If love isn’t in the air for you this year (or even if it is) why not use your savings to buy a new graphics card this Valentine’s Day instead? Nvidia may debut the first of a trio of new midrange graphics cards on February 15, starting with the GTX 1660 Ti. The still-Turing, but not-RTX GPU will reportedly offer performance somewhere between the GTX 1060 and 1070, likely with an eye on competing directly with AMD’s RX 590, and will be priced around $280.
The biggest criticism of Nvidia’s RTX series of graphics cards when they released in the latter half of 2018 was that there was no midrange option. With the RTX 2070 offering the cheapest point of entry with a price tag as high as $500, the only real options for consumers looking to upgrade were older 10-series GPUs from Nvidia, or AMD’s even older RX-series. Following the debut of the RTX 2060, Nvidia is now reportedly readying a range of three new “GTX” Turing GPUs, each offering weaker performance, but coming with a lower price tag, too.
Although Nvidia hasn’t made any official announcements about any GTX Turing graphics cards, the rumor mill has been spitting out intriguing evidence for their existence over the past few weeks. Videocardz’s image from a private partner conference with Nvidia all but confirmed it, and now HardOCP has some intriguing information from its sources, providing even greater detail. It claims that the GTX 1660 Ti will launch on February 15 with a price tag of $279. It suggests that the non-Ti GTX 1660 will follow up in early March and will have a price tag of $230, while the GTX 1650 will launch later that same month with a price of $180.
These cards are designed to compete pretty favorably with AMD’s existing midrange offerings, with analogous performance to the RX 590, 580, and 570, respectively. The 1660 and 1650 will replace Nvidia’s own GTX 1060 (6GB and 3GB) and 1050 graphics cards, providing modest performance increases over each at a similar price point. Nvidia may drop its current pricing to clear remaining stock for those last-generation cards. That could make the last few remaining GTX 1060 and 1050 cards great options for those looking to add a card to their non-gaming PC.
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