NVIDIA rumored to launch GeForce GTX 1660 on March 15

NVIDIA has been on the offensive this year starting with the release of the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, a new $279 graphics card that surprised everyone in terms of price/performance and floors the Radeon RX 590 in the same price point. The Turing-based GeForce GTX family is about to grow by two new offerings; the GeForce GTX 1660 and GTX 1650.

The news is coming from DigiTimes that sources said NVIDIA is "slated to launch GTX 1660 on March 15 and GTX1650 on April 30, which will bear minimum price tags of US$229 and US$179, respectively". NVIDIA also filled out its sub $350 cards with the GeForce RTX 2060 in January, followed by the $279 card in the GTX 1660 Ti, and now the GTX 1660 will hit $229 and GTX 1650 at $179. This means we have a $50 drop between the new Turing-based GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660, and GTX 1650 cards.

It allows NVIDIA to better compete against the multiple cards AMD has in those price brackets with the Radeon RX 570/580/590 and then Radeon RX Vega 56 and Vega 64. I don't think anyone would want to buy any Vega card right now, especially with the new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti and RTX 2060 cards on the market. I'm sure this will be revisited by Team Red fans with the launch of Navi in a few months time, but for now NVIDIA has AMD pinned down in all price points and that grip is only going to strengthen with the GTX 1660 and GTX 1650.

AMD has the sub $250 market pretty well tied up with its Radeon RX 570/580/590 but then we have the rumored price drops that will hit in a few weeks, which will be an internal response to the new Turing-based GeForce GTX 16 series cards. AMD is rumored to drop its Radeon RX 580 8GB offering to $199, while the RX 590 will be slashed to $229 according to the rumors.

The sub $300 market looks to be the hottest thing right now as we move into the last month of Q1 2019, we have another quarter to go until AMD releases Navi, and NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference in just a few weeks time where we should see NVIDIA unveil 7nm Ampere, hopefully.