Should you upgrade from the NVIDIA GTX 1060 to the GTX 1660 Ti?

Minimal gains for your outlay

The GTX 1660 Ti is not a bad GPU, far from it. But it's still very much a mid-range card and a Turing architecture-based replacement for the GTX 1060 in the lineup. It offers better performance across the board than the GTX 1060, but not $280 worth of performance improvements.

Most reviews of the GTX 1660 Ti agree that it offers improved performance at 1080p and 1440p over the GTX 1060, but in many cases, you're not going to exceed a 10 to 15 frames-per-second (FPS) increase. The GTX 1060 is still more than capable of delivering 60 FPS at high graphics in current titles.

The 1660 Ti performs better at 1440p, but not to the extent that it's really worth considering for a jump in resolution. For that, you should be thinking a little bigger.

RTX 2060 brings much more to the table

As an upgrade, the RTX 2060 is a much better proposition. It's only $70 more than the GTX 1660 Ti, and it is also based on NVIDIA's latest Turing architecture, as well as having more CUDA cores and memory bandwidth.

That means access to NVIDIA's RTX system for dynamic ray tracing and deep learning supersampling (DLSS). Frame rate takes a hit, but games look better than ever. While NVIDIA has since announced ray tracing will be enabled on older GPUs right back to the GTX 1060, the end results will not be quite as good as you get on an RTX card.

The RTX 2060 is also a great GPU for making the jump up from 1080p gaming to 1440p. The 1660 Ti is pretty good here, and if you were buying on a budget for a new build, would be a solid choice. But as an upgrade from a GTX 1060 less so.

The RTX 2060 will be more of a jump for not a lot of extra outlay and has additional hardware that sets it up better for future years, with or without using the RTX system in your games. For more GPU options, browse our roundup of the best graphics cards.