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When NVIDIA put their plans for their consumer Turing video cards into motion, the company bet big, and in more ways than one. In the first sense, NVIDIA dedicated whole logical blocks to brand-new graphics and compute features – ray tracing and tensor core compute – and they would need to sell developers and consumers alike on the value of these features, something that is no easy task. In the second sense however, NVIDIA also bet big on GPU die size: these new features would take up a lot of space on the 12nm FinFET process they'd be using.
The end result is that all of the Turing chips we've seen thus far, from TU102 to TU106, are monsters in size; even TU106 is 445mm2, never mind the flagship TU102. And while the full economic consequences that go with that decision are NVIDIA's to bear, for the first year or so of Turing's life, all of that die space that is driving up NVIDIA's costs isn't going to contribute to improving NVIDIA's performance in traditional games; it's a value-added feature. Which is all workable for NVIDIA in the high-end market where they are unchallenged and can essentially dictate video card prices, but it's another matter entirely once you start approaching the mid-range, where the AMD competition is alive and well.
Consequently, in preparing for their cheaper, sub-$300 Turing cards, NVIDIA had to make a decision: do they keep the RT and tensor cores in order to offer these features across the line – at a literal cost to both consumers and NVIDIA – or do they drop these features in order to make a leaner, more competitive chip? As it turns out, NVIDIA has opted for the latter, producing a new Turing GPU that is leaner and meaner than anything that's come before it, but also very different from its predecessors for this reason.
That GPU is TU116, and it's part of what will undoubtedly become a new sub-family of Turing GPUs for NVIDIA as the company starts rolling out Turing into the lower half of the video card market. Kicking things off in turn for this new GPU is NVIDIA's latest video card, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. Launching today at $279, it's destined to replace NVIDIA's GTX 1060 6GB in the market and is NVIDIA's new challenger for the mainstream video card market.
Compared to the RTX 2060 Founders Edition, GTX 1660 Ti has fewer CUDA[*] cores, lower memory clock, and the same amount of VRAM (6 GB), but it has higher core/boost clocks and lower TDP (120 W vs. 160 W). GTX 1660 Ti has roughly 85% the performance of the RTX 2060, at 80% the MSRP ($279 vs. $349).
Nvidia may also release a GTX 1660, GTX 1650, and possibly a GTX 1680 (a non-RTX flagship).
[*] CUDA: "When it was first introduced by Nvidia, the name CUDA was an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture, but Nvidia subsequently dropped the use of the acronym."
Previously: Nvidia Announces RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070 GPUs, Claims 25x Increase in Ray-Tracing Performance
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:00PM (1 child)
No offense, but I don't understand what you are saying. Why would you think this is a viable replacement for the 1080 or 1080ti cards? Those cards are superior to the 1660ti in almost every way.
I have two of them; it'd be silly to replace them with two 1660tis. The 1660ti is, as the article says, 85% of the performance of the 2060, and the 2060 has 62% of the "non-RTX" performance of the 1080ti... and about 65% of the performance of a 1080.
This card has just over half the performance of the 1080ti, and just over half the ram (6GB versus 11GB).
Here's a site that has a direct comparison between the 1660ti and the 1080ti.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1660-Ti-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1080-Ti/4037vs3918 [userbenchmark.com]
I don't know anyone with 1080s or 1080tis, using them for any purpose, that has been waiting for this announcement. Or more properly, what this announcement contains. They wanted a new 1080 series type of card without the RTX; this is not that. They will want to see the 1680 and 1680tis, presuming that's what it is called, when those come out. If they are priced the same as the original 1080 and 1080tis, people may upgrade--provided they don't have to replace their waterblocks and other custom cooling to do it.
Downgrading to this is a real step backwards; I myself have two 1080tis on seperate loops using something I built myself. I replaced all the thermal pads and used liquid metal TIM, etc. First time I ever did that, and it's not something I expected to repeat yearly. I know many performance addicts that are hardware hackers; you can't OC a 1660 to match even a non-OC'd 1080ti. And you can't match an OC'd 1080ti without going with the "titan" class GPU or jumping to 2080s and even tweaking those. This is just a factory overtaxed clunker with a huge heatsink to make up for the lack of proper design due to the fast turnaround time, intended to fill a void they expected their more expensive cards would fill.
Perhaps worst of all in the performance crowd, those 20x0 series cards are not water block compatible with the previous generation, even with modding--the gpu chips are too large, so you can't dremel it to fit when there isn't enough surface area to begin with. Water blocks for gpus do not come cheap unless they are already ancient and on clearance. Its expensive to chase the dragon like that; this isn't a dragon anyone wants to catch except for people wanting to upgrade from their 750tis or 980tis who may have deliberately missed the 1080 series boat, hoping the next generation would be a value worth upgrading to. This card indicates the 20x0 series wasn't a value--but no one will downgrade to this to ostensibly save space and costs. These 1660tis are triple wides! Have you looked at the photos? With a waterblock, the 1080 and 1080ti are single slot cards; this would be a huge expensive step backwards to lose performance, requiring a lot of modification to even fit, and a lot of performance loss just to have the newest.
Anyone with these cards installed already aren't wishing for a shorter, fatter card to fill two more slots--they already have made the space to fit what they have.
This card might be good for people that haven't upgraded or are just looking for a new card that isn't a replacement, but this is no upgrade for people already possessing any 1080 series card. Maybe I do not frequent the same places you frequent, but this card is most likely a reactionary offering to prevent the loss of sales to AMD, aimed at people that don't, or won't, spend money on higher end cards, and ultimately were unlikely to ever get one.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 25 2019, @06:27AM
You could have just started with the price, to point out how it's not the same segment.