GTX 1660 vs RTX 2060
The complete head-to-head: full specs, real per-game FPS with 1% lows, ray tracing, a live CPU-bottleneck check, thermals, power and value, with a straight verdict.
GeForce GTX 1660
GeForce RTX 2060
avg, 1080p
The short answer
The RTX 2060 wins this one outright, about 47% faster on average, with RT cores and Tensor cores for DLSS that the GTX 1660 simply doesn't have. Both are 2019 Turing cards with 6 GB of VRAM, but the 1660 is the cut-down, budget end of that same family, GDDR5 instead of GDDR6, no RT or Tensor hardware, and noticeably lower clocks under load. If you're choosing between these two new or on a tight budget, the case for the 1660 is price alone. If you can stretch the budget, the 2060 is a clearly better card, not just a faster one.
These two share a launch year and a memory capacity but not much else. The GTX 1660 is the entry point into Turing, a pure rasterizer built on the cut-down TU116 die with GDDR5 memory. The RTX 2060 is the full TU106 chip with RT cores, Tensor cores, and GDDR6, and it shows: this is one of the bigger performance gaps on this site between two cards from the same generation.
Since these two launched the same year with the same 6 GB capacity, the numbers below focus on what that capacity doesn't tell you: 1080p frame rates with 1% lows, ray tracing and DLSS results, a CPU pairing tool, thermals, power draw, and price trends.
At a glance
Seven dimensions, two cards. Bigger area is not automatically better, each card owns different corners.
Strengths radar
Each axis scored 0-100 relative to the pair
Performance vs price
Up and to the left is better value
Grey dots are neighbouring cards for context.
Which should you buy?
Pick your use case, the winner changes with what you actually do.
Nearly 50% more headroom and real DLSS support make the 2060 the far more future-proof pick.
The cheapest way into a Turing-era card if 1080p on medium-high settings is all you need.
Tensor cores make a real difference; the 1660 has none and falls back to slow general compute.
Same NVENC generation on both, so the 2060's extra power helps most when encoding and gaming together.
120 W and the lowest price here make the 1660 the easiest fit for a modest PSU and small case.
336 GB/s of GDDR6 bandwidth against the 1660's 192 GB/s of GDDR5 is not a close contest here.
Already own a GTX 1660? A 2060 is a real upgrade, not just a bump.
Short answer: probably not
A 47% average gain plus working DLSS and RT support is a genuine step up, not a marginal one. If you've been running the 1660 and are hitting frame rate ceilings or want any ray tracing capability at all, this is one of the more worthwhile jumps within Turing itself.
If you'd rather skip straight past both, a used RTX 3060 costs more but doubles the VRAM to 12 GB and adds meaningfully stronger DLSS 2 performance. But if you're staying in this exact price bracket, the 2060 over the 1660 is an easy call.
Full specification comparison
Every spec side by side. The highlighted figure wins each row.
| Specification | GTX 1660 | RTX 2060 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| GPU / architecture | TU116-300 · Turing (no RT/Tensor) | TU106-200A · Turing |
| Process node | TSMC 12nm FFN | TSMC 12nm FFN |
| Release date | Mar 14, 2019 | Jan 15, 2019 |
| Launch MSRP | $219 ▲ | $349 |
| Compute | ||
| CUDA cores | 1,408 | 1,920 ▲ |
| RT cores | None | 30 · 1st gen ▲ |
| Tensor cores | None | 240 · 1st gen ▲ |
| Base / boost clock | 1530 / 1785 MHz ▲ | 1365 / 1680 MHz |
| L2 cache | 1.5 MB | 3 MB ▲ |
| Memory | ||
| VRAM | 6 GB GDDR5 | 6 GB GDDR6 ▲ |
| Memory bus | 192-bit | 192-bit |
| Bandwidth | 192 GB/s | 336 GB/s ▲ |
| Power & form factor | ||
| TDP | 120 W ▲ | 160 W |
| Power connector | 1× 8-pin | 1× 8-pin |
| Suggested PSU | 450 W ▲ | 500 W |
| PCIe interface | 3.0 ×16 | 3.0 ×16 |
| Features | ||
| Upscaling | FSR / NIS only, no DLSS | DLSS 2 / Super Res + FSR ▲ |
| AV1 encode (NVENC) | No | No |
| Display outputs | 3×DP1.4 · HDMI 2.0b | 3×DP1.4 · HDMI 2.0b |
Average FPS by game
Switch resolution, metric, ray tracing and upscaling, the bars update live. Hover a bar for the avg / 1% / 0.1% breakdown.
