MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review

NVIDIA launches its new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER and MSI nail it with the custom GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X.

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: MSI (GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X 6G)
12 minutes & 19 seconds read time
TweakTown's Rating: 90%
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The Bottom Line

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is super-close to the GTX 1660 Ti, with MSI making the custom GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X nice and cool, and quiet. A great card for 1080p and 1440p gaming.

Introduction, Pricing & Detailed Specs

NVIDIA is introducing its new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER today, and with no Founders Edition version of the card the first one out of the gate is MSI's custom GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X. After that, I'll have the review of the non-X version of MSI's new custom GTX 1660 in the normal GAMING version.

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NVIDIA's introduction of the new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is an interesting one, as it is pretty much the original GTX 1660 that was launched not too long ago now, but rocking much faster GDDR6. Memory.

The GeForce GTX 1660 was already a great mid-range card if you didn't need the frills of RTX or were gaming at something like 1440p at 144FPS or 4K gaming, but now the GTX 1660 SUPER is here and fills another small gap between NVIDIA's growing stack of Turing graphics cards.

Not only that, but NVIDIA is using the launch of its new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card to unleash some new Team Green tricks into its software stack and GeForce Experience, or GFE.

Oh, and that's not all... let's not forget that NVIDIA is also launching a new GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, but I haven't got my hands-on that just yet.

For now, NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER starts from $229 and is available starting today, October 29. The slightly lower-end GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER will launch on November 22 without a price just now, but rocking GDDR6 memory clocked at 12Gbps.

The Last 6 Months

NVIDIA is using the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER and GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER launches to talk about the last 6 months of GeForce gaming PCs getting better and better with driver releases.

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In that time NVIDIA has been there with Day 0 support for some of the hottest games on the market, adding new gaming feature enhancements into GeForce Experience and adding more performance to some of our favorite games. Most noticeably, Apex Legends with a huge upgrade not too long ago.

Games like Apex Legends receiving what should be seen as free performance from a driver release, along with other games, sees NVIDIA adding more performance to some of the biggest and most popular games, almost to the level that you'd get from a physical hardware upgrade. Not too damn bad at all.

Metro Exodus performance can be increased by up to 31% under new drivers, while Respawn's popular battle royale shooter Apex Legends has an average of 23% more performance from new drivers over the last couple of months.

Detailed Specs

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Buy at Amazon

MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1660

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What's New With GTX 1660 SUPER

NVIDIA Ultra Low Latency (NULL)

Some new tech here with faster reaction times at high quality settings, something that NVIDIA Ultra Low Latency (or NULL) technology sees G-SYNC support for low latency and with no tearing.

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This is something gamers have been asking for, well, for a while now. NULL is also even better with G-SYNC enabled for even smoother performance.

ReShade Filters

Something that surprised me in the NDA call with NVIDIA ahead of the launch a few days ago, was they mentioned ReShade filters. I thought they said ReShade on the call and was kinda like 'eh, did you guys just say ReShade' and sure as shade, they did.

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We have seen some truly amazing work from the ReShade modding community, something that makes the PC community the best in the world. But now... now GeForce Experience has ReShade filters built-in!

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You can now apply your favorite ReShader filters directly through Freestyle and Ansel in GFE.

Improved Image Sharpening

Another surprise was improved image sharpening, which provides improved performance -- it looks much better in screenshots but I haven't had the time to personally play with it just yet.

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It's supported on all DX9, DX11, and DX12 games and is available in the latest NVIDIA Control Panel.

GTX 1660 SUPER: GDDR6 Upgrade

GTX 1660 vs GTX 1660 SUPER

NVIDIA hasn't changed the GPU on the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER meaning it has the same Turing GPU that the GTX 1660 had, but it has GDDR6 memory with much higher bandwidth than the GDDR5 used on the GTX 1660... that's what makes it SUPER.

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Thanks, GDDR6

The GeForce GTX 1660 has 6GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 8Gbps, while the new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER has the same 6GB framebuffer, but uses GDDR6 which is clocked at a much faster 14Gbps.

This provides the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER with 336GB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 192.1GB/sec of memory bandwidth of the GTX 1660. All of this and it has just 5W more TDP at 125W total in reference form, versus 120W in GTX 1660 reference form.

Cooling Tech

Cooling Tech - TWIN FROZR 7

Because this is the GAMING X variant of MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER range of graphics cards, the company has used its flagship TWIN FROZR 7 cooling technology. It's identical to the other TWIN FROZR 7-cooled cards, and something that ran even cooler in its GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X form versus the higher-end Turing and Navi-based TWIN FROZR 7-cooled MSI cards.

