Nvidia is set to launch the new GTX 1660 Super on October 29, that’s according to the latest rumours from China at least. Asus reportedly confirmed it would have three different variants of the GTX 1660 Super at launch, suggesting it’s going to be another AIB-first release. It’s going to have the Dual Evo, Phoenix, and TUF 3 models ready for launch, and it looks like that could be October 29 this year.
We had already heard rumours the green team was set to release a GTX 1650 Ti card on October 22, and now we’re reportedly going to have a higher-spec card trickling out into the market just a week later.
With Nvidia looking to bolster its existing mainstream GPU range at the end of October that only plays into the rumours of the red team launching its AMD RX 5500-series graphics cards into the market around mid-October. And if it’s the GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 which are getting upgraded versions that would seem to suggest where AMD is targeting its next generation of Navi-based GPUs, and where Nvidia needs to react.
The new GTX 1660 rumours come from IT Home (via @momomo_us) which itself refers to BoBantang’s claims of launch timing and price positioning. Along with the Nvidia GTX 1660 Super release date of October 29, the report suggests that the new card will be targeting prices around $30 below the GTX 1660 Ti’s $280 MSRP.
That would put the GTX 1660 Super at $250, mid-way between the current GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Ti cards. Considering it’s only supposed to be offering an upgrade on the memory front – a shift from 8Gbps GDDR5 to 14Gbps GDDR6 – I’m not 100% sure that boost alone would be worth the extra price premium over the standard GTX 1660.
After all, the current rumours suggest the Super’s Turing TU116 GPU will remain at the same level as the standard GTX 1660, offering 1,408 CUDA cores as opposed to the GTX 1660 Ti’s 1,536.
The GTX 1650 Ti, rumoured to arrive the week before the new Super Duper GeForce, is expected to retail around the $150 – $180 mark, but will actually come with a change to its GPU make up. The straight GTX 1650 sports 896 CUDA cores, so whether Nvidia opts to use either the full TU117 GPU at 1,024 cores, or a cut-down version of the TU116, we should see a decent performance uplift over the existing card.
Adding Ti and Super cards into a lineup that’s only around six months old would seem weird in isolation, but almost serves to confirm the mainstream shakeup that’s could be about to happen in October if AMD does indeed drop its RX 5500-series cards into the market.
With the GTX 1650 Ti reportedly getting the most technological tweaking that would seem like the GPU position Nvidia is expecting the real mainstream war to be fought.