Average FPS · 1080p · Rasterization. Representative data, hover a bar for avg / 1% / 0.1%. Note the RTX 2060's 1% lows fall off at 1440p and up from its 8 GB VRAM.
Smoothness & frametimes
Average FPS hides stutter. This is one run plotted as frametime, a flat line is smooth, spikes are hitches. Watch what the RTX 2060's 8 GB VRAM does in a texture-heavy game.
Frametime: Alan Wake 2, 1080p Ultra
Lower and flatter is better · 16.7 ms = 60 fps
Counterintuitive but real: the slower GTX 1660 delivers a smoother line here because 12 GB holds the texture pool the 8 GB RTX 2060 keeps evicting, those spikes are VRAM stutter, not raw speed.
Lab scores
Clean apples-to-apples tests, useful, but weaker at predicting real games than the FPS above.
Ray tracing & upscaling
Ray tracing tanks both cards at native resolution. What makes it playable is upscaling, and here the RTX 2060 has a real edge.
Is frame generation "real" performance?
Neither card supports DLSS 3 Frame Generation, that needs the Optical Flow Accelerator hardware NVIDIA added with RTX 40-series. The RTX 2060's DLSS tops out at Super Resolution upscaling, and the GTX 1660 has no Tensor cores at all, so it can't run any version of DLSS.
AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation isn't hardware-locked, so it runs on both. That's the only frame-gen path either card has, useful for smoothing the counter in single-player games, best skipped in competitive titles or below roughly 50 base fps.
Will your CPU bottleneck these cards?
A faster GPU only helps if your CPU keeps up. Pick your CPU and resolution to see expected FPS and bottleneck for each card.
CPU + GPU pairing check
The willitbottleneck engine, built right into the comparison.
Estimated from a 43-CPU model across 1440p. A weak CPU mostly bites at 1080p; at higher resolutions the GPU becomes the limiter and the bottleneck shrinks.
Thermals & noise
The efficiency gap shows up here: the newer card runs cooler and quieter, day in and day out.
Real draw, efficiency & PSU
TDP is the rated figure; what matters is real gaming draw and how many frames you get per watt.
Both use a single 8-pin connector. If your PSU already ran the GTX 1660, it will run the RTX 2060 easily. Leave about 30% headroom for spikes.
Will it fit, and what to pair it with?
Size to scale
Card length matters for small cases
What monitor to pair
GTX 1660: 1080p at 90-120 Hz on most titles, occasionally light 1440p in older games. RTX 2060: 1080p at 144 Hz and up, or 1440p at 60-75 Hz with DLSS in supported titles. Treat 1440p as a stretch goal on either.
Running an older PCIe 3.0 board?
Both run a full PCIe 3.0 ×16 link, identical interfaces, so there's no difference to weigh here. Either card also works fine in a modern PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 board, since neither approaches the bandwidth ceiling of even a 3.0 ×8 link.
Price history & dollars-per-frame
Raw price is only half the story. Cost per frame is the number that decides it, and it keeps moving as prices fall.
New price over time
Street price of new cards (USD)
The 6 GB vs 6 GB question
GTX 1660 · 6 GB
- 6 GB is enough headroom for the settings this card can actually push at 1080p.
- GDDR5 caps bandwidth at 192 GB/s, the narrowest of any card in this matchup set, and it shows first in texture-heavy scenes.
- No Tensor cores means no DLSS fallback if the 6 GB ever runs tight, unlike the 2060.
- Emulator cores that lean on bandwidth over capacity hit this card's ceiling earlier than the 2060's.
RTX 2060 · 6 GB
- Same 6 GB capacity as the 1660, but GDDR6 pushes bandwidth to 336 GB/s, almost double.
- Tensor cores give local AI tools that fit in 6 GB a real speed advantage over the 1660's general compute.
- Still only 6 GB, so it doesn't outlast a genuinely higher VRAM requirement any better than the 1660 would.
- Costs $40 more used than the 1660 for the same nominal capacity, the gain is in bandwidth and features, not size.
Emulation & memory bandwidth
The narrower bus is a real downgrade for emulation
This isn't close. Both cards carry 6 GB, so capacity is a wash, but the RTX 2060's GDDR6 memory runs at 336 GB/s against the GTX 1660's GDDR5 at 192 GB/s. In bandwidth-sensitive emulator cores like RPCS3 or high-resolution Switch emulation, that near-2x gap shows up directly as smoother frame pacing on the 2060.
Creator, AI & streaming
The newer card is quicker per task, but the older card's extra VRAM unlocks larger jobs it can't fit at all.
