ASUS GTX 1660 OC Phoenix Graphics Card Review

ASUS GTX 1660 OC Phoenix We're already loving the Nvidia GTX 1660 graphics cards, and we've reviewed a bunch of them since they launched. Superbly efficient, affordable, and packing a mighty performance punch for 1080p and 1440p gaming. At just £199.99, the ASUS GTX 1660 OC Phoenix is one of the most affordable of the lot. However, with a mini-ITX suitable card length, and a simple two-slot design, it's got a huge appeal. ASUS Vs The World As I said, this is a pretty affordable card, but it still packs the same chipset as the others we've tested. Compare it to the Zotac GTX 1660 Twin Fan, EVGA GTX 1660 XC Ultra, MSI GTX 1660 Gaming X and the Gigabyte GTX 1660 Gaming OC. It's the smallest of the bunch, the most affordable, yet we still have big expectations that it can compete. Features The GeForce® GTX 1660 Ti is built with the breakthrough graphics performance of the award-winning NVIDIA Turing™ architecture. With performance that rivals the GeForce GTX 1070, it’s a blazing-fast supercharger for today’s most popular games. Broadcast your gameplay: Get amazing performance and image quality while livestreaming to Twitch or YouTube. The GTX 1660 Ti’s dedicated hardware encoder delivers 15% improved efficiency over prior generation graphics cards and is optimized for Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). GeForce Experience: Capture and share videos, screenshots, and livestreams with friends. Keep your drivers up to date and optimize your game settings. GeForce Experience lets you do it all, making it the essential companion to your GeForce graphics card. Wing-blade fan design incorporates drooped tips on each blade to reduce drag. Dual-ball fan bearing design can last up to twice as long as sleeve bearing designs. Auto-Extreme Technology uses automation to enhance reliability. GPU Tweak II provides intuitive performance tweaking and thermal controls. Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official ASUS page here. What ASUS Had to Say "The ASUS Phoenix GeForce® GTX 1660 Ti crams high performance into just 2 slots. Our patented Wing-blade design is coupled with a dual-ball fan bearing to bring high performance and incredible durability. If that doesn't already convince you of the Phoenix's resilience, consider that each card is manufactured using Auto-Extreme Technology, an automated manufacturing process that sets a new standard of quality. If you're looking for a long-lasting companion to power you through years of games to come, look no further than the ASUS Phoenix." - ASUS Auto-Extreme Technology Auto-Extreme Technology is an automated manufacturing process that sets new standards in the industry by allowing all soldering to be completed in a single pass. This reduces thermal strain on components and avoids the use of harsh cleaning chemicals, resulting in less environmental impact, lower manufacturing power consumption, and a more reliable product overall. Packaging Given that the card its self is quite small, it's no surprise that the box is quite compact and lightweight overall. This card is designed to be cheaper, so there's nothing too fancy about the box in general. However, we can see that it's the "OC Edition" and features a "Dual-Ball Bearing Fan" as well as the usual GTX 1660 chipset features. Around the back, we can see they used their latest Auto-Extreme Technology and Super Alloy Power II. That's just their way of saying an automated production line that used decent quality components. The packaging uses a folded durable card design to protect the card. This should be more that sufficient given the lightweight design of the card. Now, let's get it out for a closer look! A Closer Look The card looks superb, design being super compact. They've put a white racing stripe right down the middle of it, breaking up what would otherwise be a pretty bland plastic card design. Down the side, there's no flashy RGB or anything like that, which is fine. However, you do get a simple ASUS and Geforce GTX logo printed on the side of the shroud. There's no backplate here, it doesn't really need one, and even still, I think it looks pretty tidy. In all fairness, most GPUs that have one don't actually require them, they often just look good. On the end of the card, you can see there's plenty of airflow around the card. you can just about see the heat sync too, which is finished in a matte black to keep things looking tidy. Plenty of ventilation is placed on the rear bracket too. Here, you'll also find a single DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI-D connection. Of course, that's more than enough display outputs for a card in this price range. Overall, it's