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This makes MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X a great buy at the sub $250 market, since it'll include a kick ass cooler -- and even a slick backplate that might not seem like much, but it keeps the card both safer, and slightly cooler.

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As for the fans, because of ZERO FROZR 7... they simply won't spin until the Turing GPU hits 60C which is only under gaming loads.

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MSI's TWIN FROZR 7-cooled GAMING X graphics cards use Torx Fan 3.0 which are super quiet in operation.

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Huge amounts of copper heat pipes keep the MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X cool.

Detailed Look

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MSI provides its high quality packaging with all GAMING X series cards, including the new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X.

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From the front of the MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X we have the dual-fan TWIN FROZR 7 cooler.

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Each GAMING X card has a kick ass back plate, which is here once again with the MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X.

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MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 512

From the top of the card, a single 8-pin PCIe power connector is required.

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MSI provides 3 x DP 1.4 connectors, and 1 x HDMI 2.0 connector.

Test System Specs

Our New GPU Test Rig

Welcome to the latest revision of our GPU test bed, with our system being upgraded from the Intel Core i7-7700K to the Core i7-8700K. The CPU is cooled by the Corsair H115i PRO cooler, with the 8700K overclocked to 5GHz. We've stayed with GIGABYTE for our motherboard with their awesome Z370 AORUS Gaming 7.

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We approached our friends at HyperX for a kit of their kick ass HyperX Predator DDR4-2933MHz RAM (HX429C15PB3AK4/32), with 2 x 8GB sticks for a total of 16GB DDR4-2933. The RAM stands out through every minute of our testing as it has beautiful RGB lights giving the system a slick look while benchmarking our lives away, while the Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard joins in with its own array of RGB lighting.

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Detailed Tech Specs

  • CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K @ 5GHz
  • Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H115i PRO
  • MB: Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
  • RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) HyperX Predator DDR4-2933
  • SSD: 1TB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
  • SSD: 512GB OCZ RD400 NVMe M.2
  • PSU: InWin 1065W PSU
  • Chassis: In Win X-Frame
  • OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

Additional Images

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Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 03

3DMark Fire Strike - 1440p

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 02

3DMark Fire Strike - 4K

3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 01

3DMark TimeSpy

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3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

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Heaven - 1080p

Heaven benchmark

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Heaven - 1440p

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Heaven - 4K

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Benchmarks - 1080p

1080p Benchmarks

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 21
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4015

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Starting off with 1920 x 1080 on MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X we have impressive performance right out of the gate, with the GTX 1660 SUPER neck and neck with the GTX 1660 Ti.

We're looking at 89FPS average in Shadow of War at 1080p, compared to 87FPS with the GTX 1660 Ti and 100FPS with the RTX 2060. AMD's older-gen RX 570/580/590 are all far behind in Shadow of War, with NVIDIA's faster GTX 1660 SUPER zooming ahead thanks to its faster memory bandwidth courtesy of GDDR6.

AMD is still far out and ahead with the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards with 121FPS and 127FPS average, respectively. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER is far out and ahead with 130FPS average, passing that magic 1080p 120FPS mark.

Benchmarks - 1440p

1440p Benchmarks

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4006

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 51
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4015

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 54
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4002

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 55

1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Things get a little more interesting at 2560 x 1440 with the new GDDR6-powered GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, passing 63FPS average in something like Shadow of War. This is actually 3FPS faster than the GTX 1660 Ti at 60FPS average, and once again -- far out and ahead of the RX 500 series cards and the GTX 1650, and thrashing the 40FPS of the GTX 1060.

MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X has identical performance to the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GAMING X at 72FPS average at 1440p in Far Cry New Dawn. This beats out AMD's previous-gen Radeon RX 590, and is 10FPS behind the GeForce RTX 2060.

AMD's new Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT are far and ahead of the GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X with 93FPS and 98FPS average, with the GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER behind those cards with 91FPS average.

You can hit over 60FPS average in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with MSI's new GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X hitting 66FPS average, 3FPS above even the GTX 2060. Not too damn bad at all, 1440p 66FPS average in a great-looking game like Shadow of the Tomb Raider... but it doesn't come close to the Navi dominance with the RX 5700 XT at a huge 104FPS average.

