NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (Desktop) vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is an entry level graphics card for desktops based on the Pascal architecture. It uses the same GP107 chip as the GTX 1050 Ti, but with only 640 instead of 768 shaders. The chip is manufactured at Samsung in 14 nm (opposed to the 16 nm TSCM based Pascal chips of the 1060 and up). The performance and specs should be similar to the GTX 1050 laptop version, that will be released later (early 2017). Compared to the faster GTX 1050 Ti, the 1050 offers less shaders (640 instead of 768) and only 2 GB of GDDR5 (instead of the 4 GB of the 1050 Ti).

Gaming benchmarks by Nvidia state that the GTX 1050 is about 30% faster on average than the Radeon RX 460 with 2 GB VRAM. The 4 GB version of the RX 460 should be about 10% slower and the older GTX 950 should reach a similar performance level as the new GTX 1050. Therefore, the GTX 1050 should be ideal for 1080p gaming with high detail settings (but not max settings).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 is a mid-tier, Turing-based, desktop GPU. The GTX 1660 relies on the TU116 chip with 1,408 shader units, 48 ROPs, 88 TMUs and a 192-bit-wide memory bus (clocked at 2 GHz = 8 GHz effectively 12 GHz, bandwidth: up to 192.1 GB/s).

The TU116 chip and other Turing-based GPUs are produced using the 12-nm manufacturing process. However, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti does not offer the latest features such as DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and Real Time Ray Tracing. Nevertheless, there are some architectural improvements when it comes to floating point and integer performance. These operations can now be carried out simultaneously. Other notable features include Adaptive Shading, unified cache, DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b, HDR, Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) as well as H.265 encoding and decoding (PlayReady 3.0).

At Full HD resolution, the GeForce GTX 1660 is slightly faster than the old GeForce GTX 1060, but clearly slower than the old GeForce GTX 1070 (and GTX 1660 Ti). Therefore, the GTX1660 is well suited for demanding games of 2019 in 1080p and high - max details (see gaming benchmarks below).

The energy consumption of the GeForce GTX 1660 amounts to 120 watts (like the 1660 Ti or GTX 1060).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 is a fast desktop graphics card based on the Pascal architecture. It was announced in May 2016 and offers all 2,560 shader of the used GP104 chip. Furthermore, the GPU is coupled with 8 GB GDDR5X graphics memory using a 256 Bit interface (10 GHz, 320 GB/s). The chip is manufactured at TSMC in 16nm (FinFET). The TDP is specified at 180 Watt and therefore slightly higher than the predecessor, the GTX 980 with 165 Watt.