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The New Go-To Budget GPUs?

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GPU
Nvidia snuck a new GPU out onto the market late February.

I say “snuck” because there is no Founder’s Edition of this card and is therefor not listed in the Nvidia inventory. However, add-in board manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are the only ones producing this card. This new card is the 1660TI.

Weird name, right?

Well there is no explanation on why they went with that naming over the “1160TI” since it is supposed to be a direct replacement for the 1060 6GB card.

Enough about the weird name, how does it performs.

It keeps pace with a 1070 making it a huge boost over the 1060 that it is replacing. The performance increase is due to the new Turing Architecture. The RTX card series also uses this. Its MSRP is almost double that of the 1050ti. The 1050ti is still considered the best budget GPU to date due to the Pascal architecture’s efficiency.

At almost twice the cost of the 1050ti…

…(anywhere between $279 and $350) the 1660ti might not be the first choice for a budget card. Especially considering that the RTX2060 is only $350 as well. So, going for the higher end 1660ti does not make monetary sense. Especially when it foregoes the RTX features of Ray Tracing and DLSS.

This may be the card for you…

…if you do not have any want for those features and are looking for an upgrade from your 800 or 900 series card. Nvidia also revealed that they will be continuing this 16XX line of cards for at least 2 more releases. The 1660 non-ti and a 1650. The 1650 may be the exact replacement for the 1050ti depending on the performance and pricing that they go with.

Graphics cards are pretty much the largest investment you can make in a computer…

They make a large difference in gaming and high-end video editing. If you need an upgrade but do not need the fancy features of Ray Tracing or DLSS then keep your ears open for news about these cards.

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