Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC Review

Naming conventions aside, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is quite a peculiar card. Turing architecture without fancy Ray Tracing or the promise of DLSS and all that jazz. But whatever the case, here we are. What we have here today is Palit’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC.

Naming conventions aside, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is quite a peculiar card. Turing architecture without fancy Ray Tracing or the promise of DLSS and all that jazz. But whatever the case, here we are. What we have here today is Palit’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC.

DESIGN

In traditional StormX fashion, the Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC features a single fan design and a very compact form factor. Its aesthetics harken back to the time of Palit’s very own GTX 750, albeit shrunken to retain their now standard size. There’s also no backplate here once again similar to other entries in the StormX lineup, and you’ll have a full view of its black PCB.

Moving forward, the Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC features ports for HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort, and Dual-Link DVI-D one a piece. 

PERFORMANCE

As we’ve mentioned before, the GeForce GTX 16 series is Turing without Ray Tracing and DLSS. It’s a card moving into midrange territory to say the least with its price point. Anyway, Palit’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC features 1536 CUDA Cores and 1500MHz base and 1815MHz boost clock with 6GB VRAM.

Test System Setup

Motherboard	GIGABYTE AB350-DH3
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz
GPU	Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
RAM	ZADAK 16GB DDR4
Cooler	Noctua NH-U12A
Storage	Plextor M9Pe(G) NVMe 512GB M.2 SSD + Seagate BarraCuda HDD 4TB + Western Digital Green HDD 2TB
PSU	EVGA 500 BV
Case	Silverstone RL06
OS	Windows 10 Pro N
Monitor	ViewSonic VX2758 1080p 144Hz Monitor

3DMark Time Spy

3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spy is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built the right way from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With its Extreme counterpart rendering visuals in 4K.

3DMark Firestrike

Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for modern gaming PCs. Its ambitious real-time graphics are rendered with detail and complexity far beyond other DirectX 11 benchmarks and games. With Extreme and Ultra versions raising resolution in 25650 x 1440 and 4K.

Unigine Superposition

Unigine Superposition is an extreme performance and stability test for PC with tests for 1080p, 4K, and 8K.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Odyssey features an in-game benchmark tool that tests out how well the game runs on your current system. We're going all out with the top preset here with Ultra High preset.

Settings:
Ultra High Preset
Adaptive Quality: Off
Ambient Occlusion: Very High
Anti-aliasing: High
Character: Ultra High
Clutter: Very High
Depth of Field: High
Character Texture Detail: Ultra High
Texture Detail: High
Environment Details: Ultra High
Fog: High
Resolution Modifier: 100
Screen Space Reflections: High
Shadows: Ultra High
Terrain: High
Volumetric Clouds: Ultra High
Water: Very High

Metro Last Light Redux Benchmark Tool

Metro Last Light Redux features a built in benchmarking tool that can simulate on multiple passes and comes with detailed sequences.

Settings:
Quality: Very High
SSAA: On
Texture Filtering: AF 16X
Motion Blur: Off
Tesselation: Very High
VSync: Off
Advanced PhysX: Off

Far Cry New Dawn

Ubisoft's Far Cry New Dawn features an in-game benchmark tool that tests out how well the game runs on your current system. We're going all out with the top preset here with Ultra High preset once again.

Settings:
Graphics Quality: Ultra
Texture Quality: Ultra
Shadows: Ultra
Geometry & Vegetation: Ultra
Environment: Ultra
Water: High
Terrain: High
Volumetric Fog: High
Anti-aliasing: TAA
Motion Blur: On
Vsync: Off
Framerate Lock: Off
Adaptive Resolution: Off
Resolution Scale: 1

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers

The Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers official benchmark tool uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance. A character creation tool is also included, allowing you to view a playable character as they will appear in-game.

Settings:
Graphics Settings: Maximum Preset
Real-time Reflections: Maximum
Anti-aliasing: FXAA
Transparent Lighting Quality: High
Grass Quality: High
Parallax Occlusion: High
Tessellation: High
Glare: Standard
Texture Filtering: Anisotropic x16

Final Fantasy XV

Final Fantasy XV from Square Enix is one of the most graphically intensive games to date, offering rich details and beautiful visuals to boot. Our test run involves a run on the great wilderness from Hammerhead to the road ahead.

Settings:
Framerate: 120fps
Resolution: 100%
Preset: Highest
Assets: On
Model LOD: High
TRAM: Highest
Anisotropic Filtering: High
Geomapping: On
Lighting: High
Shadows: Highest
Ambient Occlusion: High
Anti-aliasing: TAA
Motion Blur: On
Filtering: Highest
NVIDIA Hairworks: Off
NVIDIA VXAO: Off
NVIDIA TurfEffects: Off
NVIDIA ShadowLibs: Off

Temperature

For the temperature, we look for the average on a 30-minute idle state and load temperatures are tracked during 3DMark's Time Spy stress test for the same duration. The test system is under a 33C ambient room temperature, and unit is in Celsius.

CONCLUSION

The Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC presents itself as quite a decent product. It delivers superb performance at 1080p and reasonable work on 1440p for what it is. Especially if you're shooting for a small form factor build, Palit's venerable StormX does a pretty swell job in keeping the temps to where they're at. 

On its own, the Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC can offer great price-to-performance ratio. It's definitely a great choice if you're looking for a graphics card that can deliver superb numbers without all the bells and whistles, and the lofty price tags that come with NVIDIA's RTX GPUs.