Graphics card price-to-performance ratios are at an all-time high in 2019. Sales of Nvidia’s RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti cards didn’t meet company expectations with consumers unwilling to pay Nvidia’s steep RTX tax. Then came GeForce RTX 2060, a powerful card that rivalled the performance of the GTX 1070 and 1080 and opened an affordable doorway to into the world of real-time ray tracing and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). Only a month after the release of Nvidia’s budget RTX card, the company is bringing yet another budget offering to its arsenal.
Enter the GTX 1660 Ti
| GTX 1660 Ti | RTX 2060 | GTX 1060 | |
| GPU | TU116 | TU106 | GP106 |
| CUDA cores | 1,536 | 1,920 | 1,280 |
| Tensor cores | NA | 240 | NA |
| RT cores | NA | 30 | NA |
| Base clock | 1500 MHz | 1365 MHz | 1,410 MHz |
| Boost clock | 1770 MHz | 1680 MHz | 1,708 MHz |
| Memory | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory speed | 12Gbps | 14Gbps | 8Gbps |
| Memory interface | 192-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 288GBps | 336GBps | 192GBps |
| Single-precision performance | 5.4TFLOPs | 6.5TFLOPs | 4.4 TFLOPs |
| Price | Rs 25,699 | Rs 32,749 | Rs 22,999 |
Zotac GTX 1060 6GB AMP Edition ZT-P10600B
Available for preorder at under Rs 26,000, the 1660 Ti is touted as the successor to the GTX 1060. The new GTX 1660 Ti boasts major performance gains on its 1060 predecessor and is engineered on the same Turing architecture as the Nvidia RTX 2060.
The Nvidia RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti share certain similarities in terms of specifications. Both cards are built on a 12nm process and feature similar 6GB of GDDR6 memory. In fact, the boost clock speed on the 1660 Ti even exceeds that of the RTX 2060. But let’s not get ahead ourselves. At the current moment, the GTX 1660 Ti sits in a sweet spot offering a 20-percent increase in performance over the GTX 1060.
Unlike the RTX 2060, the GTX 1660 Ti’s lack of RT and Tensor cores means no support for real-time ray tracing and deep learning super sampling, two critical features of the RTX GPUs. The GTX 1660 Ti also boasts fewer CUDA cores and slower memory, resulting in lower memory bandwidth, which should drop the overall performance as compared to its RTX counterpart.
Final Verdict
Of the three Nvidia GPUs, the GTX 1660 Ti offers the best value for money with performance surpassing that of the GTX 1070 which is priced at approximately Rs 37,000. However, if you aren't strapped for cash go with the RTX 2060. For Rs 7,000 more, the RTX 2060 can easily rival the performance of a GTX 1080. Moreover, you get real-time ray tracing and DLSS support as well. While only a few games currently support both these features, you can bet that's going to increase in the future.
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