NVIDIA Ends Production Of RTX 2060 / GTX 1660 Series
ITHome has reported that NVIDIA is ending the production of the GTX 1660 / RTX 2060 series. For the unaware, the GTX 1660 / RTX 2060 series took the market by storm when it first launched. This sudden decision may hint towards a possible successor to this lineup based on the Ada architecture.
Production For GTX 1660/RTX 2060 Halted
As per ITHome’s sources, NVIDIA has decided to stop the production of 4 GPUs namely;
- GTX 1660
- GTX 1660 Super
- RTX 2060
- RTX 2060 Super
Similarly, most of these GPUs have already gone off shelves with GTX 1650 and GTX 1630 being the only ones in stock. This change of plans will bring about a positive effect on Ampere’s pricing. The RTX 3050, notorious for being overpriced is now expected to be dropped in price to fill the gap. AMD’s RX 6600 currently goes for as low as $229 which is ~$50 cheaper than the RTX 3050 while offering 30% higher performance. (Source: Amazon)
This is indeed sad news for most budget gamers because the GTX 1660 Super was a really good budget GPU. Fret not, for AMD’s RDNA2 GPUs are still here but NVIDIA fans will need to wait for a bit. One should also note that the GTX 1660 lineup lacked RT and DLSS capabilities despite being built on the Turing architecture. Similarly, we have no information regarding the GTX 1650 Super and the GTX 1660 Ti.
All in all, it is time we say goodbye to our beloved GTX 1660 / RTX 2060 lineup. The RTX 2060 was reintroduced during the GPU shortage. We saw a 12GB variant of the RTX 2060 which wasn’t much of an increase over its 6GB counterpart. As for whether this decision helped the market’s situation, the results are debatable.
Paving Way For Ada?
The GTX 1660 Super was launched as a 2K (1440p) gaming card back in October, 2019. This GPU was a mid-ranged beast, pushing more than 60FPS in almost every game at 1440p. Of course, time did slow this GPU down but the fact remains. Since then, the RTX 3050 has been the only ‘relatively’ new GPU which is still somewhat slower than the GTX 1660 Ti.
Ada Lovelace may introduce something new to NVIDIA’s budget arsenal but the current pricing strategy says otherwise. Ada is an expensive architecture and from the initial looks of the RTX 4050 Mobile, the AD107 GPU does not seem to offer a huge performance increase. Do you think the RTX 4050 will suffer the same fate as the RTX 3050? Or will NVIDIA finally introduce mid-ranged beasts akin to the 1660 series? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
