Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti: Performance Analysis

Our detailed breakdown of the GTX 1660 Ti begins with a fascinating trio of games, incorporating engines old and new. Our test system 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 ensure that the power-hungry 8700K doesn't overheat, a Corsair H110i all-in-one liquid cooler is used, which does a remarkably effective job.

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.

It's a system designed to give you as much in-depth data as you want - or indeed as little, for at-a-glance viewing - all derived from video captures of each respective GPU. No internal frame-rate measurements here, it all comes from the video output of the card, the best way to ensure accuracy.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Assassin's Creed in its latest iterations has favoured Nvidia hardware and the trend continues with the GTX 1660 Ti, which delivers a highly impressive initial showing to the point where it powers ahead of the GTX 1070 and is just a couple of points away from AMD's Vega 56. The GTX 1660 Ti monsters the old GTX 1060 6GB - 34 per cent faster at 1080p (where even an 8700K is likely to encounter some bottlenecks) with a 41 per cent uplift at 1440p. A strong start for the new Turing card.

Assassin's Creed Unity

Going back in time to 2014's visually resplendent Assassin's Creed Unity, we see our first example of how the latest Nvidia graphics cards can lose some pace against the 10-series Pascal offerings. The deficit isn't actually noticeable in gameplay, amounting to around two per cent but it does buck the trend against the majority of our results. AC Unity's depth of field and volumetrics are absolutely punishing - far more so on AMD hardware, explaining how GTX 1660 Ti can actually pull ahead of Vega 56 here.

Battlefield 1

Nvidia's Turing architecture has delivered excellent results on EA's Frostbite engine, as you would expect from a modern game engine. Gains over the Pascal-powered GTX 1060 reach 40 per cent, while the 1660 Ti also beats GTX 1070 - powering ahead at 1080p, but losing a little pace at 1440p. Battlefield 1 is still a title where AMD delivers though: this is closest we get to RX 590 closing the gap, while Vega 56 performs more in line with the more capable RTX 2060 - especially so at 1440p resolution.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 1660 Ti Analysis

• Introduction, Hardware Breakdown
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey/Unity, Battlefield 1 - Performance Analysis Part 1 [This Page]
• 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
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - the Digital Foundry verdict