Nvidia’s GTX 1660 is an affordable GPU that’s better than the GTX 1060

Nvidia announced its new GTX 1660 graphics card today, driving the cost down even further for those looking for an affordable GPU. This model starts at $219 / £199, and it will be released on March 14th from Nvidia’s partners, including EVGA, Asus, and more.

The GTX 1660 sits below the Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti in terms of performance and price. As for where it fits in the greater labyrinth of Nvidia GPUs, the company says the new card has, on average, a 15 percent boost over the last-gen GTX 1060. And compared to the two-generation-old GTX 960, it’s said to be 130 percent faster.

Nvidia’s new budget graphics card is built on the efficient Turing architecture that you’ll find in the GTX 1660 Ti as well as in its more powerful and expensive RTX 20-series models. However, this option makes some sacrifices to arrive at this price: it doesn’t support DLSS or ray tracing (both are exclusive to the RTX 20-series), and when up against the $279 GTX 1660 Ti, the cheaper model ships with slightly slower GDDR5 video RAM and fewer CUDA cores.

Assuming you didn’t run out of patience for Nvidia’s latest card, and you haven’t recently bought a more expensive GPU, this one is worth checking out. Those who are upgrading from a GTX 9-series, GTX 1050, or a lesser card will likely notice huge performance gains, and you won’t have to spend much for the improvements.