The latest word from the graphics grapevine is that Nvidia does indeed have a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in the wings, and the GPU will launch on February 15, priced at $279 (around £215, AU$395).
This is according to sources in the know who spoke to HardOCP. They also informed the tech site that there is a GTX 1660 model which will follow in March, with a lower asking price of $229 (around £175, AU$325).
Those two models have been previously rumored, but this new report also claims there will be a third GTX 1650 that will arrive late in March at the even more wallet-friendly price point of $179 (around £135, AU$250).
As ever, this is just speculation bouncing around the web, so we should be careful about being too ready to believe what we might want to hear.
HardOCP further notes that the “exact launch prices are still in flux”, so even if these graphics cards do exist, the aforementioned price tags may not be accurate, and just give us a ballpark idea of the cost.
Ray removal
The purported idea with these cards is to offer a cheaper optionto punters who don’t want Nvidia’s fancy ray tracing technology (RTX). The GeForce RTX 2060 will set you back $349 (£329, AU$599), so the pricing obviously needs to be in line with that – although at $279 (around £215, AU$395), it would actually come in under the price of the old GTX 1060 at $299 (£249, AU$499).
An alleged Ashes of the Singularity benchmark that was recently leaked shows the GTX 1660 Ti could be close to 20% faster than the GTX 1060, so if all this is on the money, things would seem to be shaping up nicely in terms of price/performance ratio. Of course, as we’ve already outlined, we can’t put too much store in these rumored prices – or indeed purported benchmarks.
There certainly seems to be a gathering weight of speculation starting to build up now, even if a lot of this stuff seems rather sketchy – including an alleged photo of an Nvidia pre-briefing shindig for third-party GPU manufacturers which could potentially be a fake.
Still, at least we don’t have long to wait to find out the truth behind all these allegations, if the launch of the GTX 1660 Ti is indeed only three weeks away.
Another interesting observation from HardOCP is that Nvidia intends to keep the GTX 1050 Ti in stock at retailers going forward, dropping its price to ensure the GPU remains a viable lower-end option, effectively nestling below the GTX 1650.
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