And the winner is...
The numbers don’t lie: R ight now,
the GeForce GTX 1660 rules the
roost when it comes to 1080p
gaming. Were it not for the price
drops on Nvidia’s cards, though,
we’d really consider giving it to
the R X 590. It’s a solid all-
arounder of a GPU, with a
reasonable price point. If you
want to go with Radeon right
now, it’s definitely the card we’d
recommend for 1080p gaming.
We can’t really find it in our
hearts to recommend the poor
GTX 1060, though – it’s a good
unit, and if you’re already
rocking one, there’s no real need
to upgrade just yet, but it can’t
compete with the current
generation of sub-$400 cards.
The 1660 isn’t a mind-blowing
card by any means, but if you’re
looking for mid-range gaming
that won’t hurt your wallet, it’s
the best option right now. If
you’re using anything older than
a 970, it’s an excellent choice of
upgrade. However, with the first
Navi and Nvidia Super cards upon
us, you may want to consider
stretching your budget a little
further and gaining more
performance and future-proofing
via those next-gen cards.Round 4
LONGEVITY AND MAINTENANCE
On average, the GTX 1660 is the best
card here, but only by a small margin.
Unsurprisingly, the 1060 doesn’t
perform too well, but it does the job.
Performance across our benchmark
games is very varied. The R X 590
dominates in some games, but lags
behind both GTX cards in others. This is
primarily due to AMD or Nvidia
preference from developers in game
design, and shouldn’t really be a factor
when deciding on a card – unless you
plan to only ever play one or two games.
The GTX 1060 lags behind in this
department due to its age, although the
R X 590 puts out reliable figures despite
itstwo-year-oldarchitecture.Broadlyspeaking, in games where the 1600
boasts higher fps figures, the 590 only
narrowly loses out. Both are capable of
hitting 60fps at 1440p, too, if you’re
willing to lower the graphical settings.
Variation between average fps and
minimum fps (in the 97th percentile)
differs between the cards, too. The 1660
varies by 47 percent on average, while
the 590 only varies by 39 percent, and
the 1060 by 37 percent, making them
both more stable than the 1660. This
could be written off as driver maturity,
however; the 1660 will likely perform
within tighter parameters once it’s been
around for a while. Overall, we have to
giveittothenewercard.GTX 1660 6GB GTX 1060 6GB RX 590 8GBTOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION 2 (AVG/MIN FPS) 62/42 57/45 69/53
DEUX EX: MANKIND DIVIDED (AVG/MIN FPS) 55/43 47/37 56/45
FAR CRY 5 (AVG/MIN FPS) 82/62 71/60 80/70
GRAND THEFT AUTO 5 (AVG/MIN FPS) 64/40 57/42 50/37
MIDDLE EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR (AVG/MIN FPS) 61/41 52/36 58/37
METRO EXODUS (AVG/MIN FPS) 46/26 40/22 44/24
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER II (AVG/MIN FPS) 65/49 60/48 56/44WINNER:
GTX 1660
Our test bed consists of an Intel Core i7-7800K , 16GB of G.Skill DDR4-3200, a Gigaby te Z370 Aorus
Gaming 7, and a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo M.2. All games are tested at their highest graphical profile with A A
turned on at 1080p. Figures provided are an average and a minimum (97th percentile) respectively.