Nvidia have released the GTX 1660 Super, and MSI have sent over their best Gaming X option
for me to check out, so let’s see what it can do in this review. We’ll look at gaming
at 1080p and 1440p resolutions as well as thermals, power draw, overclocking and also
compare it with the 1660 and 1660 Ti.
Like many other recent MSI cards it’s got a dark grey and black theme, nice neutral
colours and should blend in well with most builds. There are two fans on the front, a
metal backplate with a nice brushed finish and MSI logo on the back, 8 pin power connector
on the top, no option of SLI here.
There’s RGB lighting on the top and bottom of the front fans, as well as from behind
the MSI logo on the top, and this can be controlled using MSI’s light sync software to change
the effects or match it with the rest of your system.
For the I/O we’ve got three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and single HDMI 2.0b output, and
as you can see here it’s a dual slot card.
In terms of dimensions it’s basically the same as MSI’s previous 1660 and 1660 Ti
Gaming X models, so not too large.
The metal backplate should help improve overall strength and reduce sag, however looking behind
it there aren’t any thermal pads, so it’s not being fully utilized to help with heat
dissipation.
Inside there’s a metal heat spreader covering the memory, although this doesn’t appear
to come into contact with the main heatsink. Underneath we can see the thermal pads on
the memory, interestingly there’s a pad up the top that doesn’t actually come into
contact with anything, while the pad down the bottom offers half coverage. The GPU die
is the only contact point to the heatsink for heat removal, and it appears to be using
three heatpipes.
In terms of specs it’s basically got the same CUDA core count as the GTX 1660, same
base and boost clock speeds as well. The only way that it differs is in the memory, the
new Super version uses faster GDDR6 memory instead, which is actually higher than the
1660 Ti.
The MSI Gaming X card we’re looking at here is overclocked out of the box, and this higher
boost speed makes this MSI’s fastest 1660 Super.
With all that out of the way, let's check out how the card actually performs in games.
The system that I’m testing with has an Intel i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5GHz on
all cores in an MSI Z390 ACE motherboard, along with 16GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory running
in dual channel. You can check the links in the description for details on all of the
components as well as for up to date pricing.
To get an idea of how the 1660 Super stacks up, I’ll also include results of the 1660
below it, and 1660 Ti ahead of it at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. All testing was done
with the same Nvidia drivers and Windows updates, so let’s get into the results.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode with ultra settings. I’ve got the GTX 1660
Super highlighted in red, and as expected, it's in between the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660
Ti, though it’s closer to the Ti. Either way even at ultra 1440p above 60 FPS averages
were hit in my test.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool at highest
settings. The 1660 Super is about in the middle of these options, but closer to the 1660 Ti
once more.
Control was tested walking through the start of the game with the same test pass done each
time. Again the results weren’t too far behind the 1660 Ti, and even with the high
setting preset almost 60 FPS was achieved at 1080p.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint was tested using the built in benchmark with the very high setting
preset. The difference between the Super and the Ti was extremely minimal here, with even
less of a difference when we step up to 1440p.
Fortnite was tested running through the same section of the map for each test with the
new chapter 2 map. Even at epic settings any of these options is offering a great 1080p
experience, and was still playable at 1440p too.
Borderlands 3 was tested with the game’s benchmark tool, like the other titles the
1660 Super is offering fair performance and is in between the 1660 and 1660 Ti.
Apex Legends was tested with all settings maxed out. At 1080p there was basically no
difference between the 1660 Super and 1660 Ti, however the difference was more pronounced
at 1440p, where it was still very playable with these frame rates.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the game’s built in benchmark with very
high settings, and there was basically no change between the Super and Ti here.
As we’ve seen we’re able to get some nice performance in the games tested. Just for
reference, at 1080p I found the 1660 Super was about 11% faster than the 1660, while
the 1660 Ti was only about 3% ahead of the 1660 Super, much less of a difference.
As for overclocking I’ve tested a couple of games to see what extra gains can be had.
I was able to overclock the GPU core by 160MHz and memory by 500MHz using MSI Afterburner,
however these were by no means finely tuned settings.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the game’s benchmark tool. I’ve got the
1660 Super overclock results at the top, also in red with the stock results. We can see
that it’s now ahead of the 1660 Ti, there’s an 11% increase to average FPS at 1440p compared
to stock, and an 8.5% boost at 1080p.
Control was tested running through the start of the game, and again the 1660 Super once
overclocked was beating the 1660 Ti. Average FPS was 9% higher than at stock at 1440p,
and almost 7% higher at 1080p.
So we’re seeing some decent performance, but what are the thermals like? As all three
of my graphics cards are MSI’s Gaming X they’ve got the same cooler. Temperatures
were reasonable on the GPU core even after leaving this benchmark on loop for an hour.
As for the power draw, interestingly the 1660 Super was using more power than the 1660 Ti
when under the same workload, despite not performing quite as well. With the overclock
in place power draw increases even further.
For up to date pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over
time. In the US you can pick up this model for about $250 USD, while here in Australia
we’re looking at $439 AUD. As we saw in my dedicated comparison between the 1660 Super
and 1660 Ti, the Super offers much better value. The performance is close to the Ti
at stock while also being cheaper, and as we saw it was possible to overclock the Super
to get ahead of the Ti. Basically if you’re buying today the Ti seems a little pointless
unless you can get it on a good deal or you really care about using a bit less power.
There are cheaper GTX 1660 Super cards available, even within MSI’s own lineup such as the
Ventus. For the most part you’re paying extra for the Gaming X for the better cooler,
as more metal just costs more money to produce, and it comes with higher boost clock speeds
out of the box. If you’re willing though in pretty much all cases you can manually
overclock this difference yourself, so I think it depends more on whether you want one with
a better cooling solution, if not it’s definitely possible to save some money on a cheaper 1660
Super card.
That said this particular model did appear to have good cooling which was inline with
the other Gaming X cards above and below it, the fan doesn’t even spin up until it rises
above 60 degrees Celsius. During stress testing the fan RPM averaged below 1300 so it was
still on the quieter side, and I didn’t notice any coil whine with my unit.
So what did you think of MSI’s GTX 1660 Super Gaming X graphics card? As we’ve seen
it’s easily able to handle 1080p gaming, and in some less demanding titles 1440p worked
alright too. It’s a step up over the 1660 model, but not quite as good as the Ti version,
however when you consider the price difference between Super and Ti, the Super appears to
be better value.
Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed
for future tech videos like this one.