We also compare the RX 5700 XT, the RTX 2060 SUPER, the RTX 2070 SUPER, the RTX 2080 SUPER and the RTX 2080 Ti on recent drivers using the Vive Pro. Here are the results of our FCAT-VR benching. The engine is considered one of the best optimized in all of PC gaming, which makes it easy to see major gaps in any one card's abilities versus another. A little more driver wrinkliness here, it seems. Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. We would recommend adding Steam VR’s Motion Smoothing – or dropping the resolution multiplier – in addition to using reprojection for satisfactory play without tempting VR sickness using entry level cards with a demanding HMD such as the Vive Pro. This chart compares the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER with the most popular Graphics Cards over the last 30 days. In No Man’s Sky, the unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 57.3 FPS and the GTX 1660 Ti gave 58.1 FPS, making it an acceptable experience on Enhanced settings using reprojection. Considering Shadow and Rise both run on the same engine, I'd imagine that some of the driver quirks that are messing with Shadow of the Tomb Raider might have carried over here. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the last of our ten tested games, so let’s look at the summary charts. Included are two synthetic benchmarks, Superposition (given in average and minimum FPS) and VRMark’s Cyan Room (score). Casting fireballs from ones fingertips and feeling the thunk of arrows into one’s shield is a great experience unique to Skyrim VR. Skyrim VR is an older game that is not as demanding as many of the newer VR ports so its performance is very good on maxed-out settings using its Creation engine. The original GTX 1660 generally edges out the GTX 1660 Super in 1080p and 1440p tests here in this trio, though it regained ground on the 4K runs. Worried About Snoops and Spies on the Web? If that suffices for your gameplay (and it should for the lion's share of PC owners), Zotac's GeForce GTX 1660 Super Twin Fan handles the job admirably. EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming 12G Review. Next we will check out another very demanding VR game,  No Man’s Sky. Previously, he worked as a freelancer for Gadget Review and Digital Trends, spending his time there wading through seas of hardware at every turn. Obduction’s unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 111.8 FPS with 7 dropped frames and the GTX 1660 Ti gave 112.3 FPS with 6 dropped frames; and no frames were synthesized by either GeForce card. On specs alone, it's a little tough to put these two alongside one another, but on both price and performance (as we'll discuss in more detail below), the Radeon RX 590 is the closest AMD equivalent on the market right now. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’s unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 167.3 FPS, the GTX 1660 Ti gave 171.3 FPS, and the RX 590 produced 126.7 FPS. To set a baseline for how the GTX 1660 Super gains its "super" status, I've charted out how the base specs for the non-Super GPU stack up side-by-side against the Zotac version of the Super. The GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER is up to 20% faster than the original GTX 1660 and up to 1.5X faster than the previous-generation GTX 1060 6GB. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/zotac-geforce-gtx-1660-super-twin-fan. The GTX 1660 SUPER released at $229 and immediately made redundant the identically priced but slower GTX 1660 and also the 1-3% faster GTX 1660 Ti now starting at $259. We have recently transitioned from VR performance benchmarking using the Oculus Rift CV-1 to the Vive Pro, and from benching Oculus Store games to benchmarking SteamVR and Viveport games. For BTR’s VR testing methodology, please refer to this evaluation. The GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card family hasn't been out for even a year, but it looks like Nvidia's penchant to "Super"-size all its cards has given it its turn in the Super barrel. No synthetic or dropped frames were reported by any of our cards. First, the question we're probably all asking: Why? We particularly want to compare the (new) $229.99 ASUS DUAL GTX 1660 SUPER EVO versus the (open box) $206.99 Red Devil RX 590 since they are in a similar price range, and we also want to see if the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti XC is worth the extra $30 (after rebate) over the SUPER for VR. All of the engines are identified under each game’s description. