Which graphics should you pick in your next laptop? The Nvidia GTX 1650, or is it worth
paying more for the GTX 1660 Ti? In this comparison we’ll take a look at the differences in
gaming performance, thermals, battery life and more to help you decide which to get in
your next laptop.
Let’s take a look at how the laptop GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 Ti differ in terms of specs.
Straight out of the gate we can see there are 50% more CUDA cores with the 1660 Ti,
and it’s also available with higher base and boost clock speeds, though this comes
at the result of higher power. The 1660 Ti also has 50% more memory, plus it uses faster
GDDR6 while the 1650 has less and slower GDDR5.
This may not seem like a fair comparison at first, it’s well known the 1660 Ti isn’t
too far off the RTX 2060 when it comes to laptops, however at the moment the 1660 Ti
is the next step up from the 1650, there’s no 1660 in between like on the desktop side
at this time, unless of course you count the 1660 Ti Max-Q. Don’t worry, I’ll be comparing
the 1660 Ti and 2060 in a future video, so if you’re new here you’ll want to get
subscribed for that one.
To do this comparison I’ve basically got two of the same laptop so I can do the most
possible apples to apples comparison. Massive thanks to Metabox here in Australia for lending
me these units to do this comparison, you can find prices and links in the description.
Basically these are the same Clevo chassis, the only difference is that one has the 1650,
while the other has the 1660 Ti.
They both otherwise have the same i7-9750H CPU and same 16gb of memory in dual channel,
so kind of a best case and ideal for a GPU comparison as we want to try and minimize
other components being a bottleneck.
Basically expect different results with different CPU and memory configurations. Both laptops
also have the same cooling solution and battery, so we’ll be able to accurately compare thermals
and battery life too.
In my case both graphics are also running at the top end of the specified GPU power
limit, so the 1650 runs at 50 watts while the 1660 Ti runs at 80 watts, but expect different
results with different power limits, which will vary between laptops, so unfortunately
these results aren’t globally applicable, but should show us the differences between
the best possible 1650 and 1660 Ti laptops.
Otherwise both laptops were tested on the same day under the same conditions with the
same Windows updates and Nvidia drivers installed, so let’s get into the results.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode rather than multiplayer, as it allows me to
consistently perform the same test run. In all upcoming graphs the 1660 Ti will be shown
by the red bars, while the 1650 will be shown by the purple bars. I’ve tested all available
setting presets, and these are shown on the left, so in this case from low to ultra settings.
In this first example the 1660 Ti is coming out significantly ahead at all settings, with
even the 1% low at medium and above beating the average FPS from the 1650.
Apex legends was tested with either all settings at maximum or all settings at minimum as it
doesn’t have predefined setting presets. At minimum settings the 1660 Ti was scoring
30% higher average FPS, and then it was coming out 40% faster at maximum settings, where
even the 1% low is ahead of the 1650’s average. We’ll be expecting this trend throughout
the rest of the games, where higher setting levels see bigger differences as they are
more GPU bound.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark, and with the highest
setting preset in use there was a 52% higher average frame rate with the GTX 1660 Ti when
compared with the 1650.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay on each machine.
There’s a far smaller difference at low settings where we’re more CPU bound, but
then at epic settings there was a fairly big 55% improvement to average frame rate with
the 1660 Ti. It’s worth noting that the 1650 still played the game well enough at
epic settings though, so it depends what sort of frame rate you want to target.
PUBG was also tested with the same replay on each machine, and was another game where
the 1% low performance from the 1660 Ti beat the average FPS from the 1650 at most setting
levels. At ultra settings the 1660 Ti was able to get us 63% higher average FPS, putting
this game in 3rd place out of all 15 tested.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and is generally a
fairly CPU heavy game, however we’re still seeing a massive improvement with the 1660
Ti here, as the 1650 seemed to bottleneck the CPU from performing better. This game
saw the biggest improvement with the 1660 Ti out of all 15 tested, with a massive 69%
higher average frame rate at ultra high settings.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though, let’s counter that example with Dota 2,
which was tested playing in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on.
In this case the 1650 was ahead in most tests, though it was only very slight. This is an
example of a game that’s more CPU heavy, as I never found the GPU utilization to rise
much, so as a result it doesn’t really matter what graphics we’ve got.
CS:GO was tested with the Ulletical FPS benchmark and was in a similar boat. While there were
improvements to be had with the 1660 Ti, this game only saw the second lowest improvement
out of all 15 tested, coming out 25% ahead with all settings maxed out.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built in benchmark, and there were larger improvements
to be had with the 1660 Ti in this test. This was another game where at most setting levels
even the 1% low results from the 1660 Ti were ahead of the 1650’s averages, and at ultra
settings the 1660 Ti was able to get 47% higher average FPS.
