Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G Review

Today is the official launch of the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER and unlike what we’ve seen on the RTX SUPER lineup, the existing GTX 16 series lineup will continue to coexist with the newly introduced GTX SUPER in a rather interesting way.

Since NVIDIA didn’t release any reference model for the GTX 1660 SUPER, you’ll be seeing the GTX 1660 SUPER from the AIB partners instead. The GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G we have here for this review is one of the GTX 1660 SUPER available from Gigabyte, alongside the rest of the GTX 1660 SUPER from other NVIDIA’s partners that will be available from today onwards.

Specifications

Unboxing

The packaging of the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G is almost the same as what the GTX 1660 Gaming OC 6G and GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC, which is something that we believe many of you are familiar with. Other than the ‘SUPER’ label being added at the back of the name of the model, the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G is packed with similar features such as RGB Fusion 2.0, WindForce cooling solution, factory overclocked, Turing shaders.

Highlighted features such as the signature WindForce cooling design, Heat-Pipe direct touch, support for RGB Fusion 2.0 and full coverage backplate can be found at the back of the box.

The included accessories are the usual quick start guide and drivers CD that many of us will just ignore without any second thought – since the graphics card driver and utilities can be downloaded directly from the product’s page upon availability.

The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING OC 6G

At first glance, the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G looks just like the GTX 1660 Gaming OC 6G and you won’t really know it’s actually a GTX 1660 SUPER without looking at the label sticker located at the back of the card.

It features a similar triple-fan cooler and heatsink with Copper heatpipes, a more minimalist approach as compared to the design you’ll find on graphics cards under the AORUS brand. The unique fan blade design allows the fan to operate silently even at higher speed and the middle fan that spins in the opposite direction are some of the traits you’ll find on most of the Gigabyte branded graphics cards.

To power the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G, you will need at least a 450W power supply with at least one 8-pin PCIe power connector as recommended by NVIDIA. The fairly low power requirement makes the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G a pretty good option for a low power gaming system that runs on a 500W power supply, or lower.

At the back of the card, you’ll find a backplate that serves two purposes – improve the aesthetics and slightly enhances the overall structural integrity of the card itself. Just so you know, the backplate isn’t made of metal, which is something that we’ve seen previously on both the GTX 1660 Gaming OC 6G and GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC.

Unlike some of the previous designs, the full-coverage design hides the extended heatsink fins from the view that gives the card a cleaner and beefier look. Both the top shroud and backplate acts as a case for the PCB itself, which somewhat gives it a slightly better structural integrity even though both are made of plastic.

While some GTX 1660 SUPER from the board partners offers a single HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI-D as the display output options, Gigabyte decided to give its GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G a total of three DisplayPort and one HDMI.

Test System Setup

The test is done using the following setup under an ambient temperature of 30°C:

The test is done separately for games that support both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 at the resolution of 1920×1080, 2560×1440, and 3840×2160. The GTX 1660 Ti is used for this test as well, for performance comparison of course.

Games Benchmark – 1080p

For 1080p gaming, we can see that the actually GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G performs almost on par with the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC 6G despite being positioned under the GTX 1660 Ti in the GTX 16 series lineup. There are titles where the GTX 1660 Ti still performs better but the GTX 1660 SUPER seems to be in a rather awkward position at the moment.

Games Benchmark – 1440p

Moving on to 1440p, we can still see similar patterns for both the GTX 1660 SUPER and GTX 1660 Ti for most of the titles. Being marketed as a graphics card for 1080p gaming doesn’t stop us from going 1440p with the GTX 1660 SUPER, though it requires some sacrifice on the graphics quality if you insisted on getting the 60fps mark for your games.

Games Benchmark – 4K

At this point, the test is basically just to show you what kind of numbers you will get on some of the newer AAA titles as 4K is clearly not a thing for both the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1660 SUPER.

Temperature

The beefy cooler on the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G is probably one of the better cooling solutions you’ll get on a GTX 1660 SUPER as compared to a basic Aluminum block heatsink design. The idle temperature of the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G hovers around 42°C on passive cooling after running a number of tests, as the fans will not spin until it goes above the 56°C mark.

The highest GPU temperature recorded throughout the tests is 65°C, which is like 10°C cooler than a lower cost GTX 1660 SUPER that comes with a dual-fan Aluminum block heatsink cooler. Since the cooling fans are very silent on default even during load, you can also adjust the fan curve via the AORUS ENGINE software for it to run even cooler without sacrificing too much on the acoustics.

Final Thoughts

Instead of replacing the existing models like what we’ve seen in the RTX lineup, NVIDIA has decided that the GTX 1660 SUPER will coexist with the existing GTX 16 series. While existing users of the GTX 1660 Ti won’t be very happy about this decision, users who are looking forward to upgrading to a GTX 1660 Ti can now consider to go for a GTX 1660 SUPER instead if their budget doesn’t allow.

If we look that the retail price of the Gigabyte GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G which is set at RM 1,259, it’s definitely a steal as compared to the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming OC 6G which it can perform almost on part with and retails at RM 1,529. The price might be a little bit higher as compared to some of the offers from the competing brands, but that’s pretty much justifiable with the cooling solution that Gigabyte equipped to the GTX 1660 SUPER Gaming OC 6G that gives you 10°C lower in temperature during load.

Pros

• Decent performance right out of the box
• Great cooling performance
• Uses GDDR6 memory
• Offers higher effective memory speed than both GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti
• Offers higher bandwidth than both GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti
• Performance is close to a GTX 1660 Ti

Cons

• Price is slightly on the higher side
• No support for SLI / NVLink