**MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X Review**

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X is a high-performance graphics card that has been tested for its capabilities, overclocking potential, and thermal management. In this review, we'll delve into the details of this card's performance, temperature management, and other aspects.

**Performance at Lower Resolutions**

When testing the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X at lower resolutions such as 1080p, it was able to deliver smooth gameplay with average frame rates ranging from 60-80 FPS. This is a significant improvement over its predecessor, the GTX 1060, which struggled to maintain consistent frame rates in games at this resolution. The card's performance was further enhanced by manual overclocking, which resulted in an additional 3.3% boost in average frame rate.

At 1440p, the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X demonstrated impressive performance, with average frame rates ranging from 80-120 FPS in demanding games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Far Cry 5. These results are comparable to some of the more powerful graphics cards on the market, including the RTX 2060. This is a testament to the card's ability to handle high-resolution gaming without sacrificing performance.

**Performance at Higher Resolutions**

When tested at 4K resolution, the GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X struggled to maintain consistent frame rates. However, with manual overclocking and improved cooling, it was able to deliver respectable performance, albeit at a significant cost in terms of power consumption. The card's peak clock speeds were pushed to their limits, resulting in an average frame rate of around 40-50 FPS.

**Overclocking Potential**

The GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X demonstrated excellent overclocking potential when tested with MSI Afterburner. By applying a manual overclock of 130 MHz to the GPU core and 1000 MHz to the memory, we were able to boost the card's performance by up to 6.5% at 1440p and 7% at 4K resolution.

**Thermal Management**

The GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X was tested for its thermal management capabilities using the Heaven benchmark. At ambient temperatures of around 26°C, the card's temperatures were relatively high, with peak GPU core temperatures reaching around 78°C. However, when manually overclocked and maxing out the fan speed with MSI Afterburner, we were able to reduce the temperatures by up to 10°C.

**Average and Peak Fan Speeds**

The GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X's average and peak fan speeds were measured during the thermal management tests. At idle, the fans did not spin at all, resulting in a completely silent operation. However, when manually overclocked, the fans increased to around 50-60% speed, resulting in a slight increase in temperature.

**Power Consumption**

The GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X's power consumption was measured using the Heaven benchmark with manual overclocking applied. The card's average system power draw from the wall was around 210W, which is slightly higher than some of its competitors.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X is a high-performance graphics card that has been extensively tested for its capabilities, overclocking potential, and thermal management. While it may not be the best choice for 4K gaming, it demonstrates excellent performance at lower resolutions and has a strong overclocking potential. Its thermal management capabilities are also impressive, allowing for significant boosts in performance with manual overclocking. Overall, this card is a solid option for those looking to upgrade their gaming experience without breaking the bank.

**Recommendation**

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X is available in various configurations, including the Gaming X model we tested here. While it may not be the most expensive option on the market, its performance and overclocking potential make it a great value for its price. However, there are cheaper options available, such as the standard GTX 1660 Ti model, which may offer better cooling but slightly lower clock speeds.

**Comparison to Other Graphics Cards**

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X will be compared to other graphics cards in our upcoming series of reviews. We'll be testing its performance against some of the most popular graphics cards on the market, including the RTX 2060 and GTX 1070. These comparisons will provide a better understanding of the card's strengths and weaknesses and help readers make informed decisions when choosing a graphics card for their gaming needs.

**Availability and Pricing**

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X is available in various configurations, including the standard model we tested here. The standard model is priced around $309 USD or $509 AUD, while the Gaming X model we reviewed costs slightly more due to its improved cooling system. However, prices may vary depending on the region and retailer.