a simple beast, but very tidy looking and ticks all the right boxes for this price range. Of course, we want to see how it performs, so let's get it on the test bench! How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test bench to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Graphics Card Test System Motherboard – Aorus Z390 Gaming MasterProcessor – Intel Core i9-9900K (Stock)RAM – Crucial Ballistix Gaming 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua NH-D15SPower Supply – Be Quiet Power Zone 1000WMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Thermaltake Core P5 TGOperating System – Windows 10 64-bitMonitor – AOC 28-Inch 4K Gaming Monitor Additional Hardware Killawatt style electricity usage meter wall plugPrecision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. With our previous reviews, we used the “Medium or Normal” preset. However, as GPUs get faster, we’ve now moved that up to “High” profiles for all games, at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, as is FreeSync and G-Sync technologies or similar. Graphics card power usage set to optimised or balance, and the system power mode set to High Performance within Windows and the available GPU driver software. Identical settings are used for all resolutions unless otherwise stated. Games and Settings Used Shadow of the Tomb Raider DX12 High Preset1080p1440p2160pDeus Ex: Mankind Divided DX12 High Preset1080p1440p2160pGhost Recon: Wildlands High Preset1080p1440p2160pBattlefield V DX12 High Preset1080p1440p2160pBattlefield V DX12 High Preset (DXR Enabled) NVIDIA RTX Cards ONLY1080p1440p2160pMetro Exodus DX12 High Preset1080p1440p2160pMetro Exodus DX12 High Preset (RT, then RT and DLSS Enabled) NVIDIA RTX Cards ONLY1080p1440p2160pFar Cry New Dawn High Preset1080p1440p2160p The Division 2 High Preset1080p1440p2160p Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download)FireStrike Ultra BenchmarkUnigine Superposition (download)4K Optimised BenchmarkHWMonitor (download)GPU-Z Noise Everyone has a reasonable noise level preference when it comes to comes to components on a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down; some want an entirely silent computer. To accurately gauge the noise output of a graphics card, we position a Precision Gold N05CC one meter above our open-air test bench and take an average reading at idle and load. Gaming noise levels are taken during a CPU vs CPU match a preset match in Soul Calibur VI. Power Consumption We take power readings during idle state with no background applications running. Then again at 50% completion of the Unigine Superposition benchmark, using the average as the final published result. Gaming power consumption is taken during a CPU vs CPU match a preset match in Soul Calibur VI. Temperatures We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered from Unigine Superposition after a 4K optimised run, confirming the numbers are accurate with HWMonitor. Furthermore, the ambient temperature is always kept +/- 1c from 21c. Gaming temperatures are taken during a CPU vs CPU match a preset match in Soul Calibur VI. Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark FireStrike So, no huge surprise that the card is the second slowest on these charts. However, it's on par with other GTX 1660 cards, and even beat out the more expensive Zotac model by a small margin. 3DMark TimeSpy Things we're much more impressive in TimeSpy, where the ASUS card topped some GTX 1660's, the RX580, and even the Vega 56 with a score of 5843. Unigine Superposition It held onto that place here too, scoring 4298 points. That's enough to put it miles ahead of the RX580, two of the GTX 1660's, and the Vega 56. Again, keep in mind, this is the most affordable GTX 1660 we have, and it's certainly not the slowest. Shadow of the Tomb Raider This is where the GTX 1660 chipset really shines, sure, they're far down the charts, but the performance figures are way more comfortable than one would think. At 1080p, it scored 82 FPS, which is almost what we got from a GTX 1070. At 1440p, a oh-so-close to 60 FPS score of 55 FPS. Again, that's very much playable. I wouldn't expect anyone buying this card to be doing so for 4K gaming, so 30 FPS here just isn't an issue. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided A little more demanding than Tomb Raider, Deus Ex still delivered good results too. 71.8 FPS at 1080p and 47.1 FPS at 1440p. Of course, using the medium profile at 1440p would soon fix that up. Ghost Recon: Wildlands We see a very similar performance here too, although we expected that from what we saw in previous GTX 1660 reviews. At least the Phoenix is as consistent as the competition though, and competitive! 