Review on Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER OC 6GB (GV-N166SOC-6GD)
3 min readI welcome the readers of the review of the Gigabyte GV-N166SOC-6GD video card. When choosing a video card, it is not always possible to correctly evaluate consumer properties based on reviews, so the information below will be useful. Gigabyte GV-N166SOC-6GD turned out to be the cheapest model in my city and was purchased at Onlinetrade
This video card is one of the cheapest GTX 1660 Super models on the market (especially from those equipped with semi-passive CO). Therefore, you should not expect a rich kit. Here is the actual photo:
The heatsink is attached to the memory chips through thick thermal pads
In the review I will not talk about performance. There is a lot of information on this on Youtube. The card is equal to the previous generation GTX 1070 and faster than the nearest-priced card from AMD RX5500XT 8GB.
Testing on standard settings. To evaluate temperatures, a couple of words about the testing conditions: Corsair air 240 case with 2 fans for supply (bottom) and 2 for exhaust (top). Turns of 800 RPM. Airflow is low due to low revs, but this should be more than enough for the gtx 1660 super graphics card.
The frequency ranges from 1950Mhz-1830Mhz. That is, the video card does have factory overclocking since Nvidia claims the frequency 1785Mhz as nominal.
The video card rests on Powerlimit and resets the frequencies.
In games, the GP temperature exceeds 80 degrees. Cooler speed reaches 2500 rpm. The noise of the video card is clearly distinguished from the background of the system unit.
Disappointing performance. Until the time of purchase, the feedback was that the video card was cold and very quiet.
Memory temperature is not recorded in the monitoring of GPU-Z and Afterburner. Given that video cards with GDDR6 often suffer from excessive memory heating, the lack of temperature control is disappointing.
Voltage 0.98-1.05V
It is obvious that the voltage is too high, which leads to a frequency drop due to excess powerlimit
The purpose of this review is to show the effect of voltage reduction on the gtx 1660 super.
The voltage was reduced in MSI Afterburner by adjusting the voltage / frequency curve (All actions are similar to those for Pascal video cards, there are plenty of video instructions on Youtube)
An express assessment of voltage reduction with frequency fixation at the level of 1900Mhz was made. Step 0.05V. That is, the goal is to evaluate at what minimum voltage there will be no loss of performance relative to the state from the store and how other parameters (chip temperature, fan speed) will react. Overclocking was not intended to be testing.
Stability was tested in Unigine Superposition (preset Extreme) for intermediate results and in Red dead redemption 2 for final check
For the rated frequency of my instance, the minimum stable voltage was 0.837v
The following is a series of graphs with monitoring the GPU-Z. First run with unigine superposition at nominal parameters, then with voltage reduction.
Frequency Graph:
The graph shows that there is no decrease in frequency relative to the nominal
GPU voltage graph:
In accordance with the curve, the voltage is fixed at 0.837v. In general, of course, finer tuning is possible at high time costs. Often a decrease in the operating frequency by a small amount allows you to further reduce the voltage.
Power consumption graph:
Power consumption decreased from 125W to 100W. In a percentage ratio of -20%.
The video card began to work at 80% Powerlimit:
Chip temperature graph:
The test is short, but the contribution of reducing power consumption to the temperature of the chip is visible.
Fan Speed:
Fan speed decreased from 2450 rpm to 2250 rpm. Noise reduction is subjectively felt.
Сonclusions:
In general, the video card GTX 1660 Super is definitely a successful video card in the Nvidia line. As for the model from Gigabyte, then the factor of the budget model is affected. Cooling on the verge and probably in small buildings with poor ventilation, overheating is quite possible.
In other matters, the voltage is very much too high, so I painted what results can be obtained by reducing the voltage. In summary, it is possible to recommend a video card for purchase, since if you are not satisfied with the temperature and noise characteristics, you can always resort to lowering the voltage and getting indicators much better than the factory ones.
The article is written on the basis of materials of this site.
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Great great article. Far more useful than countless similar performance measuring reviews.
Would love to have a possibility to read text like this before buying any new card. It’s a pity there are so little resources like this one.
Great review! Just what I needed since I did a similar undervolt as well and wanted to see what the expected gains would be. All other reviews just focus on performance of which there are countless graphs up already