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PNY GeForce GTX 1660 Super Single Fan review: Tiny graphics card, big performance

Jarvis

November 8, 2019

Pound for pound, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1660 Super is the best GPU you can buy for 1080p gaming—and the graphics card we’re reviewing today proves that it doesn’t even need much weight to push out those blisteringly fast frames. The PNY GTX 1660 Super Single Fan, well, puts a miniscule single-fan spin on Nvidia’s newest GPU, making it easy to slip into almost any system. Even better, it sticks to the GeForce GTX 1660 Super’s baseline $230 price, rather than inching upwards into GTX 1660 Ti territory.

How does this smaller-statured graphics card compare against the dual-fan (and just as appropriately named) Asus Dual GTX 1660 Super EVO OC we originally reviewed? Let’s dig in.

PNY GTX 1660 Super Single Fan: Specs, features and price

As a refresher, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super is a very straightforward upgrade of the vanilla $220 GTX 1660. It sports an identical core GPU configuration—same clock speeds, same CUDA core count, same everything—but swaps out the original’s slower GDDR5 memory for ultra-fast 14Mbps GDDR6 VRAM. That one tweak gives the GTX 1660 Super enough extra performance firepower to land within spitting distance of the much pricier $280 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which feels a bit superfluous in the wake of this GPU’s release.

Here’s a look at the core specifications of the entire GeForce GTX 1660 lineup, as well as the last-gen 6GB GeForce GTX 1060. Notice the new GTX 1660 Super’s huge memory bandwidth advantage over its siblings:

PNY’s single-fan offering sticks to the GTX 1660 Super’s $230 baseline price, and thus sticks to reference speeds out of the box. You can easily apply an automatic overclock using the Nvidia OC Scanner tool built into many software options (such as EVGA’s superb Precision X1). The GDDR6 memory also sticks to Nvidia’s specifications, but it’s already plenty fast—faster than the VRAM in the step-up GTX 1660 Ti, even.

The physical design doesn’t include any fancy extras either. You won’t find a backplate, a dual BIOS switch, or flashy RGB lights like you do on the Asus Dual EVO OC. The PNY GTX 1660 Super Single Fan is a simple, solidly built graphics card with singular DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI connections. While people with ancient or ultra-budget displays will no doubt appreciate the inclusion of the legacy DVI port, ditching it for another HDMI or DisplayPort would’ve been more welcoming for modern setups.

Its most distinguishing characteristic is its diminutive size. PNY’s graphics card measures a mere 6.61 inches long, making it ideal for space-constrained mini-ITX builds, though the card remains two slots wide and measures a wee thicker than normal at just shy of 5 inches wide. It’s tiny.