Overwatch was tested in the practice range as it allows me to perform the exact same
test run, perfect for a comparison like this. At epic settings the 1660 Ti was able to reach
56% higher average frame rates when compared against the 1650, with the 1% low from the
1660 Ti ahead or close to the 1650’s averages at most setting levels.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built in benchmark, and is another game that generally
favours CPU performance. At every setting level, the 1660 Ti 1% low was head of the
averages from the 1650, and at ultra settings there was a 43% boost to average FPS with
the 1660 Ti.
The Witcher 3 tends to be more GPU bound in my experience, which would explain why it
saw the 4th highest improvement out of all 15 games covered. At ultra settings there
was a 58% higher average FPS with the 1660 Ti, however the 1% low results weren’t quite
able to come out ahead of the 1650’s averages here.
Watch Dogs 2 tends to favour CPU performance as it’s pretty much always reporting 100%
utilization, and while the differences seen are on the lower side compared to other games
tested, there was still a 41% improvement to average FPS at ultra settings on the 1660
Ti, though much smaller differences as we step down to lower settings and become further
CPU bound.
Ghost Recon was tested with the built in benchmark, and while the differences at low settings
look larger, the 1660 Ti was just 41% ahead there. I say just because at ultra settings
this rises up to 52% higher average FPS, and we also saw the biggest difference to 1% low
here as well.
Strange Brigade was tested with the built in benchmark and is our only Vulkan title.
At ultra settings there was a massive 64% higher average FPS with the 1660 Ti, making
this the second largest difference out of all 16 games tested. Even the 1% lows are
massively ahead of the average FPS the 1650 was able to provide.
In terms of overall improvement, over these 15 games the 1660 Ti graphics is performing
47% better in terms of average FPS with all settings at maximum. The performance difference
does of course vary between games though, as we can see. Games like Dota 2 didn’t
really see a difference as the GPU doesn’t seem to matter compared to CPU performance,
whereas others saw huge changes.
I’ve also tested some synthetic benchmarks, including 3DMark’s Time Spy, Fire Strike,
and VRMark. There were some pretty big differences here too, like in the games, with the fire
strike graphics score from the 1660 Ti coming out 56% ahead of the 1650, with a 59% higher
score for time spy, so actually in line with some of our games.
As both machines have the same cooling solution let’s also take a look at temperature differences.
Neither were particular hot with this workload of the heaven benchmark running for over an
hour at maximum settings, however the 1660 Ti was clearly warmer due to the increased
power that allows it to perform better.
This doesn’t really translate into battery life differences when testing with the same
49 watt hour battery. With both laptops running the Witcher 3 at ultra settings, the 1650
only lasted a few minutes longer, as the cap to 30 FPS should mean they’re not working
too differently. With that in mind I did also try running with battery boost disabled, but
now the bottleneck is the amount of power the battery can provide, so both laptops only
went up a few FPS, so there was still no major difference.
I’ve measured total system power draw from the wall while running the Witcher 3 at ultra
settings, so the GPUs were reporting 100% utilization here. In this test the 1660 Ti
system was drawing 26% more power, which to me seems fair given this game saw 58% higher
average FPS with the same settings.
Just before we get into pricing we’ll quickly look at some Adobe Premiere video export results.
I was seeing just a few seconds difference with Intel quick sync in use, shown by the
shorter bars, and then with a two pass export, so no quick sync shown by the larger bars
the 1660 Ti was only giving a 5% performance improvement, as this task seems to be more
CPU heavy.
Now for the final difference, the price, you can check the links in the description for
up to date laptop prices with either graphics card, as prices will change over time. This
will depend on where you live, but in general expect the 1660 Ti to cost more money, as
it’s a higher tier graphics option.
Let’s start with US pricing, in this example this same Clevo chassis with 1650 goes for
$1050 USD, while the 1660 Ti version goes for $1200, which is $150 or 14.3% more money.
In this example the ASUS TUF FX505 with 1650 is $900 USD, while the 1660 Ti modei is $200
more, however this isn’t perfect as there are also storage differences. In this case
the 1660 Ti is 22.2% more money.
Here in Australia, we’re looking at a $200 AUD difference at the moment, which converts
to around $140 USD for my international viewers. This works out to about 15% more money, pretty
much the same as the US prices. For that we are getting an on average improvement to FPS
in games of 47%, so if you’re looking for a gaming laptop it seems like the 1660 Ti
is well worth the extra cost, but you can of course do the math using my game results
with other models and prices.
I would not be at all surprised if we get a non Ti version of the 1660 in future for
laptops, this is already available on the desktop PC side. I’d expect this as the
current performance gap between the 1650 and 1660 Ti is quite large. At the moment though,
the 1660 Ti seems worthwhile for a gaming laptop. Don’t get me wrong, the 1650 was
capable of playing modern games even with decent settings, but if you can afford the
1660 Ti I think it’s well worth it.
For other tasks though it’s going to depend, for instance in Adobe Premiere I wasn’t
seeing too much of an improvement to justify the price increase.
Let me know which graphics you’d pick down in the comments for your next laptop, and
if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for more upcoming laptop comparisons
and future tech videos like this one.