**Conclusion**

In this review, we've extensively tested the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X for its performance, overclocking potential, and thermal management. Our tests have shown that this card is a great option for those looking to upgrade their gaming experience without breaking the bank. Its excellent performance at lower resolutions, impressive overclocking potential, and strong thermal management capabilities make it a solid choice for anyone in the market for a new graphics card.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmsi's geforce gtx 1660 ti gamingx graphics card is one of their top end models from the new 1660 ti lineup so let's take a look and see just how well it performs to do this i'll be testing gaming at 1080p 1440p and 4k as well as overclocking cooling power draw and noise levels help you decide if it's worth buying let's start by taking a look at the card like other recent msi cards it's got a dark grey and black theme nice neutral colors and should blend in well with most builds there are two fans on the front a metal back plate with a nice brushed finish and msi logo on the back and a single 8-pin power connector on the top there's rgb lighting on the top and bottom of the card and this can be controlled using msi's lightsync software to change the effects or match it with the rest of your system for the i o we've got three displayport 1.4 outputs and single hdmi 2.0 b port the card is on the smaller side compared to others i've covered recently just under 25 centimeters in length 13 centimeters tall and 4.6 centimeters wide making it a two slot card weighing in at 869 grams or 1.9 pounds the 1660 ti is nvidia's first graphics card with a new turing architecture to not feature rtx as a result it's both cheaper and branded as a gtx card this also means we've still got the benefits of gddr6 memory of which there's six gig and here are the rest of the specs for that matter while we're at it it's worth noting that this gaming x card has a nice overclock on it out of the box with a megahertz higher boost clock compared to reference specs so we're expecting it to perform a little better than many other 1660 ti cards at stock the system that i'm testing with has an intel i7 8700k cpu overclocked to 5.0 gigahertz in an msi z390 gaming pro carbon motherboard along with 16 gig of t-force nighthawk cl16 memory running a ddr4 3200 in dual channel check the links in the description for details on all of the components as well as for up-to-date pricing let's start out with apex legends i've tested this one using maximum settings and it was easily playable at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions i could kind of get by with 4k but i wouldn't recommend it with this card although lower settings would go a bit better battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and again it was running perfectly fine at 1080p and still great at 1440p with high settings able to average above 60fps again 4k wasn't a good experience here with high settings only just sitting on 30 fps not good for a first person shooter game metro exodus was tested with a built-in benchmark which has been shown to perform below actual gameplay so this is more of a synthetic test i chose to test this way for when i do future comparisons i can more easily compare results between different graphics plus you can do the same test and compare far cry new dawn was tested with a built-in benchmark and we're starting to see a similar trend where this test was able to get decent frame rates at 1080p and 1440p resolutions even with high settings but then fairly weak performance at 4k far cry 5 was also tested with the built-in benchmark and this game gets higher fps than the newer far cry new dawn just covered although despite the small increase in this game still not great at 4k in this test with high settings overwatch was tested in the practice range so i can consistently reproduce the test run even at ultra settings with 4k the game was easily playable with 1 percent low still above 60 fps not surprising as it's a well optimized game then of course much better with lower resolutions assassin's creed odyssey was tested with the built-in benchmark with high settings used once again 60fps averages in this test were almost possible with 1440p and then higher at 1080p so both should play fairly well 4k even wasn't too bad as this game doesn't need a super high frame rate to play fortnite was tested with the replay feature so the exact same test was done at each resolution with high settings in use 4k wasn't too great here but it was playable with lower settings otherwise 1440p and 1080p went perfectly fine here shadow of the tomb raider was tested using the built-in benchmark and this test is another example of one that was able to sit at 60 fps with 1440p high settings with fairly low results comparatively at 4k watchdogs 2 was tested with high settings and is another game that plays alright with lower frame rates so the solid 30fps i was getting at 4k was playable with 1440p once more giving us that golden 60 fps even in this resource intensive game granted this is also a cpu heavy game and we do have an overclocked 8700k ghost recon is another resource intensive game which was tested with the built-in benchmark at high settings and you're probably getting tired of hearing me say this but above 60 fps averages were possible at 1440p with higher