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We benchmarked Skyrim VR using its highest settings. In his free time, you’ll find him shredding the local mountain on his snowboard, or using his now-defunct culinary degree to whip up a dish in the kitchen for friends. The game is playable on Medium settings at 45Hz/45 FPS using reprojection although it is not ideal. There is an emphasis on puzzle solving which get more and more difficult as a player progresses. It comes in close enough to the next-step-up GeForce GTX 1660 Ti for the price to eke out our Editors' Choice award for 1080p-gaming cards—for now. ARK Park is a single or multiplayer VR adventure game set in a dinosaur theme park, and it allows gamers to interact with a few of the dinosaurs in ARK: Survival Evolved. Here are the performance results of our three competing cards using FCAT-VR’s generated chart. Nvidia has already confirmed one: the GeForce GTX 1650 Super, coming in late November. Until, perhaps, AMD answers with a "Navi" Radeon DNA-based card at a similar price—or Nvidia splices even more Super cards into the GeForce line—in its price band it's the best bargain in town. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. If someone is going to spend hundreds of dollars on a HMD they should not cheap out on their graphics card. PNY GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6GB Single Fan 1660 SUPER. The GTX 1660 SUPER  and the GTX 1660 Ti are in approximately the same class when it comes to VR performance and in only one game does the Ti beat the SUPER by about 10%. In sum, this card bridges budget and mainstream pricing, and it's made to play most esports titles above 144fps in 1080p and AAA games at more than 60fps at 1080p. The charts themselves will list the settings we used (typically the highest in-game presets and, if available, DirectX 12). Finally there's Rainbow Six: Siege. This review follows up the evaluation where we compared VR performance of a RTX 2080 Ti versus a RTX 2080 SUPER with a Vive Pro using 10 VR games. It is an adventure game developed by Cyan Worlds using the Unreal 4 engine. Our last synthetic benchmark is Unigine's 2017 release, Superposition. The GeForce GTX 1660 Super represents a card that will reliably return strong 1080p high-refresh gaming results, and scratch the surface of some titles at 1440p, while still giving the GTX 1660 Ti enough of a mandate to exist. This game is well-optimized for the PC platform, but very demanding at its higher visual quality settings. Powered by the award-winning NVIDIA Turing architecture and ultra-fast GDDR6 memory, it’s a supercharger for today’s most popular games. The GTX 1660 Ti barely edges the GTX 1660 SUPER in eight out of ten games. The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or the endorsement of PCMag. The GTX 1660 Ti also does more with slightly less power, at a 120-watt requirement, while the GTX 1660 Super needs 125 watts (in the version we tested). Far Cry 5 results were far less surprising, delivering numbers exactly in parallel with what we saw in the synthetic benchmark tests. You Need a VPN, Exclusive: First Test Results of the Radical OnePlus 9 Pro Display, Intel's 'Rocket Lake' CPUs Will Try to Beat AMD With Lower Prices, Hidden Tesla Tricks Every EV Fan Should Know. Despite the game languishing in bugs and server problems for the first year, Ubisoft has worked hard on its competitor to CS:GO to make it one of the most highly played games on the Steam platform, with 45 million players and growing as of late 2019. Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. Project CARS 2’s unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 57.6 FPS and the GTX 1660 Ti gave 58.7 FPS with both cards each reporting a combined total of 50% synthetic (including dropped) frames. We're looking only at the test's Graphics Subscore, not the Overall Score. Let's take a break from fps-based benchmarks for Final Fantasy XV. On the other hand, FCAT-VR reported a combined total of 47% synthetic (including dropped) frames using the RX 590 as it managed to deliver 74.8 unconstrained FPS. It's not overly demanding, but it is still a reliable test. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine. We set the settings to “Enhanced” which is just above Low and raised the anisotropic filtering from 2x to 16x. