NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER vs AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT

Best value NVIDIA vs AMD graphics cards compared. Which is best? GTX 1660 SUPER versus the Radeon RX 6500 XT budget GPUs. Benchmarks and specs.

GPU Comparison

Quickly search and compare graphics cards

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 250.79
$ 160.99
$ 89.80 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

35 %
16% slightly better overall score
30 %

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

80 FPS
17 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate
63 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

48 FPS
2 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate
46 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

58 FPS
2 FPS slightly higher City frame rate
56 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

36 FPS
11 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate
26 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER and the Radeon RX 6500 XT? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Gaming Benchmarks

The Witcher 3 FPS

The Witcher 3 FPS

Ultra settings at 1080p

76 FPS
7 FPS slightly higher The Witcher 3 FPS
69 FPS
Control FPS

Control FPS

High settings at 1080p

57 FPS
24 FPS significantly higher Control FPS
33 FPS
Cyberpunk 2077 FPS

Cyberpunk 2077 FPS

High settings at 1080p

54 FPS
21 FPS significantly higher Cyberpunk 2077 FPS
33 FPS
Horizon Zero Dawn FPS

Horizon Zero Dawn FPS

High settings at 1080p

66 FPS
11 FPS slightly higher Horizon Zero Dawn FPS
55 FPS
Microsoft Flight Simulator FPS

Microsoft Flight Simulator FPS

High settings at 1080p

54 FPS
17 FPS significantly higher Microsoft Flight Simulator FPS
37 FPS
Red Dead Redemption 2 FPS

Red Dead Redemption 2 FPS

High settings at 1080p

66 FPS
22 FPS significantly higher Red Dead Redemption 2 FPS
44 FPS

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

6017
21% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score
4972
Blender score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

817.61
97% significantly higher Blender score
414.02
Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

60772
15% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score
52512
Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

55624
39% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score
39991
Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

64059
25% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score
51021
Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

58985
6% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score
55573

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1530 MHz
2310 MHz
50% significantly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1785 MHz
2815 MHz
57% significantly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

6 GiB
49% significantly more memory
4 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

192 Bit
200% significantly larger memory bus width
64 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

336 GB/s
133% significantly higher memory bandwidth
144 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

125 W
107 W
16% slightly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

85.68 Gigapixels/s
90.1 Gigapixels/s
5% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

157.1 Gigatexels/s
180.2 Gigatexels/s
14% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

5.03 TFLOPS
5.77 TFLOPS
14% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1408
37% slightly more shading units
1024

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

88
37% slightly more texture mapping units
64

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

48
49% significantly more render output processors
32

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

70th of 549
85th of 549

Family

The product line

-
Radeon RX 6000 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

October 2019
January 2022

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR6
GDDR6

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0
12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.6
4.6

GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER vs Radeon RX 6500 XT compared

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 and the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT are the best budget gaming GPUs from team green and team red. But which performs the best for the money. In terms of pricing, these two cards are very close, so making a purchase decision will depend on features and performance.

AMD is no stranger to budget GPUs, they've dominated this space for years, with NVIDIA focusing on the high-end line-up. However, the status quo may be shifting with the 1660 SUPER. It is a GTX series card with no raytracing features, but with a comparable level of performance to the older but still capable RTX 2060. No doubt, this makes it a rather compelling option for the budget minded gamer.

In response, AMD offers the Radeon RX 6500 XT with a slightly lower retail price, build on the tried and tested RDNA 2 architecture found in both the Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles. It's the lowest end card in their 6000 series line up, but that doesn't mean it's slow. This is a great option for 1080p gaming and even 1440p gaming with slightly lower settings.

Specifications compared

Both cards are competing in the same space, so they both have similar specs and power requirements. One notable difference in that the 1660 SUPER has 6 GB of memory compared to the 6500 XT with only 4 GB. With modern titles, this can have a significant impact on performance. With too little memory, the card will not be as efficient since it will need to swap game data in and out of memory. This can be something to keep in mind if you're going to be using the card for a few years.

In most cases, the 1660 SUPER is the victor, with faster memory and more compute units. However, on paper, the 6500 XT is slightly faster in raw performance numbers, but we will see how this translates to real world usage next.

Benchmarks compared

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER beats the Radeon RX 6500 XT in terms of performance. It manages to edge out the 6500 XT in all of our tests. In other benchmarks, the conclusion is the same. Despite the 6500 XT being theoretically faster, it's unable to match the pace of the 1660 SUPER. This could be due to less mature drivers and less attention from game developers during optimisation.

The 6500 XT is slightly newer and less expensive. It may even be reduced in price to compensate in the future. However, until then, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER over the Radeon RX 6500 XT.

Last updated Sep 18, 2022. Analysis by hardwareDB.

Comments

GamingGuruX

I'm glad to see that there are good budget options for gamers who don't want to spend a lot of money on a high-end GPU. Both of these cards seem like great choices for 1080p gaming.

January 24, 2023 Reply
Anonymous

i play at 2560x1440 with my 1660 super it works well

April 09, 2023
allku2

Interesting comparison! I've always been an AMD fan, but it looks like the NVIDIA card is the better performer in this case.

January 16, 2023 Reply
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