Introduction
NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GPU in October of 2019. It’s been five months since the launch, and we’ve got a robust custom retail video card to review for you today that should allow a high overclock. We will be taking a look at the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X video card, which is the top product SKU in MSI’s lineup of GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER based video cards. If there is any GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER with high overclocking potential and performance, this is the best foot forward from MSI.
GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
Before we dive into the MSI video card itself, let’s go over what the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is all about. As we mentioned it was launched in October of 2019 and is an updated refresh of the GeForce GTX 1660 family. It improves upon the GeForce GTX 1660 and offers more performance in the $229 price range. It isn’t as fast as the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, but it offers more performance over the GeForce GTX 1660 which was launched in March of 2019, a year ago.
The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is based on the NVIDIA Turing architecture at 12nm and is called TU116. The GeForce GTX 1660 for comparison is also the Turing architecture at 12nm and TU116. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has 1408 CUDA Cores, 48 ROPs and 88 TMUs. The GeForce GTX 1660 also has 1408 CUDA Cores, 48 ROPs and 88 TMUs. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has a base clock of 1530MHz and a boost clock of 1785MHz. The GeForce GTX 1660 has a base clock of 1530MHz and a boost clock of 1785MHz.
So far, everything is the same between the GTX 1660 SUPER and GTX 1660, so what is different? Well, it is actually just the memory configuration and bandwidth that is different between the two video cards. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card has 6GB of GDDR6 memory at 14GHz. The GeForce GTX 1660 has 6GB of GDDR5 at 8GHz. Both operate on a 192-bit memory bus. Because of the memory frequency difference, the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has a memory bandwidth of 336GB/sec while the GTX 1660 is 192GB/sec.
Therefore, in terms of hardware, the only difference between the two is that of memory frequency and bandwidth. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has 75% more memory bandwidth. The other difference is, of course, the price. For this memory, bandwidth upgrade the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has an MSRP of $229 while the GeForce GTX 1660 is $219.
The Competition
If we go purely by price and look to see what the price comparable video card is with a stock GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER at $229, the closest match is the 8GB version of the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. The MSRP for those video cards, stock price MSRP is $199. However, there are retail 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT video cards that are actually right at the price point of $229, same as the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER stock MSRP.
The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, the next step up from the Radeon RX 5500 XT, actually has a starting MSRP price of $279.99, and of course, goes up from there. So technically speaking, the Radeon RX 5600 XT is way out of the price range of the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, even compared to factory overclocked models.
The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is actually in an interesting place because it’s pricing is in-between the Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB and Radeon RX 5600 XT. It leans closer to 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT pricing though by stock pricing, not factory overclocked pricing.
Therefore, to make this review make sense we needed to include both the 8GB version of the Radeon RX 5500 XT and a Radeon RX 5600 XT, which we have done. This will give the big picture of performance and where a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER sits with these video cards.
The particular video card we are reviewing today, the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X can be found for $269.99, so it actually sits closer to the Radeon RX 5600 XT stock MSRP pricing. The video card we are using for comparison though is a factory overclocked XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II Pro which is $289.99. Therefore, the two video cards are $20 apart, which is a very close comparison price-wise.
Our review should give you a good idea of what video card is the better value, and we will be overclocking the MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X video card. Check out our full MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X review.