Hi All,
I recently posted about buying a friend a used gtx 1660 6gb that was going cheap ($130/€115/£100) to upgrade his gtx 1060 3gb. I was concerned because not only did we find no improvement on fps, but it was actually performing worse than his 3gb 1060. Just to remind you, here are his specs:
i5 7500 3.4GHz
Asus H110M-R
8gb DDR4 2400MHz in single channel
Aerocool Integrator 500w psu
Here's the UPDATE!
I took on board many of your comments and suggestions, such as it could be bottlenecked by the cpu, it could be his bad ram, it could be not getting enough power from the psu etc. So I took my 2070 super out and installed the 1660 in my own rig, to do some further testing where none of those factors should be an issue. My specs are as follows:
i5 9600k 3.7GHz
MSI Z390-A Pro
16gb DDR4 3200MHz dual channel
Corsair RM850w psu
The only problem, is that the 1660 is still waaaaaay under performing.
Following your suggestions, this is what I did:
1. Use DDU in safe mode to remove all old drivers
2. Install 1660
3. Custom install the latest 1660 driver/PhysX and no other nonsense
4. Checked GPU-Z which reported the card correctly as a 6gb 1660 (I am 99% sure the card is legit), PCIe x16 3.0, correct base clock of 1530mhz and boost clock of 1785mhz
5. Checked Afterburner which reported the same clock speeds, and showing correct idle voltage of 0.775, running at 35c idle
6. Proceeded to benchmark various games and directly compare to his 1060 3gb (in his lower spec rig), using all the same in-game graphic settings as him.
These included:
- Heaven Unigene benchmark, 1080p ultra settings. His 1060 3gb scored average of 60fps, the 1660 in my 9600k rig scored average of 49fps.
- GTA V using the same very high settings, walking a lap around my bunker next to each other. He had an average of 85fps. I had average of 75fps.
- Rust, using same low-mid graphic settings, running along the beach next to each other. His 1060 3gb was getting 95fps average, I was getting 90fps average with the 1660.
This trend continued in everything we tried. I was monitoring usage/voltage/temps using CPUID HWMonitor for each game and there are a couple of things to note. Clock speeds = normal. Voltage = normal. CPU usage = normal. HOWEVER, despite all this, the 1660 power usage is always at 80% when idle and 100% under load. ALSO, the idle temperature is normal, however under load the temperature is not going above 50c. From my research it should be reaching 70c+ under load, so for some reason it seems to be staying very cool despite it's constant high usage. I don't know if these 2 factors are normal or not, but it surprised me in comparison to my 2070 super which when idle is always less than 20% power usage.
I have taken pictures of my monitoring and results, but didn't want to spend ages uploading them all, so let me know if any of them would be particularly useful.
Hopefully these updated results and tests might shed some light on what the problem is, as I would be expecting this card to be at least 20% fps boost in comparison to the 1060 3gb. This is the last post I make on this before I just cut my losses and sell it as under-performing on eBay!
Thanks in advance!
I recently posted about buying a friend a used gtx 1660 6gb that was going cheap ($130/€115/£100) to upgrade his gtx 1060 3gb. I was concerned because not only did we find no improvement on fps, but it was actually performing worse than his 3gb 1060. Just to remind you, here are his specs:
i5 7500 3.4GHz
Asus H110M-R
8gb DDR4 2400MHz in single channel
Aerocool Integrator 500w psu
Here's the UPDATE!
I took on board many of your comments and suggestions, such as it could be bottlenecked by the cpu, it could be his bad ram, it could be not getting enough power from the psu etc. So I took my 2070 super out and installed the 1660 in my own rig, to do some further testing where none of those factors should be an issue. My specs are as follows:
i5 9600k 3.7GHz
MSI Z390-A Pro
16gb DDR4 3200MHz dual channel
Corsair RM850w psu
The only problem, is that the 1660 is still waaaaaay under performing.
Following your suggestions, this is what I did:
1. Use DDU in safe mode to remove all old drivers
2. Install 1660
3. Custom install the latest 1660 driver/PhysX and no other nonsense
4. Checked GPU-Z which reported the card correctly as a 6gb 1660 (I am 99% sure the card is legit), PCIe x16 3.0, correct base clock of 1530mhz and boost clock of 1785mhz
5. Checked Afterburner which reported the same clock speeds, and showing correct idle voltage of 0.775, running at 35c idle
6. Proceeded to benchmark various games and directly compare to his 1060 3gb (in his lower spec rig), using all the same in-game graphic settings as him.
These included:
- Heaven Unigene benchmark, 1080p ultra settings. His 1060 3gb scored average of 60fps, the 1660 in my 9600k rig scored average of 49fps.
- GTA V using the same very high settings, walking a lap around my bunker next to each other. He had an average of 85fps. I had average of 75fps.
- Rust, using same low-mid graphic settings, running along the beach next to each other. His 1060 3gb was getting 95fps average, I was getting 90fps average with the 1660.
This trend continued in everything we tried. I was monitoring usage/voltage/temps using CPUID HWMonitor for each game and there are a couple of things to note. Clock speeds = normal. Voltage = normal. CPU usage = normal. HOWEVER, despite all this, the 1660 power usage is always at 80% when idle and 100% under load. ALSO, the idle temperature is normal, however under load the temperature is not going above 50c. From my research it should be reaching 70c+ under load, so for some reason it seems to be staying very cool despite it's constant high usage. I don't know if these 2 factors are normal or not, but it surprised me in comparison to my 2070 super which when idle is always less than 20% power usage.
I have taken pictures of my monitoring and results, but didn't want to spend ages uploading them all, so let me know if any of them would be particularly useful.
Hopefully these updated results and tests might shed some light on what the problem is, as I would be expecting this card to be at least 20% fps boost in comparison to the 1060 3gb. This is the last post I make on this before I just cut my losses and sell it as under-performing on eBay!
Thanks in advance!