Often articles about computer components begin with a technical definition, after which an emphasis is placed on a serious approach to choosing hardware. If you have come across this material, you have an idea of what a video card is and how important a computer component it is. Therefore, let's not shake the air in vain and present to your attention two graphics processors, between which there is an avid struggle.
RX 580
Let's start with the 2017 model - AMD Radeon RX 580, which has become the most powerful solution in the RX500 series. The RX 580 replaced the bestseller of its time - the AMD Radeon RX 480. The new product received higher frequencies, reduced power consumption and noise levels compared to its predecessor.
The model is based on the updated Polaris 20 core. Compared to the younger brother Polaris 10, there were not so many changes:
- increased operating frequency range per core up to 1257-1340 MHz;
- reduced energy consumption for non-resource-intensive operating modes;
- maximum fill rate increased from 40,5 Gpix/s to 42,9 Gpix/s.
The rest is the same 14nm process technology with 5700 million transistors and 2304 stream processors. The video card comes with identical memory as its predecessor - GDDR5 for 4 or 8 GB with a frequency of 8000 MHz.
As a result, we get a good graphics card at a budget price: the 4 GB version starts at $120, and the 8 GB version starts at $200. With a good companion hardware, you can comfortably play popular AAA games in Full HD resolution:
- PUBG - 70 fps;
- Quake Champions - 130 fps;
- Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered - 130-135 fps.
GTX 1660
The “green” GTX 1660 graphics card was released in 2019 in order to oust the aforementioned competitor, the RX 580 model from AMD. The 16th series of NVidia chips is an intermediate link between the 10th and 20th families.
The GTX 1660 runs on the TU116 core under the Turing architecture, the advantage of which we know from the top RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 cards. The only difference is the absence of RT and tensor cores for ray tracing. In general, the technical characteristics turned out to be a worthy competitor to the “red” RX 580:
- number of transistors - 6600 million;
- manufacturing process - 12 nm;
- frequency - 1530-1785 MHz;
- number of stream processors - 1536;
- 5 GB GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus;
- memory frequency - 8000 MHz;
- power consumption - 120 watts.
6 GB of VRAM and a 192-bit bus did not prevent the GTX 1660 from showing 35,9% more performance than the RX 580 in synthetic tests.
If we look at the tests in video games, then with similar system parameters in Full HD resolution with maximum graphics settings, the GTX 1660 shows a good average fps result:
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - 60-65 fps;
- Grand Theft Auto V - 80-85 fps;
- Rise of the Tomb Raider - 90 fps.
Verdict
After the release of the GTX 1660, NVidia made AMD nervous. The Greens have edged out competitors in terms of performance and power consumption. 120V for the GTX 1660 versus 185V for the RX 580 is a significant difference. For clarity, we present the results of comparative testing:
If we talk about the cost, then at the time of writing the GTX 1660 6 GB starts at $ 240-250, and the red 8 GB model from $ 200. Whether it's worth it is up to you to decide.