81.4 FPS at 1080p and 58.8 FPS at 1440p is nothing to cry about. Battlefield V Despite being such a gorgeous game to look at and this being a tiny card, it still rocked an amazing 82 FPS at 1080; we use High settings, so Ultra are clearly within reach on most games here. However, at 1440p, 57 FPS is still more than enough too. Metro Exodus Our GPU crushing trump card did what it always does on only hit 47.6 FPS at 1080p. Sounds bad, but that's faster than the RX580, as well as the ASUS, MSI, and Zotac GTX 1660's. The same is pretty much true at 1440p. Far Cry New Dawn While a great looking game in its own respect, Far Cry New Dawn is much easier to run than Metro, that's for sure. We hit whopping 88 FPS at 1080p, putting it on par with the more expensive Gaming X model from MSI. At 1440p, 63 FPS put it ahead of ALL the other GTX 1660 cards, which is just shockingly impressive. The Division 2 Finally, we have our final game, which performed right where you would have guessed. It did around 85 FPS at 1080p, and 54 FPS at 1440p. That's pretty consistent performance from most games, and much higher up the charts than we expected for such a tiny card. Power Consumption At just 195 watts, it's extraordinarily efficient. Sipping a little more power than the Zotac and EVGA models, but then again, it's not the slowest GTX 1660 card tested either. Keep in mind the slower RX580 uses another 120-ish Watts! Temperatures Despite the single fan cooler design, the card still only topped out at 76c. That's pretty toasty compared to some of the triple-fan rivals, but I mean... come on, obviously it's higher. The card didn't seem to lack the performance though, so it's obviously not hitting a thermal limit. Acoustics At 42 dBa I wouldn't say it was all that loud either, in fact, it's just a tiny bit quieter than our Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti. Overclocking When it comes to overclocking the GTX 1660 cards, we've been endlessly impressed with what these cards can do. Right out of the box, we were able to get a huge 120 MHz boost on the GPU core, and another 500 MHz on the memory. It seems there's a balance to be found with this one though. The memory will go higher if I lower the GPU core, and visa-versa. This setup netted me good results though, so I'll take it! The FireStrike score boosted to 3176, and just as impressive, we got an extra 5 FPS out of Tomb Raider. It literally takes a couple of minutes an we've got a 6-9% performance boost for free. How Much Does It Cost? For some stupid reason, ASUS are selling their own damn card for £246.94 on Amazon, which quite honestly is irritating me quite a lot right now. Because this card is just £199.99 MSRP and you can get it for that price at plenty of other stores. So, please do your research and get the best deal. Admittedly, the card competes with other £240-ish cards. However, it doesn't look like a card in that price range, so be careful that you don't overpay. In the US, it's on Amazon for $284.99, which is also seeming a little higher than MSRP at the moment. Overview I can't help but love this little card. Is it a good looking card? Not really, it's a bit of an ugly duckling with a racing stripe, and that's about it really. Is it the fastest card we've ever tested? Oh no, certainly not. However, it managed to beat a bunch of rival GTX 1660 cards, which being both smaller, and cheaper. Now, it's not the fastest, but it's quite the underdog of the bunch, and I love that. Performance This card is shaping up to be quite the bargain though. It's performance matches or beats its rivals cards. Plus it's powerful enough to play the latest games at both 1080p and 1440p without much concern. It's not overly noisy, and while it runs a little warm, it doesn't seem to be bothered by that fact. What I do love though, is that it's absolutely tiny. For those building in mini-ITX based systems, it's got the best compatibility of any GTX 1660 we've tested. Should I Buy One? It's a bit of a no brainier to me that this is one of the best all-round GPU series we've had in a while. Perhaps my favourite since the GTX 660 Ti and the GTX 1070 Ti. They offer a healthy performance boost over the last gen. Of course, these are built to appeal to those who have more sense than money, and only upgrade every other gen, at a minimum. If you're coming from a GTX 960 or older, or a Radeon R9-series card, it's night and day. About half the power usage and about double the performance in just a couple of years is a big shift. You don't need an RTX 2080 Ti to play CS:GO, or even Metro Exodus, £200 will get the job done pretty damn well these days. ASUS GTX 1660 OC Phoenix Graphics Card Review