design is a brushed finish with a plastic protector on top that we can remove while another part is a grille with a fairly original transparent cover. In general we liked it a lot, although it is not at the level of the aluminum plates as is normal. The general view gives us a plump graphics card feeling, being very compact in extension and very thick.

Ports and connections

We continue with the ports section, where we will see what configuration Asus offers us for this Nvidia GTX 1660 Super. In the rear area, and facing the outside, we will find the following video ports:

• 1x DVI-D1x DisplayPort 1.42x HDMI 2.0b

The truth is that we did not expect such a poor configuration, with only a DisplayPort. We believe that DVI does not make much sense today, and although we understand that a normal user will only use only one monitor, more ports would be appreciated in case of any failure. The DisplayPort port will give us a maximum resolution of 8K at 60 FPS, while in 4K we will reach 165 Hz and in 5K we will be able to reach 120 Hz. In the case of HDMI, it supports a 4K @ 60 Hz resolution, so that as always the best option will be the DisplayPort.

On the other hand, we find the two connectors related to fans and lighting in the front area, with a multiple connector that allows us to control the 2 fans independently, and only two cables for lighting that cannot be configured. The communication interface used is maintained as PCIe 3.0 x16 more than enough for a card like this.

And finally the power connection only consists of a 6 + 2-pin connector. It's a GPU with a low TDP of just 125W, and despite its increased stock frequency in turbo mode, it doesn't need any more connectors. Then we will see how its overclocking capacity behaves, and how far it can go.

PCB and internal hardware in the Nvidia GTX 1660 Super

Let's get into the details and internal specifications of this Nvidia GTX 1660 Super, whose mounting solution is quite peculiar. And is that the heatsink is not attached to the housing, but we can remove it directly and independently by removing the screws from the backplate.

Next, we remove the backplate to reveal the four main screws plus two other small ones that connect the dissipation block to the PCB. So the three elements will come out separately, so we can clean and maintain them perfectly.

Thick and forceful heatsink

Despite being a card with a fairly low TDP, Asus does not risk it and opts for an integral aluminum block without any division. It occupies practically the entire PCB, with a fairly dense fin stack located vertically to be bathed by the axial flow generated by the fans.

In turn, the block has two thick nickel plated copper heatpipes that make direct contact with the DIE of the GPU and transfer heat to the periphery of the block. At first glance it will not seem very worked or complex but the effectiveness is outstanding, keeping the graphics card at only 63 degrees with the fans almost stopped.

Likewise, Asus has placed the corresponding silicone-based thermal pads in both the card's VRM and the 6 memory chips. They are quite thick and moderately hard to the touch, although we have not had heating problems.

News about the 1660 and specifications

And before we will see what power configuration Asus has implemented. While the reference model in principle would be a 3 + 2 phase configuration, this Asus GTX 1660 Super OC increases this number to 4 + 2, being 4 for the GPU and 2 for the GDDR6 memory SoC. Without a doubt a much simpler configuration than a 1660 Ti for example, and the 4 phases will demonstrate an improved capacity for overclocking.

We are already within the specifications, and regarding the graphics processor, Nvidia has been conservative and has maintained exactly the same chipset as the base 1660. It is the 12nm TU116 FinFET chip that is made up of 3 clusters for graphic processing, 11 clusters for texture processing and 22 stream multiprocessors. This translates to a total of 1408 lifetime CUDA cores, while we don't have RT cores or Tensor cores, so it doesn't have dedicated ray tracing processing as you all know.

The frequency at which this processor works is 1530 MHz of base frequency, and Asus has increased the turbo frequency to 1830 MHz, being the reference frequency of 1785 MHz, so it is a good climb. Finally we have 1536 KB of double block L2 cache for the GPU. In this way, 88 TMUs (texture units) and 48 ROPs (raster units) are obtained as performance values.

Regarding GRAM memory, we do have important news. This time the level has been raised with 6 GB of GDDR6 type instead of the GDDR5 used by the 1660. This clearly indicates that this GPU was already prepared for this standard, as was the 1660 Ti. Well, these memories maintain a 192-bit bus configuration, using 6 chips each working at 32 bits and 7000 MHz of bus frequency and 14000 MHz of effective frequency. With all this, the bus speed increase is 75% compared to GDDR5 memory, going from 192 GB / s to no less than 336 GB / s.

Nvidia ensures that this 1660 Super is 1.5 times more powerful than the GTX 1060, while it has been presented with drivers that offer several improvements such as the Sharpening or the NVENC encoder, used for streaming jobs. We will not verify this, but we will verify its overclocking capacity, and we hope that it will catch up with the 1660 Ti… or will I exceed it by far?

Test bench and performance test

We continue, and now we are going to perform the corresponding battery of performance tests, both benchmarks and tests in games, to this Nvidia GTX 1660 Super. Our test bench consists of the following components:

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	Asus GTX 1660 Super OC
Power supply	Cooler Master V850 Gold

All the synthetic tests and tests have been carried out with the filters as they come in the configuration of each program. The tests consist of tests that run in the three main resolutions, Full HD, 2K and 4K. We have run all of them on the Windows 10 Pro operating system in its 1903 version fully updated and with the Nvidia 441.07 drivers, being the latest version available. As is logical, in this case it has not been possible to perform the Ray Tracing Port Royal test, as it is not a compatible GPU.

