GTX 1660 struggles significantly in performance.
GTX 1660 struggles significantly in performance.
Hello everyone. I’m experiencing a minor issue with my GTX 1660 Super recently purchased. It seems to be running about 10% slower than expected on synthetic benchmarks. The GPU isn’t throttling its thermal limits—it stays around 1800-1900 MHz at temperatures of 74-75°C, while the memory operates at 7000 MHz and the CPU at 14000 MHz. There are no visual artifacts or crashes. After reinstalling drivers in safe mode with DUDE, nothing changed. I’ve also tried a fresh Windows install without any background applications.
Looking into further details, it appears the issue isn’t related to PCIe 2.0. My system has a Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super OC with an I7-4770K, 16 GB DDR3 RAM at 1600 MHz, and a Cl11 ASUS H81M-R PCIe 2.0 chipset with the latest BIOS. The system runs smoothly in passmark tests except for the GPU, which lags by about 52% compared to the expected 72%. An overclock could potentially boost performance by around 400 points (adding 140 MHz clock speed, 900 MHz memory bandwidth, and a 123% power limit). I’m at a loss for solutions.
Did you review the BIOS settings for clock speeds and temperatures?
Replace the card by removing it and putting it back in. Here’s a short video to assist you.
Results are best compared with identical hardware. The missing 10% might stem from your older system, and anything above the 60th percentile would likely fall into the average performance group. If you own a 3Dmark benchmark, try running Firestrike, a 4770, and a 1660 Super—expect them to hover near 12k.