Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G Review – Bang For Buck King

Following on from our launch day review of the £310 MSI GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G, today we have assessed the Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G. While it is still £10 more expensive than Nvidia's MSRP for the 1660 Ti, at £269 this card is definitely a much more appealing value proposition than the premium MSI card.

You can tell the OC 6G has been built to a price. The plastic shroud is quite plain to look at, even the backplate is made of plastic. The cooler is also very basic, with just a single copper heatpipe, and there is no lighting of any kind on this card.

That being said, this card delivers where it counts, and that is in the performance department. Despite a 75MHz clock speed deficit compared to MSI's Gaming X, in actual games this Gigabyte is never more than 1.2FPS slower at 1080p. In fact, average performance is just 1.4% better with the MSI. So from a purely bang for buck perspective, the Gigabyte OC 6G makes a lot more sense.

The cooler actually performs reasonably well, too. I had my doubts when I took it apart, but my sample peaked at just 65C under load which is a great result. Noise levels is the one area where MSI does have a decent advantage, as this Gigabyte card produced around 43dB of noise – almost 6dB more than the MSI Gaming X. Clearly, Gigabyte's twin fans are having to work harder to keep temperatures low, but even then it is still not really a loud card.

It also overclocked very well, with our frequency improving by 170MHz – from 1857MHz to 2027MHz. That means it actually overclocked further than the MSI Gaming X, despite that card's beefier cooling solution and higher price. A lot of this does come down to the ‘silicon lottery', but prospective GTX 1660 Ti buyers who are happy to overclock could well save money with a cheaper card like this, especially as Nvidia is not binning the TU116 GPUs into two stacks.

So on the whole, I have to say it is pretty easy to come to a conclusion about the Gigabyte GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G. It's not the most sophisticated card we've ever come across, and noise levels are a touch higher than I'd like. But for £269, it just offers excellent value by performing effectively the same as the more expensive MSI Gaming X card we reviewed for launch day.

There is still the matter of Vega 56, and it appears that Sapphire's Pulse card can now be found for £289.99. Vega 56 performs about 10% faster, on average, than a GTX 1660 Ti so anyone looking for slightly increased raw performance may well be tempted by that. The downside, however, is power consumption, with Vega 56 pulling almost twice as much power as a 1660 Ti.

For its 1660 Ti though, Gigabyte has done a good job of producing a fast-running and cool card for just £10 above MSRP, so this OC 6G comes well recommended if you are in the market for a compact and power efficient 1080p/1440p gaming graphics card.

You can buy the OC 6G from Overclockers UK for £269.99 HERE.

Pros

• Just £10 above MSRP.
• Barely any performance difference between this and the higher-end MSI Gaming X.
• Runs cool.
• Low power draw.
• Very compact.

Cons

• Vega 56, at its current price of £289, is a compelling alternative if the higher power draw is not a problem for you.
• Slightly louder than I'd like.

KitGuru says: GTX 1660 Ti is most appealing when cards are priced as close to MSRP as possible. Gigabyte has done a good job of producing this card for £269, with no major drawbacks to worry about.

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