NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 vs AMD Radeon R9 290X

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q1 2019 with a MSRP of $219. It is built on the Turing GPU microarchitecture (codename TU116) and is manufactured on a 12 nm process.

Memory

The GTX 1660 has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory, with a 2,001 MHz memory clock and a 192 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 192.1 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The GTX 1660 includes 1,408 CUDA cores, the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,530 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,785 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 88 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 48 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The GTX 1660 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports DVI, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 300 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 120 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The GTX 1660 has the 109th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 20.14% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 21,063.5 score and $219 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 96.18. This is the 18th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.