What is the input lag? High Dynamic Range (HDR) enhances your gaming world with higher contrast and brighter colors than you’ve ever seen before. The smoothest, fastest and most exciting gaming experience ever by eliminating screen tearing, display stutter and input lag.Ultra-high resolution (UHD) delivers 4x the resolution of 1080p content, enabling much sharper and crisper images with delicate details during gaming. Explore more in MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP review
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Twin Frozr 7 cooling is quiet and effective
- Faster than Radeon RX 590
- Achieves 60fps at 1080p ultra / 1440p medium on most titles
- Extremely power efficient
- Zero Frozr (fan off) capability at idle / low loads
- VESA Adaptive-Sync, HDMI 2.0b, DisplayPort 1.4, 8K support
Cons
- No idle fan stop
- Could be quieter in gaming
- No game bundle
- No support for RTX and DLSS
Compare MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP
| GeForce | RTX 2080 Ti FE | GTX 1660 Ti | GTX 1660 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPU | TU102 | TU116 | TU116 |
| Node | TSMC 12 nm FFN | ||
| Die Size mm² | 754 | ||
| Shader cores | 4352 | 1536 | 1408 |
| Transistor count | 18.6 Billion | 6.6 Billion | 6.6 Billion |
| Base frequency | 1350 MHz | 1500 MHz | 1530MHz |
| Boost frequency | 1635 MHz | 1770 MHz | 1785 MHz |
| Memory | 11GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR6 | 6GB GDDR5 |
| Memory frequency | 14 Gbps | 12 Gbps | 8 Gbps |
| Memory bus | 352-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 616 GB/s | 288 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
| RT cores (x64) | 68 | – | – |
| Tensor cores | 544 | – | – |
| Texture units | 272 | 96 | 88 |
| ROPs | 96 | 48 | 48 |
| TDP | 260W | 120W | 120W |
| Power connector | 2x 8-pin | 8-pin | 8-pin |
| NVLink | Yes | – | – |
| Max Therm degree C | 89 | ||
| price | $ 1199 | $ 279 | $ 219 |
MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP review
Design
The MSI GTX 1660 Super Gaming X measures in at 9.7 x 5 x 1.6-inches, which makes this a dual-slot card. The power connector resides at the top side of the card. BTW there is no RGB. The card comes with a factory overclock, more robust power delivery, as well as the Twin Frozr 7 thermal design to keep things cool. With this Gaming X, power is delivered via a single 8-pin connector, and is full size (it’s 9.7 inches long) but should fit into most builds.
Ports
The card has a new gunmetal look dual-fan design (TwinFrozr 7) and has been fitted with one HDMI port and three DisplayPort connectors. MSI stripped away the DVI and space-occupying virtual link connector for VR purposes. The GeForce GTX series has DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, 1.4a Ready, enabling support for 8K displays at 60Hz.
Memory
The TU116 based 1660 GPU has 1536 shader for the Ti model and 1408 shader cores (aka CUDA cores / Stream processors) tied to 6GB of memory for the regular 1660 (non-Ti). So you can choose two video card series based on the same chip, the GTX 1660 and the 1660 Ti. The Ti variants we have seen in the first launch wave and thus will get GDDR6 graphics memory, the non-Ti is fitted with GDDR5 graphics memory as well as offering 6GB and 3GB configurations.
Frame rates
Looking at some of the modern popular games people are playing today the GeForce GTX 1660 Super MSI Ventus XS OC 6GB is running FIFA 22 and delivering strong performances on 1080p Ultra, getting 109 frames per second. Comparing this to Dying Light 2 which is predicted to get playable results, where it averages 44 FPS. Another popular game we looked at is Back 4 Blood, which is running at 71 frames per second.
Temperature
The back side, the back side is covered with a back-plate with some gaps to vent, the PCB is small and extending away from the PCB is the actual cooler, the card reaches temperatures in the 60 maybe 65 Degrees C range in our testing and remains at a silent acoustic noise level.
Power consumption – MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP
The card has a 120 Watt rated TDP, 75 Watts is delivered through the PCIe slot, then 1×150 Watts capacity feeds in through the 8-pin PEG (PCI Express Graphics) power connector.
Gaming power consumption of the GTX 1660 is highly impressive. With only 116 W during gaming, the MSI GTX 1660 is super efficient and uses less power than the GeForce GTX 1060, while delivering more performance at the same time. Compared to the Radeon RX 590, which is built on a 12 nanometer production process as well, the GTX 1660 uses just half (!) the power and is faster.
Cooling fan
In order to keep the temperatures where they are, the GTX 1660 Super Gaming X’s fans settled at 1,200 RPM for an average, which was whisper quiet on the large 90mm fans. EVGA’s cooling solution spun a lot faster at almost 2,300 RPM. And though it was louder than Twin Frozr, it was not intrusive over the other system fans.
Overclocking
With manual overclocking, maximum overclock of our sample is 2490 MHz on the memory (24% overclock) and +160 MHz to the GPU’s base clock, which increases average GPU clock from 1934 MHz to 2086 MHz (8% overclock).
How to install MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP?
Installation of any graphics card is really easy. Once the card is seated into the PC make sure you hook up the monitor and of course any external power connectors like 6 and/or 8-pin PEG power connectors. Preferably get yourself a power supply that has these PCIe PEG connectors native.
Once done, we boot into Windows, install the latest drivers and after a reboot, all should be working. No further configuration is required or needed unless you like to tweak the settings, for which you can open the NVIDIA control panel.
Alternate of MSI gaming GeForce GTX 1660 super 192-bit HDMI/DP 6GB GDDR6 HDCP
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
Specs
CUDA cores: 3,584Base clock: 1,320MHzBoost clock: 1,777MHzTFLOPs: 12.74Memory: 12GB GDDR6Memory clock: 15GT/sMemory bandwidth: 360GB/s
Pros
+Ready for 60fps at 1440p or greater+Decent gen-on-gen performance improvement+More readily available to purchase in pre-built PCs
Cons
-Not always massively faster than an RTX 2060-RTX 3060 Ti is a better buy at $399Advertisement
The decision to load the RTX 3060 with 12GB of GDDR6 memory appeared a strange one at first, and in many ways it still is. It’s more memory than the RTX 3080, after all, albeit slower stuff, and it tops out the RTX 3060 Ti too. However, the RTX 3060 wields it well, managing to dispatch the RTX 2060 by a large margin in most games, and by enough of a gap in the rest to make it worthwhile.YOUR NEXT MACHINE
And we’re not going to turn our noses up at 12GB of VRAM when 6GB is the likely alternative.
With a decent generation-on-generation improvement and plenty of speed at 1080p and 1440p, the RTX 3060 12GB is a graphics card easily argued for. It’s also nominally cheaper than the RTX 2060 was on launch day, though it’s not so easy to find it as a discrete number nowadays. That said, this card often crops up within pre-built gaming PCs, and for a decent price all-inclusive too.