at 1080p while 4k wasn't good here cs go was tested using euletical fps benchmark and as a well optimized game that runs on basically anything i was seeing high frame rates even at 4k definitely playable however we can see the one percent lows tank in this test indicating the lower resolutions should provide a more consistent experience rainbow six siege was tested with the built-in benchmark and is another game that's optimized pretty well with 80 fps possible even at high settings at 4k with well over 100 fps possible with low resolutions the witcher 3 was tested with hair works disabled and i didn't find it too bad at 4k the 1 low wasn't too low showing that there weren't too many dips in performance however it was noticeably better at 1440p or below pubg was tested using the replay feature with the same replay file between resolutions at high settings with 4k it was a bit choppy and the average fps is too low for a first person shooter anyway but definitely going all right at 1440p and below shadow of war was tested using the built-in benchmark and continues the trend of 60fps averages at 1440p with high settings in use not so great at 4k and then around 100fps at 1080p as we've seen we're able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested 1080p runs with great frame rates even with high settings while 1440p is even playable in these titles with around 60 fps averages or above some games were sort of playable at 4k but this is definitely not a 4k card at least not with half decent settings i'd advise looking at something with more power for 4k gaming personally i'd be after gtx 1080 ti or rtx 2080 levels of performance for that for overclocking i've retested with far cry 5 at high settings i was able to overclock the gpu core by 130 megahertz and boosted the memory core speed by 1000 megahertz using msi afterburner at 1080p there was a 3.3 improvement to average fps a 5.6 improvement at 1440p and then a 6.5 improvement to 4k as the graphics become less constrained by the cpu at higher resolutions this isn't too bad considering the card already has a pretty good factory overclock out of the box so we're seeing some decent performance but what are the thermals like these are the temperatures i measured with the heaven benchmark in an ambient room temperature of 26 degrees celsius on the warmer side as we've only just finished summer here in australia despite this the temperatures were still looking pretty good a little warm at idle but it's fair given the fans don't spin at all until around 60 degrees celsius by manually maxing out the fan speed with msi afterburner it was possible to reduce the temperatures by 10 degrees celsius and my manual overclocks only raised to gpu core temperature by 1 degree just for fun i've used my thermal camera so you can see how the back plate looks with the stress tests running it was definitely warm to the touch but nowhere near as hot as some of the other higher end cards i've tested that need oven mitts i've got the average and peak clock speeds while running the heaven benchmark for an extended period and with the 130 megahertz overclock applied with msi afterburner we're getting a nice little boost we can see that by maxing out the fans we're able to boost performance just a tiny bit as gpu boost prefers cooler temperatures these are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures and clock speeds just shown at idle they don't spin at all so it was silent and then they only rise a small amount with the overclock applied i couldn't really tell the difference sitting next to it by maxing out the fan speed it does get noticeably louder but i don't think it was that loud considering i did this test with the side panel of my case off here's how these tests sounded so that you can get an idea for yourself as i've got seven other fans in the case this isn't the best test however you can use the idle test as a baseline with just the case fans going and then compare the rest against that i'll also note that while testing i was not able to hear any coil wine with my unit here's what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same heaven benchmark so once manually overclocked there was just a 10 watt power increase for up-to-date pricing check the links in the description as prices will change over time at the time of recording in the us the msi geforce gtx 1660 ti gaming x is going for around 309 us dollars or around 509 australian dollars here in australia as for whether or not it's worth it i think i'll leave that for the comparison videos i'll be doing between this the 1060 1070 and 2060 graphics as i'll have a better idea of how it stacks up once i start comparing so get subscribed for those there are of course cheapest 1660 ti options available msi's gaming x appears to be their top of the line option for the 1660 ti at the moment so you can save your money and get a lower clocked out of the box card sure it'll perform a few fps slower but there's a very good chance you can make up for that with some manual overclocking in most cases anyway however what you're usually paying for is better cooling extra metal costs more i bought this one with my own money to have it available for future testing here in australia on launch it was actually priced the same as many other models that were clocked lower with worse cooling i'm not really sure why but for me it made sense to get this model so what did you guys