Zotac GeForce GTX 1660 Power Tests
For our power testing, we used AIDA64 to stress the Zotac GeForce GTX 1660 and HWiNFO to monitor power use and temperatures.
After the stress test has ramped up the Zotac GeForce GTX 1660, we see it tops out at 117.25 Watts under full load and 14.7 Watts at idle. For entry-level graphics cards, the power usage shown is very good for systems in this class.
Zotac GeForce GTX Cooling Performance
A key reason that we started this series was to answer the cooling question. Blower-style coolers have different capabilities than some of the large dual and triple fan gaming cards. In the case of the Zotac GeForce GTX 1660, the GPU uses dual fans that exhaust hot air into the case.
Temperatures for the Zotac GTX 1660 are the warmest of the three GTX 1600 series cards we have here. That is somewhat surprising given the power consumption. Zotac could have increased the cooling solution effectiveness at relatively low cost, but what we see here works. It is a trade-off made to hit a price segment.
Final Words
Looking over our benchmark results we find that is most cases the Zotac GeForce GTX 1660 shows up where we would expect on our charts. The GPU’s performance generally falls between the GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 Ti, with closer performance to the Ti model. NVIDIA and its partners like Zotac do a great job of segmenting the market delivering different performance levels for different budgets. This is a simple case of if you want more performance, buy higher in the stack.
The form factor of the Zotac GeForce GTX 1660 is a dual slot blower design with limits the cooling solution compared to the EVGA GTX 1660 Ti Black, a triple slot card. We wish Zotac’s solution kept the card a bit cooler to help increase performance. For a ~$220 card at the time of this writing, it serves as a solid entry point into the newer generation of GPUs.
Some of these pictures seem to be from a Gigabyte 1650 and not this GPU?
95% of the content on this site is solid, but many of these “reviews” leave me scratching my head. Did no one look at these benchmark charts and realize that comparing a budget card to 15 high end cards and a couple of Kepler cards was incredibly unhelpful? This card is at the bottom of every benchmark! Why not compare it to cards in its range, I.E. 1060 and 1070? I mean this is the type of stuff you learn about in an intro stats class.