MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS
If the rumours are to be believed, then the Nvidia 1660 Ti graphics card will be released on February 22nd. We say rumours as at the time of writing there is still nothing concrete nailing this date down. We can, however, say that there is more than enough ‘rumours’ to make this date seem more than likely.
With us already seeing a number of leaks surrounding the brand new GPU, until present, these have largely been limited to box art or ‘distant’ images of the cards. Well, in a report via Videocardz, we can get a closer look at the PCB and overall graphics card for the upcoming release of the MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS.
Eagle-Eyed Observation
With this being the first Nvidia card to featuring the Turing architecture without the RTX’s key features, there is a lot of curiosity surrounding it. In terms of VRAM, however, some eagle-eyed observers have made a pretty interesting point. The PCB (as pictured below) would appear to have 8 memory slots while only 6 of these are occupied.
This would tally with the theory that this will be a 6GB VRAM release, although 3GB variants are also expected. What it does, however, indicate is that an 8GB option would be possible. People are, however, already cynically suggesting that this might be ‘saved’ for a (yet unknown and unconfirmed) 1670/1680.
What Do We Think?
Having written about the 1660 Ti for quite some time now, in truth, the reception for it doesn’t seem anywhere near as popular as we’d have expected. Sure, this isn’t a high-performance card, but without a single-benchmark released, many people seem convinced that this is going to be a huge flop.
Personally, I still think this card can be a huge success, but only if Nvidia gets the pricing right. There are still a lot of people with 7XX/9XX series Nvidia cards. People who didn’t make the upgrade to the 10XX range and specifically the highly-popular 1060. If this can offer a ‘something like’ experience to the 1070 while priced at around £250, this could be a huge success. I would, however, concede that if this is close to (or above) £300, this may very well flop.
What do you think? Do you think this card will fail? – Let us know in the comments!