think of msi's gtx 1660 ti gamingx graphics card as we've seen it's easily capable of 1080p gaming and even 1440p with higher settings let me know your thoughts down in the comments and get subscribed for upgrading comparisons between the 1660 ti and other graphics cardsmsi's geforce gtx 1660 ti gamingx graphics card is one of their top end models from the new 1660 ti lineup so let's take a look and see just how well it performs to do this i'll be testing gaming at 1080p 1440p and 4k as well as overclocking cooling power draw and noise levels help you decide if it's worth buying let's start by taking a look at the card like other recent msi cards it's got a dark grey and black theme nice neutral colors and should blend in well with most builds there are two fans on the front a metal back plate with a nice brushed finish and msi logo on the back and a single 8-pin power connector on the top there's rgb lighting on the top and bottom of the card and this can be controlled using msi's lightsync software to change the effects or match it with the rest of your system for the i o we've got three displayport 1.4 outputs and single hdmi 2.0 b port the card is on the smaller side compared to others i've covered recently just under 25 centimeters in length 13 centimeters tall and 4.6 centimeters wide making it a two slot card weighing in at 869 grams or 1.9 pounds the 1660 ti is nvidia's first graphics card with a new turing architecture to not feature rtx as a result it's both cheaper and branded as a gtx card this also means we've still got the benefits of gddr6 memory of which there's six gig and here are the rest of the specs for that matter while we're at it it's worth noting that this gaming x card has a nice overclock on it out of the box with a megahertz higher boost clock compared to reference specs so we're expecting it to perform a little better than many other 1660 ti cards at stock the system that i'm testing with has an intel i7 8700k cpu overclocked to 5.0 gigahertz in an msi z390 gaming pro carbon motherboard along with 16 gig of t-force nighthawk cl16 memory running a ddr4 3200 in dual channel check the links in the description for details on all of the components as well as for up-to-date pricing let's start out with apex legends i've tested this one using maximum settings and it was easily playable at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions i could kind of get by with 4k but i wouldn't recommend it with this card although lower settings would go a bit better battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and again it was running perfectly fine at 1080p and still great at 1440p with high settings able to average above 60fps again 4k wasn't a good experience here with high settings only just sitting on 30 fps not good for a first person shooter game metro exodus was tested with a built-in benchmark which has been shown to perform below actual gameplay so this is more of a synthetic test i chose to test this way for when i do future comparisons i can more easily compare results between different graphics plus you can do the same test and compare far cry new dawn was tested with a built-in benchmark and we're starting to see a similar trend where this test was able to get decent frame rates at 1080p and 1440p resolutions even with high settings but then fairly weak performance at 4k far cry 5 was also tested with the built-in benchmark and this game gets higher fps than the newer far cry new dawn just covered although despite the small increase in this game still not great at 4k in this test with high settings overwatch was tested in the practice range so i can consistently reproduce the test run even at ultra settings with 4k the game was easily playable with 1 percent low still above 60 fps not surprising as it's a well optimized game then of course much better with lower resolutions assassin's creed odyssey was tested with the built-in benchmark with high settings used once again 60fps averages in this test were almost possible with 1440p and then higher at 1080p so both should play fairly well 4k even wasn't too bad as this game doesn't need a super high frame rate to play fortnite was tested with the replay feature so the exact same test was done at each resolution with high settings in use 4k wasn't too great here but it was playable with lower settings otherwise 1440p and 1080p went perfectly fine here shadow of the tomb raider was tested using the built-in benchmark and this test is another example of one that was able to sit at 60 fps with 1440p high settings with fairly low results comparatively at 4k watchdogs 2 was tested with high settings and is another game that plays alright with lower frame rates so the solid 30fps i was getting at 4k was playable with 1440p once more giving us that golden 60 fps even in this resource intensive game granted this is also a cpu heavy game and we do have an overclocked 8700k ghost recon is another resource intensive game which was tested with the built-in benchmark at high settings and you're probably getting tired of hearing me say this but above 60 fps averages were possible at 1440p with higher at 1080p while 4k wasn't good here cs go was tested using euletical fps benchmark and as a well optimized game that runs on basically anything i was seeing high frame rates even at 4k definitely playable however we can see the one percent lows tank in this test indicating the lower resolutions should