iBuyPower has listed a Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti-based system on Amazon in what seems to be an accidental listing, as the GTX (not RTX) 1660Ti has not been announced yet. The GTX 1660 Ti is expected to be a mid-range performer at a much lower price point than other Turing GPUs thanks to its lack of RTX-compatible hardware.
The GTX 1660 Ti’s MSRP could be quite low considering that the iBuyPower listing has the entire PC, which also includes a Core i7-8700, 480 GB SSD, and 16 GB of RAM, priced at $1200. Similar PCs from iBuyPower featuring the RTX 2060 retail for roughly $100 more. HardOCP and later VideoCardz reported that the GTX 1660 Ti's MSRP is $279 ($70 lower than the RTX 2060).
The 1660 Ti is expected not to contain any RTX-compatible hardware, and even if it did, its 1536 cores probably wouldn’t be enough considering that the 2060 struggles at 1920 cores. As a result, the size of the TU116 GPU (which the 1660 Ti is reportedly based on) is about 70% of the size of the TU106 GPU that powers the RTX 2060 and 2070, according to a leaked die shot from VideoCardz. Coincidentally, that makes the 1660 Ti almost the same size as the 1070 and 1070 Ti, and according to the Final Fantasy XV benchmark database, a leaked 1660 Ti also performs much like GTX 1070. However, considering the 1660 Ti has far fewer cores, it is very impressive.
The upcoming 1660 Ti could be crucial to Nvidia’s financial success after the company reported a staggeringly poor performance during the last half of the year. Revenues, margins, and income dropped intensely while operating expenses shot up. While Nvidia primarily blames China’s economy, the company admitted that RTX sales didn’t meet expectations. While Nvidia’s gaming revenue (Nvidia’s largest source of money) impressed for Q3 of last year, sales plummeted in Q4 which saw gaming revenue barely exceed half of what the company made in Q4 of 2017. Being a more mainstream GPU at a more reasonable price, the GTX 1660 Ti could give Nvidia the boost it needs after such disappointing sales.
