MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GAMING X review - Conclusion

Final words and verdict

The basic models will start at 229 USD. With the GTX 1660 Series you do get up-to-snuff with the latest Turning architecture, just not tensor and RT cores. So in the 1920x1080 and maybe even 2560x1440 a good number of games will run fine, alongside improved power consumption. This 6 GB card offers the performance one can expect and you will see an up-to 5% advantage over the base model. Tweaking wise there's room left. We do think that all cards will match a roughly 10% OC bracket that, really, is by NVIDIA's design. As mentioned, the 6 GB of GDDR6 graphics memory at Full HD is sufficient. 

Aesthetics

MSI will be MSI with that dark design, the TwinFrozr 7 cooler, and once juiced up, it is a nice looking product. It sits in the Gaming line, was made a little darker to look at with new gunmetal elements, and that works for me. The RGB lighting effects are funky to see. That LED inclusion that has been done subtly and can be configured in any manner you prefer with Mystic Light software, the choice is yours. While I will always remain skeptical about back-plates (they potentially can trap heat and thus warm up the PCB) MSI does have vents there. The flip-side is that they can look better and can protect your PCB and components from damage and, well, they can look nice as they can have a certain aesthetic appeal. I have to admit, this is looking very nice but looks are always personal, of course. So in the end, on looks, you certainly get that premium feel of detailed aesthetics and quality.

Cooling & acoustic levels

The card tops out at roughly only 65 Degrees C while gaming. So that's not bad at all, the acoustics I'd rate as silent, we doubt you'll ever hear the card once mounted into a chassis. In idle the fans do not spin btw. We've heard no noticeable coil whine. But I do want to note that any graphics card at a high-enough FPS can make some coil whine. 

Overclocking

Much like any NVIDIA product these days, we've been able to push roughly 10% extra perf out of the card compared to the reference card. The combination of memory, power and voltage settings will bring you a proper overclock. Once you've applied it, you get a few percents more perf. Here again, we expect all brands to roughly reach this kind of tweaking performance.

Concluding

You know, I have to say that the 'new' SUPER series 1660 is a bit puzzling. Are these graphics cards downgraded 1660 Ti's or upgraded 1660 cards? Well, we'll follow suit with naming and will call it upgraded 1660. However, if you'd take a 1660 Ti PCB and SMT mount a 1660 GPU on there, that's really what we are talking about today. The product obviously is nice for the mainstream market but sits in a very narrow window between the two aforementioned cards. You'll see 1660 performance with let's call it 10% extra performance thanks to the memory type used. Any 1660 non-Ti, however, is clearly positioned against the competitions Radeon RX 590. The reality is also that most consumers have put RTX cards on hold due to the sales price of Raytracing range, which remains to be steep. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER addresses the issue of offering a more compelling product. 

The GAMING X line is a very nice product series overall, really it is with proper looks, totally silent and performance that can compete. The baseline performance with the factory tweak is sweet as well and it did also tweak really nicely. The product is fast enough for any day gaming up-to, the Full HD monitor resolution domain of 1920x1080. The 6 GB of graphics memory seen over 8 GB really isn't a hindrance either as long as you stick to that resolution and sure, Quad HD as well. Looking at it from a competition point of view, the card positions itself against the Radeon RX 590 cards mostly. Once again please let me reiterate, the Raytracing and AI feature like DLSS, of course, have been stripped away. The product as-is is good, the power consumption of the 1660 SUPER series, by the way, is really good. The product as fabbed and presented by MSI though comes very much recommended as it ticks most right boxes design-wise. But whether or not the consumer market actually needs a card in this very saturated positioning, remains to be seen.

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