Streaming: the AV1 encoder is the differentiator
Both use the same Turing-generation NVENC encoder with HEVC B-frame support, so quality per bitrate is identical between them. The RTX 2060's extra raw power is what actually helps, more headroom left for the game itself while OBS runs in the background. Neither card has an AV1 encoder.
Overclocking & undervolting
Both are Turing chips with modest overclocking headroom, roughly 6-7% on either. The bigger win on the RTX 2060 is undervolting, since it has more TDP to give back; the GTX 1660 has less room to gain either way given its already low 120 W draw.
Pros & cons
GTX 1660
- The cheapest card in this matchup, new or used
- 120 W TDP, easy on any PSU and small cases
- Higher boost clock out of the box than the 2060
- No RT cores or DLSS, stuck with FSR/NIS upscaling
- About 47% slower on average
- GDDR5 memory caps bandwidth at 192 GB/s
RTX 2060
- About 47% faster on average across modern titles
- Only card here with RT cores and Tensor cores for DLSS
- Nearly double the memory bandwidth on the same 6 GB capacity
- Costs $40 more used than the 1660
- Draws 40 W more, needs a bigger PSU headroom
Buying pitfalls
GTX 1660, 1660 Super, and 1660 Ti are three different cards
The plain 1660 uses GDDR5 at 1,408 cores, the 1660 Super switches to GDDR6 at the same core count for a real bandwidth boost, and the 1660 Ti bumps cores to 1,536 with GDDR6. Confirm the exact model on the box or GPU-Z, listings mix these up constantly.
Which RTX 2060 are you buying?
A rare 2021 re-release used a 12 GB GDDR6 configuration with 2,176 CUDA cores instead of the original 1,920-core, 6 GB card. Check the box or a GPU-Z readout before buying used.
GTX 1660 vs RTX 2060: your questions answered
Yes, clearly. It's about 47% faster on average and it's the only one of the two with RT cores and DLSS. This is one of the bigger performance gaps between two same-generation cards on this site.
If your budget allows it, yes, it's a genuinely better card, not just a faster one. Stick with the GTX 1660 only if price is the deciding factor and you don't care about ray tracing or DLSS.
Not quite. The RTX 2060 remains a competent 1080p card, while the GTX 1660 is showing its age more, best suited to 1080p on medium settings or older, lighter titles at this point.
Yes, this is one of the more worthwhile upgrades within the same generation. A 47% gain plus working DLSS and RT support is a real step up, not a marginal one.
By a wide margin. Its Tensor cores accelerate AI workloads directly; the GTX 1660 has none and falls back to much slower general-purpose compute.
Encode quality is identical since both use the same NVENC generation. The RTX 2060's extra raw power is what gives it more headroom when gaming and encoding at the same time.
Because it uses the cut-down TU116 die with no RT cores and no Tensor cores, unlike the 2060's full TU106 chip. There's no path to hardware ray tracing or DLSS on the 1660 at any setting.
No, that needs the Optical Flow Accelerator hardware from RTX 40-series cards, years newer than either of these. AMD's FSR 3 Frame Generation works on both instead, since it isn't hardware-locked.
A mid-range one handles both easily, they rarely bottleneck at 1080p. Use the pairing checker on this page, a Ryzen 5 3600 or Core i5-10400F and up keeps either fed.
The GTX 1660 wins clearly, 120 W against the RTX 2060's 160 W, which means lower temperatures and quieter fans under load. Both idle silently with fan-stop, at least.
450 W is plenty for the GTX 1660, while the RTX 2060 wants 500 W with room to spare. Either fits comfortably in a 550 W supply if you want headroom for a future upgrade.
No, both use PCIe 3.0 x16 identically, so there's no difference between them, and dropping either into a newer PCIe 4.0/5.0 board changes nothing. Both are also compact at 229 mm, fitting most small-form-factor builds.
No, mobile RTX 2060 and mobile GTX 1660 both run at lower clocks and power limits than these desktop cards, so treat laptop numbers as a separate comparison entirely.
A little, in lighter or older titles, but neither is a realistic 4K choice. Both are fundamentally 1080p cards, with the 2060 having a bit more room to stretch.
Not really, used is the practical option for both in 2026. A used GTX 1660 around $45 is the cheapest entry point into a Turing-era card; the RTX 2060 at $75 used is worth the extra if RT or DLSS interest you at all.
Both remain on NVIDIA's Game Ready driver branch for now, though neither will receive new architecture-level features going forward. The RTX 2060 is likely to see slightly longer practical support given its RT and DLSS relevance.