When NVIDIA released the GeForce RTX 2060 earlier this year, based on its price – speculation and several rumours began pointing to the hardware maker prepping a new line of non-RTX Turing-based GPUs. Cards that would omit RT-cores and the AI Tensor cores dedicated to ray-tracing and AI effects to offer up a more affordable entry-point into modern gaming.

And with the release of the MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X - we dive in to find out just how well it performs.

Bringing back the GTX moniker (with an even more affordable non-Ti GTX 1660 also available), the GTX 1660 Ti seemingly strips away next-gen features to focus on performance. Well, not seemingly - it does. As per the review material received from NVIDIA, the hardware maker noted that most of its customers – roughly two thirds – were utilising cards with GeForce GTX 960 performance or less. And with that in mind, launching a new card targeting those looking to upgrade but perhaps keep the rest of their machine and display option intact - then the GTX 1660 Ti could be, cue sales-pitch, ‘the right card for you’.

Looking at MSI’s Gaming X take on the GTX 1660 Ti and you get the hardware maker’s custom cooling solution allowing for a higher boost clock speed than most other GTX 1660 Ti cards on the market. Although it features fewer CUDA cores than the RTX 2060’s 1920, the lower power requirement and performance we found when gaming at 1080p painted a very competitive picture.

Click Here for Our Full MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X Review