provide a more consistent experience rainbow six siege was tested with the built-in benchmark and is another game that's optimized pretty well with 80 fps possible even at high settings at 4k with well over 100 fps possible with low resolutions the witcher 3 was tested with hair works disabled and i didn't find it too bad at 4k the 1 low wasn't too low showing that there weren't too many dips in performance however it was noticeably better at 1440p or below pubg was tested using the replay feature with the same replay file between resolutions at high settings with 4k it was a bit choppy and the average fps is too low for a first person shooter anyway but definitely going all right at 1440p and below shadow of war was tested using the built-in benchmark and continues the trend of 60fps averages at 1440p with high settings in use not so great at 4k and then around 100fps at 1080p as we've seen we're able to get some pretty good performance in the games tested 1080p runs with great frame rates even with high settings while 1440p is even playable in these titles with around 60 fps averages or above some games were sort of playable at 4k but this is definitely not a 4k card at least not with half decent settings i'd advise looking at something with more power for 4k gaming personally i'd be after gtx 1080 ti or rtx 2080 levels of performance for that for overclocking i've retested with far cry 5 at high settings i was able to overclock the gpu core by 130 megahertz and boosted the memory core speed by 1000 megahertz using msi afterburner at 1080p there was a 3.3 improvement to average fps a 5.6 improvement at 1440p and then a 6.5 improvement to 4k as the graphics become less constrained by the cpu at higher resolutions this isn't too bad considering the card already has a pretty good factory overclock out of the box so we're seeing some decent performance but what are the thermals like these are the temperatures i measured with the heaven benchmark in an ambient room temperature of 26 degrees celsius on the warmer side as we've only just finished summer here in australia despite this the temperatures were still looking pretty good a little warm at idle but it's fair given the fans don't spin at all until around 60 degrees celsius by manually maxing out the fan speed with msi afterburner it was possible to reduce the temperatures by 10 degrees celsius and my manual overclocks only raised to gpu core temperature by 1 degree just for fun i've used my thermal camera so you can see how the back plate looks with the stress tests running it was definitely warm to the touch but nowhere near as hot as some of the other higher end cards i've tested that need oven mitts i've got the average and peak clock speeds while running the heaven benchmark for an extended period and with the 130 megahertz overclock applied with msi afterburner we're getting a nice little boost we can see that by maxing out the fans we're able to boost performance just a tiny bit as gpu boost prefers cooler temperatures these are the average and peak fan speeds measured under the same tests as the temperatures and clock speeds just shown at idle they don't spin at all so it was silent and then they only rise a small amount with the overclock applied i couldn't really tell the difference sitting next to it by maxing out the fan speed it does get noticeably louder but i don't think it was that loud considering i did this test with the side panel of my case off here's how these tests sounded so that you can get an idea for yourself as i've got seven other fans in the case this isn't the best test however you can use the idle test as a baseline with just the case fans going and then compare the rest against that i'll also note that while testing i was not able to hear any coil wine with my unit here's what total system power draw from the wall looked like in the same heaven benchmark so once manually overclocked there was just a 10 watt power increase for up-to-date pricing check the links in the description as prices will change over time at the time of recording in the us the msi geforce gtx 1660 ti gaming x is going for around 309 us dollars or around 509 australian dollars here in australia as for whether or not it's worth it i think i'll leave that for the comparison videos i'll be doing between this the 1060 1070 and 2060 graphics as i'll have a better idea of how it stacks up once i start comparing so get subscribed for those there are of course cheapest 1660 ti options available msi's gaming x appears to be their top of the line option for the 1660 ti at the moment so you can save your money and get a lower clocked out of the box card sure it'll perform a few fps slower but there's a very good chance you can make up for that with some manual overclocking in most cases anyway however what you're usually paying for is better cooling extra metal costs more i bought this one with my own money to have it available for future testing here in australia on launch it was actually priced the same as many other models that were clocked lower with worse cooling i'm not really sure why but for me it made sense to get this model so what did you guys think of msi's gtx 1660 ti gamingx graphics card as we've seen it's easily capable of 1080p gaming and even 1440p with higher settings let me know your thoughts down in the comments and get subscribed for upgrading comparisons between the 1660 ti and other graphics cards\n"