Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super: performance analysis

Our tests conclude with three more games: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3. Our test system for all benches across this entire review consists of a Core i7 8700K running at an all-core turbo speed of 4.7GHz. This is paired with two 8GB sticks of 3400MHz DDR4 supplied by GSkill, with all titles running from solid state storage to avoid streaming issues. A Gamer Storm Castle 240mm AiO liquid cooler is used to keep the power-hungry 8700K in check.

Depending on how you view this page, our performance metrics are presented in one of two ways. If you're reading this on a mobile device, you'll get a table with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements. However, if you're on a desktop or laptop, you get the full-blooded Digital Foundry experience. Play the YouTube videos to see frame-rate and frame-time metrics running in parallel to the video (you can even navigate around the video with the graphs adjusting to match). Beneath that you'll see our barcharts, dynamically generated from the frame-time metrics - mouse over for various stats and press the mouse button to swap over to the more useful percentage differentials.

We use FCAT for analysing GPU performance. This program adds a coloured border to each rendered frame, so that when the video feed from the GPU is captured and fed into our own bespoke software, each distinct frame is able to be distinguished and frame-times can be calculated. The high-definition captures are distilled down into much lighter text files with all the critical information, which are then used to dynamically generate the data presented on this page.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

So far we've seen the GTX 1660 Super's performance relative to its peers fall into two broad categories: one where the GTX 1660 Super is effectively tied with the GTX 1660 Ti, making the Super the obvious choice given its lower price point, and another where the three 1660 cards are more evenly spaced with noticeable leaps in performance throughout. The Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark shows that this game most closely resembles the latter, with the GTX 1660 Super improving 12 per cent over the standard GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Ti outperforming the Super by six per cent. All three cards deliver good results at 1080p and 1440p, but it's worth remembering that this benchmark is actually easier to run than the full game.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is another great example of a modern title amongst our benchmark suite, thanks to more modern engine architecture plus impressive support for real-time ray tracing via the DXR API. The GTX 1660 Super actually records an average just higher than that of the GTX 1660 Ti here at both 1080p and 1440p, although the results are well within the margin of error. Even if the two cards are merely tied, it's a great result for the 14Gbps memory aboard the GTX 1660 Super, demonstrating how crucial memory bandwidth is to the technical make-up of a video card.

The Witcher 3

We conclude with The Witcher 3, and once again the Super card's slightly higher TDP and faster memory clocks work wonders. The 1660 Super is 15 per cent faster than the vanilla card, virtually tying with the Ti variant at around 90fps. Looking at 1440p, we can see another case where the Super card's performance advantage makes a big difference to playability, with the 52fps result of the original card is boosted to a solid 60fps in one of the most challenging areas of the game.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 1660 Super Analysis

• Introduction, Hardware Breakdown
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Unity, Battlefield 1 - Performance Analysis Part 1
• Crysis 3, Far Cry 5, Ghost Recon Wildlands - Performance Analysis Part 2
• Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher 3 - Performance Analysis Part 3 [This Page]
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super - the Digital Foundry verdict