Benchmarks - 4K

4K Benchmarks

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 111
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4015

Far Cry New Dawn was developed by Ubisoft, and is powered the Dunia Engine, an engine that has been modified over the years for Far Cry and last used in Far Cry 5. Dunia Engine itself was a modified version of CRYENGINE, scaling incredibly well on all sorts of hardware.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 114
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 4002

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X Review 115

4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

I would never recommend a card like NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER for 4K gaming, but that doesn't mean you can't game on at 3840 x 2160 on a $229 graphics card. I keep the Ultra presets on my game runs, but we're looking at over 30FPS average for all of the games in my stack.

Shadow of War is a great-looking game, with MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X spitting out 39FPS average at 4K, just a single 1FPS better than the GTX 1660 Ti GAMING X. It is way ahead of the 28FPS on the RX 590, and just behind of the higher-end GeForce RTX 2060 with 45FPS average.

Far Cry New Dawn has virtually identical performance to Shadow of War at 4K on MSI's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X with 37FPS average, but instead of being 1FPS faster than the GTX 1660 Ti... it is 1FPS slower than the GTX 1660 Ti in Far Cry New Dawn at 4K.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider sees the MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X achieving 34FPS average, 1FPS better than the RX 590 and even the RTX 2060 is an impressive thing to see. The GTX 1660 Ti GAMING X is 2FPS faster at 4K in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a common theme throughout my benchmarking as you can see repeat through the charts at all resolutions and games, really.

Thermals & Power

Power

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER doesn't use much power at all, with the custom MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X in my Intel Core i7-8700K test bed using a total of 190W. This is 35W less than the GTX 1660 Ti, and 20W less than AMD's new Radeon RX 5700.

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Thermals

We know that any custom graphics card equipped with MSI's always-impressive TWIN FROZR 7 cooler will run cool with the new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X running at 64C under load. This makes it one of the coolest-operating cards on our charts.

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Final Thoughts

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is now here... but should you buy it? That is the $229 question. There's lots of new stuff here with NULL, ReShade filters and all that -- but what about from a hardware and performance perspective? Well, that depends on you.

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What we have here is the same performance, very similar, or in cases more performance than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. The new GTX 1660 SUPER flexes between being a little better, the same, and worse than the GTX 1660 Ti depending on the specs. It has the same 6GB of GDDR6 on-board but the GTX 1660 SUPER sees its clocks at 14Gbps up from 12Gbps on the regular GTX 1660 Ti.

This means in some games that are memory bandwidth intensive, the GTX 1660 SUPER can shine. The Turing GPU isn't changed all that much, but there are some important changes that NVIDIA did to differentiate it from the GTX 1660 Ti. The GPU is slightly chopped down with 2 less SMs, and CUDA cores count drop from 1536 CUDA cores on the GTX 1660 Ti to 1408 CUDA cores on the new GTX 1660 SUPER.

But it's the GeForce GTX 1660 that the new GTX 1660 SUPER really is the big upgrade over, with the older (and still Turing-based) GeForce GTX 1660 shipping with 6GB of VRAM. The 6GB of VRAM on the GTX 1660 however is GDDR5, clocked at just 8Gbps compared to the 14Gbps on the new GTX 1660 SUPER. This means we're looking at 192.1GB/sec memory bandwidth versus a huge 336GB/sec on the GTX 1660 SUPER. That's a massive 75% increase in memory bandwidth alone.

There's enough changes here with the GTX 1660 SUPER for MSI to confidently release its custom GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X, which offers some damn good performance at 1080p and 1440p. It's a new card that will eventually fight that lower-end Navi-based Radeon RX 5500 series from AMD which isn't too far away.

If you're a 1080p or 1440p gamer with an older GeForce GTX 900-series graphics card (or older, maybe a 700-series card) then the new MSI GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X would be a huge upgrade. If you're using an older-generation AMD Radeon series graphics card past the Radeon RX 400 series, then you'll also have a big uplift in performance with the GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X.

Performance (overclocking, power)

90%

Quality (build, design, cooling)

90%

General Features (display outputs, etc)

90%

Bundle, Packaging & Software

90%

Overall

90%

The Bottom Line

NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is super-close to the GTX 1660 Ti, with MSI making the custom GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X nice and cool, and quiet. A great card for 1080p and 1440p gaming.

TweakTown award
90%

MSI Gaming GeForce GTX 1660

TodayYesterday7 days ago30 days ago
$299.00$299.00$299.00
* Prices last scanned on 3/18/2024 at 6:10 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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