What are we looking for in these tests?

First, the best possible image quality. The most important value for us is the average FPS (Frames per second), the higher the number of FPS the more fluid the game will go. Benchmark scores will help us compare this GPU to the competition. To slightly differentiate the quality, we leave you a table to assess the quality in FPS based on the quantity we get in each game and resolution.

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	Really good
Greater than 144 Hz	E-sports level

Benchmarks

For benchmark tests we will use the following titles:

• 3DMark Fire Strike normal3DMark Fire Strike UltraTime SpyVRMARK

Well, we observe exactly what we expected, this graphics card is clearly located between the 1660 and the 1660 Ti, as the manufacturer assured us. What's more, tests put it much closer to Ti, since opting for these GDDR6 memories is a guarantee of performance. We see this not only in the tests that use DirectX 11, but also in the DirectX 12 Time Spy, which even surpasses it by very little. Undoubtedly we can be faced with the graphics performance / price improvement of Nvidia.

Nvidia GTX 1660 Super:

As always we have overclocked this Asus GTX 1660 Super OC to its maximum, always ensuring stability. In this case we have used the EVGA Precision X1 software, which works great with Nvidia's GPUs. In this way we have carried out a new 3DMark Fire Strike test and new tests for Shadow Of The Tomb Rider.

As you would expect from an Nvidia with this TU116 chipset, its overclocking capacity has been very good, managing to increase the GDDR6 memories by 620 MHz and the GPU clock by up to 140 MHz, which are quite high values. In these results it is where we have achieved a correct stability to play, although the CPU lottery may let some rise more or less.

Shadow of the Tomb Rider		Stock	@ Overclock
1920 x 1080 (Full HD)		92 FPS	97 FPS
2560 x 1440 (WQHD)		62 FPS	65 FPS
3840 x 2160 (4K)		34 FPS	36 FPS
3DMark Fire Strike		Stock	@ Overclock
Graphics Score		16687	17300
Physics Score		23794	23667
Combined		15415	16026

The results also respond very well to overclocking, with an increase of up to 5 FPS in 1080p, 3 FPS in 2K and 2 in 4K, which is no small feat. So we are very close to the RTX 2060 at 2 or 3 FPS below which is very good, and that, once again, equals the benefits of the 1660 Ti.

Temperatures and consumption

Finally, we have proceeded to stress the Nvidia GTX 1660 Super for a few hours while monitoring its temperatures and consumption. For this, we have used as FurMark for stress and HWiNFO to capture results, along with a wattmeter that measures the power of all the complete equipment, except the monitor. The ambient temperature is 24 ° C.

And the results that it gives us are also located between the 1660 and the 1660 Ti, with enormous energy efficiency like practically all cards born from the Turing architecture.

And in terms of temperatures, it has remained in a very good position as one of the coolest we have ever tried. Despite not being a visually impressive block, the heatsink that Asus proposes works like a charm even in overclocking. In addition, it is extremely quiet, and we barely reached 1500 RPM with its two fans while we play or stress the set.

Final words and conclusion about Nvidia GTX 1660 Super

Without a doubt, this Nvidia GTX 1660 Super is one of the best purchases we can make in the mid-range. This card combines a very good price with a performance perhaps a little higher than we expected, which is fantastic.

And it is that the FPS rates thrown place it in almost all cases equal to or above the 1660 Ti. It seems that the least amount of CUDA cores has been supplied by a great optimization of drivers from the beginning. While waiting to see the new 5500 and 5600, we could say that it is the best we have in the mid-range.

To this we add an excellent overclocking capacity, admitting large increases in frequency and resulting in increases of up to 5 FPS for this model that we analyze. The cooling system has behaved in a spectacular way, very quiet and effective both at high load and at rest.

We recommend reading the best graphics cards on the market

And we come to the design, one that does show that it is mid-range. Not as refined as for example TUF versions and far from strix models as normal. It is a very thick card, which will occupy three slots due to its good heatsink and its two 90mm fans. The only thing we did not like is its port configuration, with only three, one of them being a very unhelpful DVI.

And we end with the price of the Asus GTX 1660 Super OC, which is going to be at just € 254.95. A very good price if we consider that the GTX 1660 TUF is still at € 290 and the GTX 1660 Ti at € 319. With everything we have seen and if the price is finally met, there is practically nothing to think about.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ PERFORMANCE SIMILAR TO 1660 TI	- SHORTAGE OF VIDEO PORTS
+ EXCELLENT OVERCLOCKING
+ HIGH PERFORMANCE HEATSINK
+ PERFORMANCE / HARD PRICE TO OVERCOME
+ THE BEST NVIDIA OF AVERAGE RANGE

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

Nvidia GTX 1660 Super

COMPONENT QUALITY - 85%

DISSIPATION - 92%

GAMING EXPERIENCE - 83%

SOUNDNESS - 90%

PRICE - 88%

88%

The best we have in the mid-range, equaling in performance to the 1660 Ti and at a good price