MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X – Turing Without The RTX.

MSI Brings The New GTX 1660 Ti to Life With Some Gaming X Style

MSI has put into our hands today the new Turing powered GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X. Now, wait a minute, I thought the new cards were RTX? Well, that is true but this is the first of the non-RTX powered GPUs based on new Turing architecture. What this means is that while it has all of the increased shader performance we have come to know, it does so without the inclusion of RT and Tensor cores.

The MSI 1660 Ti Gaming X looks eerily similar to the previous review model we just covered recently the MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z.

Beyond appearance, this is a completely different animal targeted at 1080p gamers and high FPS. Do keep in mind we will do a bit deeper of a dive into the GPU in the next page but it is worth noting that this card is based on a  full fledge Turing GPU  TU116 to be exact and its die size is quite small as you will see in our teardown. Now we know MSI makes some solid GPU’s so let’s start right in and see what MSI has and Nvidia has cooked up for us in the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X.

The GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X from MSI joins the RTX Stable with a price point of $309 which puts us a bit behind the RTX 2060.

• MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X $309 (Source: MSI MSRP)

This price point is aggressive although there will be “cheaper” options going down to the $279.99 price point. Based on the performance I have seen with the Gaming Z/X cards in the past from MSI, it is likely worth the little extra.

GTX 1660 Ti Features

• New Turing based GPU
• New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
• Concurrent FP and INT
• New shading enhancements
• GDDR6 High-Performance memory
• NVENC improvements (good for game streamers)

 

MSI Specific Features

• Twin Frozr 7 Thermal Design
  • Torx Fan 3.0
    • Newly designed fans with specially curved blades to accelerate airflow
  • Zero Frozr
    • MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z fans do not even spin below 60C which means longer potential lifespan for fans and less dust build up.
  • Mastery of Aerodynamics
    • MSI has curved fin leading edge which means that they are not just flat plates of ALU but have a wave to reportedly allow air to pass more smoothly
    • Airflow control channels within the fin stack to direct air where needed such as heatpipes or even SMD components
  • Concentrated heatpipes
    • MSI has a mass concentration of heatpipes directly over the GPU which is the key thermal point for any card
  • Copper Baseplate
    • MSI has employed a copper baseplate on the GPU contact surface to allow optimum thermal conductivity into the cooling fin array.
  • Thermal Compound X
    • This is MSI’s way of saying they use premium thermal compound on the GPU. This is good as some cheaper or stock paste can harden and become less effective requiring disassembly to re-paste. This may hold up longer which means more time gaming less time messing with your card.

 

Specifications

Graphics Card	MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X
Graphics Engine	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Core TU116-400-A1
Bus	PCI Express 3.0
Video Memory	GDDR6 6GB
Core Clock (OC)	GPU Boost Clock: 1875 MHz, GPU Base Clock: 1500 MHz
CUDA Cores	1536
RTX OPS	N/A
GIGA Rays/s	N/A
Memory Clock	12000 MHz
Memory Interface	192-bit
Resolution	Max Resolution:7680×4320
Interface	HDMI Output: Yes x 1 (Native) (HDMI 2.0b) Display Port: Yes x 3 (Native) (Regular DP) HDCP Support: Yes
Power Connectors	1 x 8-pin
Dimensions	247 x 127 Millimeter

Here we get a brief spec style overview of the card. As you can see RTX OPS are N/a as this new TU116 GPU does NOT include RT cores for RTX instructions.