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. When there is performance headroom, we recommend increasing the resolution multiplier as far as a player’s card can handle without needing to generate synthetic frames. For our benchmark results we wanted to focus some of our efforts on the esports aspect of the GTX 1660 Super's abilities, as much of the press from Nvidia has centered around its ability to push 1080p multiplayer games to their highest-possible frame rates. Although it is considered by some to be a walking simulator, it is also an excellent detective game with great puzzles. Key Comparisons: Where Does the Super Fit In? Despite having a lower base and boost clock speed, the GTX 1660 Ti is still the more powerful card of these two, thanks to its 128 extra CUDA cores. Subnautica’s unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 66.8 FPS and the GTX 1660 Ti gave 65.3 FPS, making the game a somewhat acceptable VR experience on Low settings using reprojection. Consider, though: Right now, the MSRPs for the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Super are only $10 apart in their base-card form, at $229 for the GTX 1660 Super against $219 for the GTX 1660. The only AMD card in a similar price range is the Red Devil RX 590 although some RX 590s are now priced below $200 . It is important to remember that the charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. The RX 590 delivered 49.7 unconstrained FPS and 51% of its frames were synthetic (or dropped). This is Futuremark's DirectX 12-enabled benchmark for predicting the performance of DirectX 12-enabled games. The unconstrained framerate of the GTX 1660 SUPER was 71.4 FPS and the GTX 1660 Ti gave 70.1 FPS. We measure frametimes and unconstrained performance using the Vive Pro with FCAT VR. Here you can explore, craft equipment and build bases, pilot underwater craft, and solve mysteries while attempting to survive a very hostile environment. PCMag, PCMag.com and PC Magazine are among the federally registered trademarks of Ziff Davis, LLC and may not be used by third parties without explicit permission. The idea is to explore your own “Jurassic Park” with opportunities to study genetics, raise baby dinosaurs from eggs, ride and paint them, and even defend the park against attacking dinosaurs in a wave shooter segment. However, the RX 590 sits in a lower performance class and it cannot be recommended for Vive Pro PC-VR since it is in a similar price range to the faster GTX 1660 SUPER. There is no way outside of the virtual reality experience to convey the incredible sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. Since we posted our original review nearly three years ago, we have benchmarked many VR games for our follow-up reviews over the past thirty-three months using the Oculus Rift CV-1 and now we are using a more demanding HMD, the Vive Pro. Before we benchmark our ten VR games, check out our Test Configuration. As alluded to earlier, we've got a mix of AAA titles in here as well as some more optimized, multiplayer-focused titles, since that is the primary metric by which Nvidia is hoping the GTX 1660 Super line is ultimately measured by. Let’s check out our conclusion. Please note that settings have been lowered for the three entry level cards as noted in the smaller chart above. This benchmark does incorporate ray tracing, but it's done in software, not hardware, and thus doesn't utilize the RT cores of the one RTX 20-series card in these charts. We even felt a bit of unease playing several games with the RX 590 at our mostly medium and even low settings that we did not experience using the GTX 1660 SUPER. All three cards—the GeForce GTX 1660, the GTX 1660 Ti, and the GTX 1660 Super—are based off the "Turing"-architecture TU116 die from Nvidia. We also ran it through our standard video-card benchmarks, which test a card's abilities to handle AAA games at the highest possible quality settings. We picked the Medium Preset. Team Group’s $99 480 GB SSD Review – SSD vs. SSHD, The Kingston A1000 480 GB NVMe SSD Review. Subnautica is a very demanding game even at the lowest settings. FCAT-VR showed a combined total of 8% synthetic (including dropped) frames using the GTX 1660 Ti while the GTX 1660 SUPER reported only 2%. Here are the ten VR games that we benchmark: It is important to be aware of VR performance since poorly delivered frames can make a VR experience unpleasant, even leading to VR sickness. The GTX 1660 Super is also the first Super variant we've seen from Nvidia in its GTX (as opposed to RTX) line of graphics cards, which is to say, the cards that don't come with the ray-tracing and DLSS capabilities of the company's flagship RTX cards. Noom vs. WeightWatchers: Which Diet Plan Is Better to Help You Lose Weight in 2021? Results came back in line once we ran this predictable test, and unsurprisingly the GTX 1660 Super was 5 percent slower than the GTX 1660 Ti, and 12 percent faster than the original GTX 1660: again, closer to the Ti card than the non-Ti card. As the sole survivor of a crash landing, the player ventures into the depths of a visually impressive alien underwater world. The ASUS Dual GeForce GTX 1660 Super Mini is a very compact graphics card, made to fit Mini-ITX builds and even an Intel NUC 9 kit. We looked at it in Zotac's $239 GeForce GTX 1660 Super Twin Fan guise, and while it presents just a modest step up over the non-Super GTX 1660, it still packs enough punch to keep esports hounds and 1080p-bound AAA gamers playing long into the night.